Pool Man Read online

  I don’t know when he eased out of me, don’t know when he came to lie by my side and hold me as I sobbed. Don’t know. Don’t remember. Don’t care.

  But when I reclaimed myself, my sanity, he was there, a warm blanket, staving off the shivers of bliss careening through me.

  He eased my hair from my cheek and pressed a kiss on my temple. “Are you…okay?” he asked, his voice soft, sweet.

  His body was molded to mine. I could feel his thrumming erection pressed against my hip. That was not soft and sweet in the slightest. But when I nudged it, encouraging him to remove the damn shorts and plunge it into me, he eased away.

  “Are you okay?” he repeated.

  “I’m fine,” I said, though my voice sounded drunk. Perhaps I was. Drunk on love. Or lust. Whatever.

  I pushed against him again, and again he retreated.

  I rolled over, arm on my forehead, and glared at him. “Aren’t you going to fuck me?” I asked, spreading my legs, just in case he wasn’t quite sure what I meant.

  His gaze scorched over my splayed body and his lips quirked. He bent down to kiss a nipple, suckle it, which was awesome, but then he met my gaze and said, “No.”

  No?

  My mind blanked.

  Something deep within me flinched.

  I was hungry for him.

  I was mad for him.

  Oh, yes, I’d just had the most devastating and transformative orgasm of my life, but it wasn’t over. We weren’t done yet. Not by a long shot.

  “No?”

  “No.” He shifted off the bed and I lurched up to watch him as he returned the stupid bottle of oil to the bathroom.

  “Why not?” I disliked the petulant tone, but there you have it. I was feeling a trifle…petulant.

  He returned to the room, but barely. Leaning against the doorjamb, he crossed his arms.

  Gawd, he was beautiful.

  He winked at me. “I am not going to fuck you,” he said, “because we haven’t finished our game.”

  Our… “What?”

  “One should never leave a poker game unfinished.” This, he offered in a very somber tone. As though it were the law of the universe. I was suddenly compelled to make him break the law. He pushed off and came toward me, then held out his hand and helped me from the bed.

  “Come along, my darling.” He herded me back into the kitchen. I was very aware I was naked, aching and covered in oil. And he was still somewhat dressed. I found this very annoying. “It’s time for another hand.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  A hand, I might add, I was determined to win.

  Chapter Five

  He was determined as well, but it seemed the fates were with me. He glared at his cards as I laid down my winning hand. It hadn’t been easy, focusing on the game as the ambient air feathered over my bare skin. My nipples were puckered and my body ached with an insistent hum.

  “How did that happen?” he muttered, scrubbing his cheek with a palm.

  I flashed him a brilliant grin. “Guess I just have superior poker face.”

  He sighed. “Okay. What do you want?”

  Yes. What had my full house bought me? I waggled a finger in his direction. “Strip.”

  He paled. “What?”

  “You heard me, Jimmy. Strip. I’m buck nekked. I want you nekked too.”

  His mouth opened, as though he intended to tell me no, but he didn’t. He stood and slowly, sensuously, peeled off his shorts.

  I was gratified when his cock sprang free. I was gratified because now he was as naked as me, and I was gratified…because he was hard. That meant he’d sat there across the table, throughout our hand, as tangled in lust as I had been.

  Which was only fair.

  “Happy?” He cocked a brow.

  Not yet. But I would be. I grunted and collected the cards. “More wine would make me happy,” I said. Not that I wanted wine. I pretty much wanted to stare at his tight butt as he walked to the pantry.

  While he was gone, I shuffled and rearranged the cards and dealt them out.

  He brought me my glass and I smiled up at him. “Thank you, sir.” I took a sip and moaned.

  He glanced at the cards on the table and frowned. “Another hand?”

  “Of course. Can’t quit until the game is finished, can we?” I pointed to his chair. “Sit down.”

  He did, and hissed through his teeth. “The chair is cold.”

  I frowned at him. “It is not. You’ve been warming it with your ass. Now, quit whining and play.”

  With a grumble he lifted his cards. As he arranged them, a sly smile crossed his face and then flickered away. He shot me an assessing glance. He was pleased with his cards. I could tell.

  Also, I knew what he had.

  Because I’d cheated. While he’d been distracted with the wine, I’d stacked the deck.

  “Any draw cards?” He plastered an innocent look on his face and tossed the three of clubs onto the table. I fed him a jack. His face lit up. Really. He seriously needed to work on his poker face. Even if I hadn’t already known what he had, I would have known.

  Four jacks. Almost certainly a winning hand.

  If one’s opponent didn’t hold four aces.

  Again, when I laid down my cards, he gaped. Apparently it was inconceivable for him to lose…again. His brow knotted. He glanced at the pantry. I didn’t want to give him time to work it out, so I plunged forward with my evil plan.

  “So… I win.”

  His frown darkened.

  “What shall I ask for this time?” I nibbled my lip as I thought, as I pretended to think. I knew damn well what I wanted. “What was it you mentioned before? After the massage?”

  He stiffened. Cleared his throat. “A…naughty kiss?”

  “Hmm. After that?”

  His chin wobbled a bit. A flush rose on his cheeks. “A…um…foot rub.”

  “Ah yes.” I snaked my leg around his under the table. He flinched. “That was it. A foot rub. Do you like giving foot rubs, Jimmy?” All his muscles locked. But not because of my words. It was my naughty foot, skating up his bristly calf, and over onto his thigh, that snagged his attention.

  I brushed the top of my foot against his cock, just a tease.

  He closed his eyes and shuddered.

  “Do you?”

  He captured my questing toes and held them still. “Where?” His voice was low and gruff and vibrated with a snarling tension. His thumb eased over my arch, but slowly. I had the sense he was trying to resist a temptation, but couldn’t.

  “The sofa?”

  His gaze snapped into the living room and without a word, he bounded to his feet. His cock bobbled with the movement. “Okay.” Gruff. Gravelly. Impatient. “Let’s do this thing.”

  He grabbed my hand and tugged me into the living room then guided me down onto the couch. Most of the oil had soaked in but there was a hint of it clinging to my skin. It was a decadent slide against the buttery leather.

  And then, he knelt before me and looked up at me.

  It struck me, once more, how beautiful he was. And I’m not just saying that because he was kneeling before me and about to worship my feet. It was the cant of his head, the shimmer in his eyes. The glaze of his besotted expression.

  There is nothing more irresistible than a man besotted.

  I set my right foot on his thigh.

  He didn’t release my gaze; his eyes burned into mine.

  Slowly, he reached for me, skimming his warm fingers over my foot and up around my ankle. He did this for a long, long while as I shifted impatiently. This was not what I had in mind. I had expected—

  But then he did it. He cupped my heel in a palm and lifted my foot to his mouth. And he kissed it. It was a reverent kiss, slow and lingering. With his mouth, he explored my arch, my toes, the delicate bone on the side. Licking and laving and nibbling now and again.

  I wanted to watch him, wanted to take in every ecstatic flicker on his face, but the sight of his cock, r
iding high, quivering, beading at the tip, distracted me.

  I reached for it with my other foot, but he stopped me, a warning light in his eye. “No,” was all he said. Soft, but firm. Just no.

  I knew if I so much as nudged him just then, he’d become undone.

  And I wouldn’t get what I wanted, what I needed.

  Frankly, that would be a tragedy of monumental proportions.

  So I allowed him to make passionate love to my right foot, and then my left and then to my right again. Though he hadn’t touched my clit, and probably wouldn’t for a while, it was awake and humming with need. I could feel my body preparing for him, a bubbling, boiling cauldron of lust. I wanted him, needed him with a desperation I’d never known. But he needed this. So I let him take.

  But seriously.

  How long was this going to last? And wasn’t it supposed to be my reward?

  “Jimmy…” I shifted on the leather. Dampness pooled between my thighs.

  He peeped up at me, reluctant to take his attention from his prize, his jaw slack.

  “Jimmy… You’re driving me crazy.”

  His face broke into a grin, a beautiful smile that poleaxed me. “Am I?”

  “This is torture. Hell!” It was. It was. Oh, it was lovely and delicious, but there were other body parts screaming for attention.

  He chuckled. “Darling, sometimes you’ve got to go through hell before you get to heaven.”

  I winced. “Don’t quote song lyrics to me,” I muttered. “I’m on vacation. The last thing I want to think about is work.”

  “Then don’t.” He stroked my calf, up and down, in a drugging rhythm. “Touch yourself.”

  The command stunned me. And if we’re being honest, that’s exactly what it was. He knelt before me, kissing my feet, but the words from his lips were an order.

  “Go on,” he urged. “Do it. Nipples first.”

  I don’t know why it mortified me, the thought of pleasuring myself before him, but it did. And somehow, that mortification stoked the fire of my lust. He kissed my foot again as I dragged my fingers up my side in a slow slide. Then I circled my breasts. He sucked, nibbled as I made another circle, smaller this time, and another, smaller still until I was ringing my aureole, scraping a nail on the bumps that rose.

  He hissed in a breath, his gaze glued to my finger.

  I touched my nipple and glory rained through me. God. I’d touched myself before. It had never felt like this.

  “More.” A groan. “More.”

  With trembling hands I cradled my breasts and swiped both nipples with my thumbs, nudging them, offering them perhaps. He shuddered; his mouth, velvet and warm, continued its foray. My arousal swelled. I plucked and pinched and tugged at my turgid peaks as he brought me closer and closer to heaven.

  A great quake took me as he moved—finally moved—up to my ankle and to my calf and then to my thigh as if, once he’d begun the journey, he couldn’t wait to reach his destination.

  He walked himself between my legs and, cuffing my ankles in a warm hold, angled my legs around his torso. I hooked them together and held on tight.

  “Keep touching yourself,” he clipped, his focus taut. He zeroed in on my mound, opening me with his thumbs. And then he dipped his head.

  One lap.

  That was all it took. One little lap.

  Hardly worth all the machinations.

  I came. All over his fingers. All over his face. All over his couch.

  Bucking and screaming and plucking at my nipples. Grinding myself into him. Cursing and howling and, in general, acting like a woman absolutely out of control.

  Which I was.

  I wasn’t finished coming when he levered up, took hold of my thighs and yanked me toward him, impaling me on his cock.

  New sensation, new insanity swamped me. His rod was fat and long and fit me perfectly; he planted himself deep and hard with the first lunge. I convulsed around him, shivered, quivered, quaked.

  I plastered myself against his body, so firm, so solid, and clung like a limpet.

  He began a series of short, frenzied thrusts, each accompanied with a huffed, “Yes, yes, yes.” His voice rose as his pace increased, and I began to sing along with him.

  Clenching my muscles, I tried to hold him in. The feeling was so blissful, so perfect I didn’t want to ever let him go. He groaned, the sound rumbling through me, vibrating on the skeins of the air around us.

  “Oh, baby,” he groaned. “Please. Relax.”

  “I can’t!” I wailed. “More. Harder. More.”

  He gritted his teeth and pulled back, looking down to watch his cock jettison in and out of my wet channel. “God, yes.” A snarl. His fingers sank hard into my hips. He held me steady and pummeled me with a manic barrage.

  Each plunge kissed me, just where it should. Each one filled me with a soul-numbing delight.

  Frantically, he sucked in a nipple. Then the other. And then he nested in my neck, huffing in my ear as he worked away in a riotous rush.

  The scent of vanilla and friction and his musk rose between us. Sweat slicked the way as his chest abraded mine. Each movement, each breath sent me hither and yon, higher and higher until I could bear no more. I couldn’t… I couldn’t…

  He sealed his mouth over mine and fucked me with his tongue.

  My body sizzled, seized.

  Something deep within me released, snapped, and ecstasy blossomed like a flower in spring.

  He made a sound, something savage, something that tasted like reprieve on my lips. He thrust one more time, plunging deep, seating himself in my body and melding us as one.

  His hips surged once, twice and a third and final time. And he collapsed on me.

  I held him as he panted. Brushed back his hair and kissed the dampness from his brow.

  He groaned and gasped something I couldn’t quite make out, but it didn’t matter.

  I scored his scalp with my nails and then raked his back.

  But that’s what he’d done to me. Taken a perfectly refined woman with boring and banal taste in sex and turned her into a wild creature who, even when mating was finished, was possessed of the feral urge to mark her man.

  I could have held him all night. Forever.

  My heart lurched when he pushed away, but he didn’t go far. He eased back only enough to take my cheeks in his palms and kiss me with a brutal intensity.

  He didn’t say the words, but his eyes bespoke them.

  “Mine,” they said. “Mine.”

  We slept together that night in his bed, wrapped in black satin sheets and wrapped around each other. In the morning, I awoke to find his mouth on me, forging hot and hungry trails. We made love as the sun rose.

  And then he made me breakfast.

  French toast had never been so decadent. Fluffy and light and infused with the unmistakable hint of vanilla bean. The only thing that was more exquisite was his coffee.

  He was the perfect man.

  We spent the day lazing. I floated in the pool while he puttered around the house and then, when recalled to my mission, we curled up on his bed and plotted Harlan’s demise.

  Jimmy was a great help with sketching out my book. He seemed to have a talent for fiction and he was well-read, which I tried not to find shocking. He hadn’t been a pool boy forever, after all.

  He made references to King Lear and Dostoyevsky and esoteric writers of whom I’d never heard. He quoted Thoreau—though he had to tell me that was whom he was quoting because, even if I had read Walden—which I couldn’t recall—I hadn’t retained a bit of it.

  Over lunch we indulged in a spirited argument on the nature of utopia, but it’s difficult to say who won, because we ended up making love on the table.

  And I didn’t spare a single thought for Marlee’s china, smashed as it was on the tile, as he’d swept it from the table with an insistent arm.

  At least not until we had to clean it up.

  And then, that night, we made love again. We didn’t
bother with the games. We went straight for what we wanted.

  That day formed the pattern for the next and the next. I allowed myself to sink into it, into the passion and the power of his embrace and the tranquility of this isolated spot. I steeped myself in the present and every time I glimpsed the calendar on my phone, ticking down the days until I had to leave, I dove deeper into the now. In fact, other than to take pictures of the idyllic surroundings, I ignored my phone.

  I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving here. Of leaving him.

  But, inexorably, my final day arrived. I didn’t mention it to him. I didn’t want to talk about it. And I didn’t want our last moments together to be those awkward, tentative, gee-it-was-great-to-meet-you moments. Mostly I didn’t want to feel his withdrawal as, undoubtedly, I would if he knew I was leaving.

  So I made love to him that last night, with perhaps a hint of desperation. But then, I felt it in him too, in his frantic thrusts, his determination to make each minute matter. It was a glorious last time. One I would remember to the end of my days.

  And I have to admit, as I dressed and packed quietly the next morning, and hunted for the card to call my evil taxi driver, there were tears in my eyes.

  I should have awakened him, but I didn’t want him to see.

  When all my things were piled, waiting beside the door, I crept back into Jimmy’s room and stared down at him. Apparently I’d exhausted him last night. He was sprawled on his back, tangled in the dark sheets, utterly oblivious to the slow creep of dawn over his features.

  I couldn’t resist. I needed this memory.

  I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture of him, my lover. My wildest fantasy come to life.

  This picture would be mine to treasure forever.

  Jimmy, of course, belonged to Marlee.

  A muffled roar sounded from the front of the house and I knew it was time to go. Lucifer was here to take me to the airport hut to catch my flight.

  I wanted to kiss him good-bye, but didn’t dare, lest I wake him and ruin all my carefully scripted melodrama.

  With one last lingering look, I turned and walked out of his life.