Night After Night Page 7

  “How so?”

  “She was addicted to painkillers and denied it for the longest time. She started taking them for headaches, and she kept on taking them. And she became so wrapped up in it that her life was dictated by it. She missed work, she wrote fake prescriptions, she started doctor shopping. Selling her stuff to pay for more pills – jewelry, her iPhone, Coach purses. Anything that had value she sold off to buy more,” he said, stopping to gently wash off the soap from Julia’s legs. “I tried to help her too. Get her into rehab.”

  “How did she react to that?”

  Clay shrugged heavily, the defeat of those days with Sabrina rising back to the surface. It had been a while since he’d ended things with her for good, and there certainly weren’t any residual feelings or lingering love. Still, the memories had a way of wearing him down because that last year with her had been rough. Her furtive phone calls, the late-night texts to slimy dealers and doctors who started providing for her, and the slide into all those lies. He could still recall the unabated shock he felt when he woke up in the middle of the night to find her rooting around in his wallet and pocketing some bills to buy more drugs.

  It wasn’t even about the money she took. He couldn’t care less about that money. It was the lies and the secrets, and how they both had wore away at him. That last year with her had been the worst year for his firm. The only year his revenues were down from the one before. Precipitously. He couldn’t concentrate on deals, couldn’t focus on clients. The way she’d toyed with him had nearly cost him the business he’d worked so hard to build. Flynn had landed a big client for them – the action film director – and in the span of those last few months with Sabrina, Clay had gone and lost that client for them.

  If he were a ballplayer, he wouldn’t just have been benched. He’d have been called back down to the farm leagues for the way he’d messed up that deal.

  “She was game for it on the surface. Did the whole contrite act. Said she had a problem and needed help. But she relapsed every time and kept going back for more,” he said, and while it hurt like hell at the time, it didn’t hurt anymore. She was the past, and he’d learned from it. He wasn’t going to repeat those mistakes again.

  Julia laid a gentle hand on his arm, resting it against the strong, curved strokes of his tattoo. “I’m sorry, Clay. That sucks.”

  “Yeah, it did,” he said. “It’s hard when someone you care about won’t change and won’t even try. I kept trying to help her and she kept promising to get help,” he said, drawing a circle in the air with his index finger. “But it never happened. And so on you go.”

  “On you go indeed. And here you are,” she said, twisting around to lay a sweet kiss on his chest. Then his shoulder. Then up to his jawline.

  “Here I am.”

  “I’m glad you’re here with me,” she whispered, and it was so unlike her to let go of her hard edge, but he liked it when she did in moments like this. “I’m loving this weekend.”

  Here he was, falling faster than he expected to.

  Chapter Nine

  That’s why he hated lies. Made sense. Made perfect sense. And, hell, she shouldn’t worry because she didn’t have a drug problem, like his ex. Not even close. She had a money problem, and it wasn’t her fault. But she also had a truth problem because she couldn’t tell a soul about all those dollars she owed Charlie. She certainly couldn’t tell Clay. He did well for himself, and she didn’t want Charlie to sink his teeth into her new man.

  New man?

  What the hell? It was one weekend. One moment. Nothing more, and she certainly couldn’t think of him as her man, no matter how much she enjoyed every single second of these days with him, from the way he touched her to the way he made her feel in her heart.

  Like it could open again.

  Like she could let him in and not be burned because there was something about him that simply meshed with her. Maybe it was the way he held her, or it could be the way she felt when she was with him. Free.

  It was a feeling she’d longed for, and it thrilled and scared her.

  She buried her nerves in a kiss. Julia pressed her lips to his jawline, then tangled her fingers in his wet hair, the contact temporarily distracting her from what she knew was coming. The moment when she’d have to tell him something about her past.

  “What about you?” he asked, and there it was. Her turn to share.

  “You want to know my skeletons?” she said, slipping her hand down his chest, drawing a line across his fabulously firm body in an effort to rattle his focus. His breathing quickened, and his dick rose up in the water. But he reached for her hand before she could touch him.

  “Don’t distract me. We’re talking,” he said, in a tone that was playful but firm.

  She pretended to pout. “But other things are more fun than talking.”

  “We’ll get to other things, gorgeous. I promise you I have many things planned for you.”

  “But I have to fess up about the nudist colony I used to belong to first?”

  “Yeah,” he said with a grin, as he shifted her around so she lay against his body, her back to his front, his hard cock against her backside.

  “And my days working in a high-class call ring with your lawyer friend?”

  “Ha, that too.”

  “Fine,” she said, ripping off the Band-Aid. “I have an ex named Donovan. We dated on and off for a few years. He was handsome and hung –

  “–Hey now.”

  “Well, not like you,” she said, wriggling her rear against that evidence of how very well hung Clay Nichols was. So well. So unbelievably endowed in the length and width department. She thanked her lucky stars for that.

  “Not like I’m even worried about that at all. I just don’t want to hear about another man’s prowess.”

  “Did I say he had prowess?”

  “Julia,” he said with a sigh. “Has anyone ever told you you’re evasive?”

  “Fine. How’s this for non-evasive? Donovan and his schlong are history. But there was this other guy Dillon. He was a photographer, and did some work shooting homes for realtors and contracted with some companies in the city, taking product shots,” she said, but didn’t add the type of products he captured – like Charlie’s Limos. Nor did she add that while Charlie really did own and lease a fleet of limos, his limo company was pretty much his only legit operation. His other businesses were more of the racketeering variety, she suspected, and she had a hunch Charlie’s Limos did some laundering too. Or so Dillon had told her. She operated on a “don’t ask” policy these days when it came to Charlie. She didn’t want to know about his business dealings; she already knew too much from the things Dillon had told her. It had all seemed playful at the time when he’d come home from a photo shoot of a new stretch limo and flash a wad of greenbacks. “He paid me in cash again. I think Charlie’s allergic to checks,” he’d say.

  “What a terrible affliction.”

  “They make him break out in hives.”

  “Receipts probably do too,” she joked. Little did she know then that Dillon was onto something all right. He’d been dabbling with a most dangerous type of client.

  “Anyway, we were together for a while,” she said to Clay, pushing thoughts of exes far out of her mind. “But it was kind of fading out for the last several months. And well truth be told, I honestly don’t even know where he is.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah really. It ended, and he’s not even in San Francisco anymore,” she said, and that was all true. Dillon had left. She had no clue where he’d gone. She had her suspicions. The Cayman Islands. Maybe Mexico. Someplace untraceable. Unfindable. Drinking pina coladas on the beach and having the last laugh. Yep. The laugh was on her. That was the other reason she kept her own secrets. She was ashamed, so terribly ashamed of how Dillon had tricked her. She’d been conned, and she didn’t want anyone know she’d been played a fool.

  “Why’d it end?”

  “I told you. We drifted apar
t. Isn’t that how it usually ends?”

  “Usually.”

  “But Clay?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t want to talk about exes anymore. We’ve done that, and here I am in the bathtub with you and candles are lit and music is playing, and you’re hard because you’re always hard, and it seems like now would be a good time for us to stop talking and start doing other things.”

  She stood up, reached for a towel, and dried off. Within a minute she was in his closet, selecting a white shirt and a cobalt blue tie to wear.

  Chapter Ten

  Lucky tie.

  Knotted loosely at her neck, his power tie hung enticingly between her breasts, traveling down to her luscious belly button, then, like an arrow, pointing to the treasure that lay beneath her black lace panties.

  She wore one of his shirts, freshly laundered and unbuttoned, and a pair of black stockings and heels.

  Hottest. Outfit. Ever.

  “Sit down, Mister,” she instructed, pointing to the gray chair in the corner of his bedroom. The chair was usually home to whatever tie or shirt he’d tossed off at the end of the day. Now, he was parked in it, leaning back, getting ready for a show. He wore only a white towel, wrapped around his waist. His hair was wet from the bath.

  She leaned forward, pressing play on her phone, giving him a delicious view of her breasts. Christina Aguilera’s Candyman filled his bedroom, the pulsing beat deepening the already sexy mood. The lights were low, except for the one by the nightstand. He wasn’t turning them off. He wanted to watch. He wanted to see everything.

  As the opening notes sounded, she strutted over to him, and traced her fingernails along his neck, heating up his skin. “Welcome to the Girls in Ties club,” she said with a purr.

  “My favorite kind of club.”

  She ran her hand down his arm; her touch felt electric. “I have a feeling you will like our services.”

  “Does this club allow touching, ma’am? I don’t want to break any rules.”

  “Only with certain patrons,” she said, then swiveled around and walked the other direction, giving him a fantastic look at her ass in her thong underwear. What he wouldn’t do to tear that underwear off with his teeth right now. Bend her over, get on his knees, and pull hard til they ripped off her, revealing her beautiful, wet pussy.

  His imagination was already in overdrive. She turned, bent forward and shook out her gorgeous hair, as strands of sleek, wet red tumbled along her legs. When she flipped up her head, she swayed her hips back and forth.

  Provocatively.

  Oh so provocatively that his cock made a full tent of the towel.

  She eyed his erection, her lips curving up in a wicked grin. “I see our club pleases you.”

  “It pleases me so very much,” he said.

  “Let’s see if we can help you appreciate it here even more,” she said, pressing her hands to her belly, then running them up her stomach, as she begin playing with the buttons on his shirt.

  Peekaboo. Showing one breast, then hiding it under the fabric. Then the other. She yanked the shirt closed, feigning innocence as she spun around, her hands on her knees now, shaking that delicious ass for him as the chorus of the song played loud.

  A growl rose up in his chest, and his dick throbbed. He ached to take her, to touch her, to be inside her. He was a high tension wire. Taut. But he waited patiently, his hands on his thighs, letting her play the part as she returned to him, her heels clicking against the hard wood floor.

  When she reached him, she set her hands on his legs, slowly shimmying her hips as she danced. “The staff at Girls in Ties says you ordered a lap dance.”

  “Did I now?”

  She trailed a hand along his thigh, teasing him with her nearness to his cock. “Did you want one?”

  “I do when you take off that shirt.”

  She arched an eyebrow and opened one side of his shirt, then pressed her right breast against his chest. “Can I do this then?”

  “Yes,” he grunted, his entire body rigid as he refused to move, to give into his desire to touch her all over, and to be touched.

  She opened the other side now, revealing her chest to him. “And this?” She moved in closer, like a cat arching its back as she rubbed her breasts against him. He inhaled sharply through his nostrils. His fingers twitched with the desire to grab her hips, slam her down on his painfully hard erection. But he kept his palms spread on his legs as she tugged off one sleeve, then another, dropping the white shirt onto the floor. She turned around, wearing only her thong, stockings, heels and his tie. She lowered herself onto his thighs, still covered in his towel.

  “Oh my, it seems you like a lap dance, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said in a strained voice, his hands itching to hold her.

  She gyrated up and down, teasing him as she brought her delicious ass dangerously close to his erection, but not close enough. She wriggled lower, and once, just once, ground against him. He hissed out a harsh breath. He could feel her heat through his towel.

  “You’re soaked,” he said.

  She turned around, planting one high heeled foot on the arm of the chair, the other firmly on the ground, as she rocked her hips towards him. “No, sir. I am slippery. I thought we established this already.”

  “Let me find out how wet you are.”

  “Only if I can find out how hard you are,” she said, punctuating her retort with a thrust of her hips close to his face. He could smell her arousal, the delicious scent of her pussy so near to him. He wanted to inhale her, to be drenched in her juices. No longer able to restrain himself, he lifted a hand, and hooked his finger into the waistband of her panties, stretching the cotton panel against her.

  “Oh,” she said, playfully, eyeing his hand. “Are these in your way?”

  “Yes. They are obstructing my view. I want to see how you look right now,” he said, then slid the panties down her legs. His breathing turned erratic as he watched her be revealed, the tiniest thread of her silky desire glistening from her lips to her underwear like a trail of evidence as he pulled off the scrap of fabric. He couldn’t take it anymore. He needed to taste her, to drown his mouth in her scent, to feel her wetness all over his face.

  But more than that, he wanted her screams of passion to fill his ears. He wanted to see reckless desire smashing through her body. He wanted to control her pleasure. As she began to open his towel, he grabbed her hand to stop her. “No.”

  “I can’t touch you?”

  “Not yet. Go get on my bed,” he said, letting her know he was taking the reins now.

  “The dance is over?”

  “The dance is fucking over, and I’m going to show you what you did to me,” he said as he stood, tearing off the towel, letting her know how much he wanted her. Her eyes darkened with lust as she stared at his cock. Her reaction made him hotter, harder.

  “I’m being punished for turning you on?”

  Another shake of his head. “No. You are being rewarded for turning me on. But we’re doing it my way. You teased the fuck out of me, and now I want to watch you squirm. Crawl up on my bed and get on your hands and knees.”

  She held up her wrists, a sexy wink in her eyes. “I’ve been waiting for this.”

  “Go, woman. And leave your shoes and stockings on.”

  She strutted over to the bed. He followed, watching as she climbed up, and positioned herself on all fours in the middle of the white comforter on his king-size bed. His tie dangled down from her neck onto the covers. He joined her on the bed, bending over her, and reaching his hands around to her neck. “I’m going to untie this now, and use it for something else,” he said, quickly unknotting it. The tie fell into his hands as she rocked back into him. He brought a hand down to her ass, spanking her hard.

  “Did I say you should rock your ass against me?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to be spanked again?”

  “Maybe I do,” she said in that taunting voic
e, wriggling against him once more.

  She was rewarded with another smack, and that drew out a long low moan as she arched her back.

  “I’ll check to see how much you like it,” he said, dipping his hand between her legs to test her love of spanking. Oh yeah, there was the proof, so he slapped her once more, and she drew in a sharp quick breath.

  Then he tugged her hands together, sending her falling forward onto her elbows. He wrapped his tie around her wrists, once, twice, then pulled it between them to tighten the hold. Finishing it off with a strong knot, he tied the loose end to the headboard. He grabbed a pillow, and stuffed it under her chest. “This is if you need to muffle your screams.”

  “Assuming you make me scream,” she said.

  “I will make you scream, Julia. I will make sure the neighbors know how good you’re about to get it.”

  He moved to appraise his handiwork. She was on her knees and elbows, her hands bound together with his cobalt blue tie through the slats in the headboard, her gorgeous body stretched taut.

  “Mmm,” he murmured, stroking his chin. “Fucking perfect.”

  “So now what?”

  “Now, I am going to tease the ever loving fuck out of you, gorgeous,” he said, and ran his hands from her shoulders down her sexy back to her ass. Placing his thumbs on that most favorite spot where her legs met her ass, he spread her cheeks. “You have the most perfect ass I have ever seen. The things I could do with this ass,” he mused.

  “What sort of things?”

  “Oh, you’ll see,” he said, teasing her with his thumbs, dragging them gently between her legs. “Did dancing for me get you hot? Don’t sass me or I will take my hands off of you,” he said sliding one finger lightly across her entrance.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Could you feel your panties getting hotter with each move you made on me?” He rubbed his finger lightly against her swollen clit, and she moaned, lifting her rear higher. An invitation. A beautiful fucking invitation as she showed him with her body, with her moves, how much she wanted this.