Bittersweet Page 2

  “Who needs food?” Mo said, and pulled a chocolate-dipped pretzel from the bag. “I have dinner right here.”

  “That is not dinner and that is mine. He gave me a bag of samples. I paid a fortune for Shapiro’s bag. That’s supposed to be my stash.”

  “This is it! I swear,” Mo said solemnly and bit into the pretzel. It crunched and crumbled into a sinful pile of pretzel, peanut butter and chocolate pieces that Mo caught with her hand. Her long, lean fingers made sure to capture every piece. “Oh, Jesus. I think I love him, too,” she sighed around a mouthful of pretzel.

  “I do not love him,” Rayka said.

  “Okay. Lust.”

  “I am not in...”

  But she stopped right there. If went any further, Mo would call her a liar. And she would be right.

  * * * *

  After another cup of coffee and one more stolen piece of chocolate, Mo went home. Rayka cleaned up their delivery containers and stowed the rest of her shrimp lo mein in the fridge and put the wine bottle in recycling. The goodie bag tempted her, and she stuck her nose in the opening. Inhaling deeply, she let out a soft sound. God. The smell no longer just made her want a sweet treat, the smell now made her think of big muscular forearms, a crooked grin, fierce brown eyes, and a commanding voice. She could picture the faded denim that swathed his trim hips and the small scar on the first knuckle of his right hand.

  Rayka withdrew a dark brown orb and pressed it to her lips. She took another deep breath, and the delicate smell of mandarin oranges filled her senses. She punctured the chocolate coating and pressed her tongue to the small wound where orange cream seeped from the candy. Her tongue came to life first and then brought to mind how his finger had slid past the barrier of her lips and touched her tongue when she had sampled the orange cream in the store. Just for a moment. So fast, she had almost doubted it had happened. Except for the intense warmth that unfurled like silken ribbons low in her belly. The pulse in her pussy assured her that he had, indeed, had his finger in her mouth.

  Her breath had frozen for just an instant and he had caught her. That wide-eyed, stunned feeling of that second of her life. The overwhelming sensation that if he demanded she lower her designer skirt and shove aside her La Perla panties she would. Without a thought. Without an argument. Dear God. What was happening? Had she gone crazy?

  But she hadn’t, and when he had said, “I’ll pick you up for dinner the night after tomorrow. I have a meeting with Gideon’s lawyers tonight and tomorrow night. To finalize the store. My first free night is Friday. I will pick you up at seven.”

  She hadn’t questioned the fact that they were more orders than an invitation. Her body had hummed its response instantly. Yes. Yes, come and get me, feed me, take me. She had written down her phone number and address, accepted the pound of bribery for Ms. Shultz. She had blushingly taken his gift of a pound of candy for herself. His personal choices for her. Then she had hurried out, a pep in her step despite the fact that she was late to her next appointment.

  Her only real concern had been how she would possibly make it until Friday. She would have that nervous sizzling feeling in the pit of her belly for almost two full days. Her concentration would be shot to hell and her hormones wouldn’t just be raging by then—they’d be on a rampage. Ready to pillage and plunder and do whatever he said. Never had she felt that way. Never would she have done anything a man asked of her even if she didn’t 100 percent want to. She was almost certain she would do that for this man. He did strange things to her. Not just her body, but her mind. Whatever he said, she obliged. It was very unlike her to open her mouth to a virtual stranger. Not even if the offering was an intoxicating morsel of chocolate.

  When she closed her eyes, she could feel the slide of his hand over hers as he’d handed her the bags. For just a moment his fingers had lingered on the back of her hand, sending each nerve into a tizzy. Her nipples had hardened at the stimulation then and they did now.

  Rayka shivered and bit the candy in half. The orange and chocolate concoction melted on her tongue and she wondered what his lips felt like. What he kissed like. What Deacon’s mouth would feel like closing over her nipple and kissing down her belly. How his hands would feel parting her thighs and how his fingers would feel sliding deep inside her ready moisture. When the phone rang she was breathing hard, a tiny dot of chocolate melting on her lower lip.

  Chapter 4

  He’d heard of bed head, but never bed voice. But she had it. The raspy gasp when she answered the phone brought to mind Bardot’s tousled, I’ve-just-been-fucked hair and rumpled bed sheets. Parted lips and a light sheen of sweat on bare breasts. Deacon ground his teeth together so hard he thought they might shatter. He relaxed his grip on the phone and steadied his voice before he spoke.

  Normally when he made a date with a woman, he didn’t contact them until the time he had laid down. Not this woman. This woman had somehow wormed under his skin. She undid him in a way that was unsettling. He wasn’t sure he liked the hold she had over him, even if she didn’t know she had it.

  “Rayka?” he said when he knew his voice was steady.

  “Deacon?”

  Jesus. Just the way she said his name brought intensely filthy images into his head. Deacon thought she’d taste like strawberries. Maybe that strawberry whip candy Gideon had been addicted to. Lighter than air with just enough of the sweet summery flavor to make your tongue giddy with the taste. He took another deep breath and closed his eyes.

  “Yes, it’s me. What are you doing? Or what were you doing?” he said, letting just a bit of his dark humor tinge his words.

  He heard her suck in a breath as if she’d been caught. He took a chance. After all, she could take offense, be horrified, and break their date. Or she might go along with him. Answer his rude questioning. He pushed.

  “Were you touching yourself, Rayka?”

  “No! Oh, no. I was...”

  He could imagine the red stain of mortification on her pale cheeks. She had the lightest fawn-colored freckles on the apples of her cheeks. He wanted to run his tongue over each one to see if it had a taste or a feel. He bet different parts of her had different flavors. Or, at the very least, to him they would. Her earlobe would taste different than the nape of her neck. Her nipple would be sweeter than her pussy, and her pussy richer than the small of her back.

  “Were you thinking about it?” he asked.

  “No.” But she had hesitated. He was close to the truth.

  “Were you thinking about me?” he demanded, taking a stab in the dark.

  “I...um...”

  “You were. I see. What were you thinking about?” he asked. His voice was gruff. He could hear the dominant tone himself. She would answer or she wouldn’t.

  “You.” It was said so softly he almost didn’t hear her over his own harsh breathing.

  “What about me, Rayka? What were you thinking about me?”

  “What it would be like to kiss you,” she admitted. Her voice remained soft, but the breathy, ethereal quality had increased. She was turned on. Deacon didn’t have to see her to know that.

  “And what else?” he urged. “I know there’s more, Rayka. Don’t even bother to say there isn’t.”

  Dead silence. He could picture her chewing gently on her bottom lip. Little nibbles as she thought. He’d seen her do it in the candy store and had fought the temptation to kiss her and bite that swollen bottom lip. Hard. And then soothe it with the gentlest of licks and kisses.

  “What your hands would feel like,” she admitted.

  “Where?”

  “On me,” she said. She was stalling.

  “Where on you, sweetheart?”

  “On my thighs.”

  “Pushing them apart?”

  “Yes.”

  She breathed out that final word, and Deacon had to close his eyes and concentrate on not bursting apart in a thousand pieces. Finally, his heart settled a bit. “And in you, I bet,” he went on. “Pushing into that sweet p
ussy of yours?”

  He waited. Would she hang up? He didn’t think so. At this point, he felt certain he had a hold over her, too.

  “Yes, Deacon.”

  “Good girl,” he said. He liked how she’d automatically fallen into it. Said his name. Acknowledged his power.

  “Touch yourself, Rayka. Touch yourself the way you want me to touch you.”

  He heard her jittery breathing and wondered if she would balk.

  “I don’t think I can. I—”

  “Yes you can. Take your hand and touch yourself. Stroke your clit. It’s hard isn’t it? I know it is. I can hear it in your voice. Put your finger inside that hot, wet mouth of yours and get your finger wet first. Now do it.”

  God help him, he swore he heard the slide of her finger over her lips. Heard the soft sound of her sucking it. His cock twitched, and though he thought it impossible, it grew harder still. Fuck.

  He heard a soft sound of pleasure through the phone and sat down hard on the sofa. Her finger was on her clit and he was in her head. He popped his fly and took his cock in a loose fist. Just a few strokes. Nothing more. This was about getting her to bend. She didn’t seem like a phone sex girl. He wanted her to be one. Just for him.

  “Does that feel good?”

  “Mmmm.”

  “Harder circles now,” he said and pumped his cock once. It felt too good. Too much like he would come if she so much as said his name. He clenched his jaw tighter, ran his thumb over the gem-sized dot of pre-come.

  “It’s sensitive,” she admitted.

  His cock jerked in his hand at her words. He took his free hand and put it behind his head. Reclining back on the sofa, he said, “And you think I wouldn’t suck you hard there even if it was sensitive? Harder circles.”

  She made another, harsher sound and he tried not to unravel right there. She was obeying him. “Deacon,” she said. Just his name. No more.

  “Put me on speaker,” he said. Everyone had speaker these days, right?

  He heard a click, the loud sound of the phone being set down, and her breathing. The speaker setting seemed to amplify her more and he could hear the ragged sound of her breathing as she stroked herself as instructed. “Okay. You’re on.”

  “Two fingers, Rayka. Two fingers is what I would use. Not one. No starting small and then adding. I would want you to open for me right away. Take me in immediately. And my fingers are bigger than yours so that means three. Now. Three fingers in that cunt of yours, sweetheart.”

  He heard her moan and then gasp. This time she hadn’t even balked. Not even for show. “Oh, God,” she said.

  “If I were there, I’d fuck you with my fingers until you bloomed for me completely. Until your pussy clenched around my fingers and you hovered right there on the edge. Right there where you need to come so bad you are sobbing. And then I would pull you onto my lap and impale you. Slide you down on my cock and watch your face as you took in every last inch of me.”

  Little sweet sounds came over the phone. Little gasps and puffs and sighs that let him know he was on borrowed time. His hand found his cock again and the rasp of his calluses over the length of his hard-on almost made him shoot right there. This woman was addictive. She had somehow filled his every thought and now he would hear her orgasm for him. Mere hours after their first meeting.

  “I would wait until you got that far-away look and your cheeks were a flaming pink. I would raise you and lower you and watch your breasts. Watch them move, watch that flush spread across your pale skin as your pussy grew tighter.”

  “Oh!” she said, and Deacon could hear her panting.

  “And when you were right there. When that first tear came, Rayka. Because you don’t think you can live one more moment without coming...” He tightened his fist on his cock because her sounds were growing lower, as if her throat were full of something. For an instant he allowed himself to imagine it was full of him. That she had a throat full of his cock. His body liked that thought. Deacon felt it building in him. Felt the orgasm coming, an unstoppable force, like a wave off the ocean. “Then I would thrust up into you and suck your nipples, Rayka. And sometimes, sweetheart, I have to warn you, I bite.”

  “Deacon!” she yelped, and he let go. A hot wash of semen on his hand, his jaw clenched, his heart in his throat.

  Chapter 5

  Rayka cried out as her pussy clenched around her probing fingers. She was biting her lip so hard she expected blood, but the pain only mingled with the sweet pleasure of unexpected orgasm. His gruff voice in her ear as she fucked herself according to his explicit instructions, the picture he painted of how he would be with her, what he would do, it all fed into one intense, mind-melting orgasm.

  “Jesus,” she panted and eyed the phone as if it would move. She swore she had heard his own pleasured groans through the phone even as she had made such a ruckus. Had he? Had he gotten off to listening to her? Jesus. What was happening to her? From always-wear-clean-underwear to phone-whore in a day. “Deacon?”

  “Right here, baby,” he said. He was breathing hard.

  “Did you—?”

  “What do you think?”

  Rayka couldn’t help it. She grinned. To think she had the power to make a man stroke himself until he came was a heady thing. She never expected to be that woman. She wasn’t a temptress or a siren. She was plain old Rayka.

  “I’m glad,” she whispered, and she meant it. She wasn’t sure why. She knew very little about this man other than the fact that he had inherited a candy store from his uncle, had exquisite taste in chocolate, and was a bit bossy and rough around the edges. That and how he made her feel. That was the sum total of her knowledge of Deacon James.

  “You and me both. Now...” She heard him take her off speaker and she did the same. And there he was. Intimately. In her ear and in her head. “I called to say, we can do tomorrow. I finished up with Tom Frye this evening. All the candy store stuff is done with. I’ll pick you up at seven. Wear red and no panties,” he said. And then he hung up.

  “Red? No panties?” she said to no one. The phone suddenly seemed cold and unforgiving in her hand and on her face. She shut it with a loud bang and marched upstairs to take a shower. “Of all the nerve. He makes me...he tells me to...well, all that and then bosses me around and hangs up on me! Of all the nerve!”

  She turned on the shower and cranked the knob to hot. “And stop talking to yourself, you lunatic,” she muttered. Even as her anger seemed to go from a rolling boil to a simmer, her mind catalogued her wardrobe for red. Red turtle neck, red sweater, red stilettos, red skirt, red wrap dress. That was the one. Red wrap dress. It was pretty snug, though. Especially since she had her ten occasional pounds on. An absence of panties would be visible to anyone who cared to look at her.

  “Fine,” she mumbled and climbed into the hot water. The steam engulfed her and she sighed with pleasure. “I’ll wear red. But I am so wearing panties, mister! I don’t care what you say. And we’ll have a nice long conversation about phone manners. You do not make a woman orgasm like that and then hang up on her. I don’t care how hard I came.”

  Then she let the hot water wash over her and soften her up. Make her tense places go fluid. It felt good. Soon the outside of her body matched the inside. Warm, soft, and satisfied.

  * * * *

  “I don’t know. I like my lime color better,” Mrs. Shapiro whined. Literally. Whined.

  Rayka shoved her hands in her skirt pocket to keep from clenching them into fists and then beating the hell out of Mrs. Shapiro. That would not be good. The peace offering of the gorgeous chocolates from The Good, the Sweet, and the Yummy had gone over well. Mrs. Shapiro had cooed and accepted Rayka’s apology graciously, for the most part. She understood the “artistic type” and how “high strung” they could be. “People like you” upset more easily, she had said, assuring Rayka that she understood. Rayka had nearly bitten the tip of her tongue off during that monologue. She reminded herself of the hefty check she would get if
she could salvage this account and satisfy the old biddy...um...client. She could give Brazil a well deserved raise and rent a bigger office space and even put a bit of money away.

  “Let’s look at this lavender,” she said softly so she wouldn’t scream. “You like the black paired with pastels a lot. The classic French kind of duos. You really don’t want to do lime green.” When Mrs. S. frowned at her, Rayka did some quick thinking. “I heard Pearl Parkerson was doing lime green. We all know what people say about Pearl.”

  She would have to go to church or donate to charity, she decided, because Pearl was a lovely woman who Mildred Shapiro loathed for some reason. Personally, Rayka thought Mrs. S. was just jealous because Pearl’s bank account had more zeros in it.

  Mrs. S. clutched her chest as if she might have a heart attack. “Oh, no! My signature color? That woman, I am telling you. She found out. She found out that that is my favorite color and she hijacked it!”

  Rayka shrugged. Hail Mary, full of grace... she said in her head even though she wasn’t Catholic. Then for no reason she felt the phantom sensation of her orgasm from the night before and her nipples peaked beneath her sweater.

  “She is a vulture...” Mrs. Shapiro was rambling.

  Rayka couldn’t seem to get a deep breath. She could hear him in her mind. I would thrust up into you and suck your nipples, Rayka. And sometimes, sweetheart, I have to warn you, I bite...

  “Hmm?” Rayka caught herself just in time. Reeled herself back from the land of daydreams before Mrs. Shapiro caught her. “I mean, I’m sure she didn’t do it on purpose.”