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  “I don’t want to wait, Caleb. I want you inside me now,” she demands.

  “Hell, no. I’m right where I want to be.” I kiss her thighs, making her wait for trying to rush me. My fingers, wet with her juices, slip up to tease her clit. Her muscles quiver against my cheek as I trace around her clit, watching the micro responses of her body’s most sensitive spot to my touch. Nothing turns me on more than her arousal. The flush of delicate skin, the thrust of her hips, the hitch in her breathing when I get the rhythm right.

  I taste her again, torturing her by caressing every spot but the one she wants. The more impatient she gets, the slower I go.

  Then she sits up and scoots away from me. The next thing I know, she tackles me and straddles my waist. My head hits the deck with a thump, and I gaze up at her breasts dangling over me in the deepening dusk. I thought I wanted control, but the reversal is sexy as hell. My dick strains against my pants as her warm slit presses against my belly. She leans forward and allows me to take one nipple in my mouth. I fill my hands with her and flick my tongue over the stiff peak. She moans and rocks against me. I suckle gently but let my teeth graze the pebbled skin. Her hair falls around us in a dark curtain, tickling over my bare shoulders. I release her breast and move to the other, lavishing it with care in turn.

  Her warmth leaves me, and her fingers gently smooth over my eyelids to close them. There’s a jerk at my belt, the sound of a zipper. She eases my pants and boxers over the giant erection that springs free. My hands go down to cup my balls as she tugs my pants off my ankles. My belt clinks as she tosses the heap aside. I try not to peek. Where will she touch me first?

  She plucks my hand away and presses both of them against the dock, down by my sides. She doesn’t have to tell me not to touch—I’m loving this game. I inhale as her lips and tongue touch my nipple. The breeze over the wet skin makes me shiver, but I don’t open my eyes.

  “I like having you like this, for a change,” she purrs. “I love your body. Your chest”—her hands caress my shoulders and pecs—“your six pack, your ass.” Fingers trail over my hips, and my dick twitches as they get close.

  “I love your runner’s legs, too.” Her soft palms wrap around one leg and travel up my thigh. A whisper of skin on skin, and her warmth settles between my legs. My balls draw up tightly against me in anticipation, and she must notice. A hand cups me, and light pressure travels under my balls to the ridge of flesh behind. At the same time, a firm grip wraps around my shaft.

  “Ah, that feels good, Audrey. Now your mouth…”

  Abruptly, her hands leave me. I clench my jaw over my protest.

  “That’s not how we’re doing it today. Tell me how you feel, but don’t tell me what to do. Is that understood?”

  Jesus Christ, I’d agree to anything right now.

  “Yes,” I rasp.

  There’s no reply, but her hands return, massaging lightly. Lightning shoots from my balls to my dick as wet pressure strokes from base to tip. Her tongue. She licks me like I’m an ice cream cone on a hot day, and my hips jerk. I mutter incoherently, fighting to go by her rules. My fingers flex against the blanket.

  Finally her mouth encases me, and I groan—relief is followed by piercing need. I want to touch her, guide her over me, watch her mouth move on me. I focus on the sensations instead. Pressure builds faster than I could imagine. Her hand on my shaft moves with her mouth. Lips and tongue move over me, and her other hand still caresses my balls and taint. With nothing else to see or do, the onslaught of sensation is nearly too much. I hold on with everything I’ve got.

  “I’m getting close, Audrey. God, that feels good. I don’t know if I can—” Whatever I meant to say gets lost in the guttural noise that breaks free.

  The sensations stop.

  Weight settles over my hips.

  She lifts my hands to her waist.

  My eyes fly open in time to see her face, backlit by emergent stars, as she braces against my chest and angles her hips over my cock. Pleasure explodes in me as she sinks onto my dick, holding my gaze. Her hair tumbles in waves over her shoulders, ending just above her rosy nipples. When she’s seated fully, she covers my hands with hers and begins to lift her hips, roll them forward, and drop. Every time her hips fall, my dick throbs, swelling impossibly bigger it seems. She grunts as she takes me, sheathing my full length.

  Her eyes roll upward, and her breathing gets faster, her perky nipples thrusting forward, bouncing as she rides me. She’s the earth mother I always thought she was, a primal force. Her wet pussy is my whole world, and the galaxy surrounds us. Colors—midnight blue and forest green—seep into the edges of my vision.

  She throws her head back and begins to move faster, abandoning her rolling motion for fast, hard strokes. Her ass smacks against my lap. Her voice rises in soft cries. Her eyes fly open and meet mine, dark with lust and love. Her lips fall open as she pants. She’s close. The urge rises in me, swelling and building, and it’s here, and the spasms begin just as her pussy contracts around me. She grinds against me and yells with me, our voices echoing against the far bank of the lake as our pleasure fades in pulsing waves.

  Chest heaving, I sit up to hold her close. The night air cools the sweat on our bodies, but the warmth of skin on skin wraps us in a golden cocoon.

  “Audrey, you are a goddess,” I whisper against her salty lips.

  “I’m just a woman,” she says, smiling. “But you can call me whatever you want if you make me feel like this for the rest of our lives.”

  “Forever,” I promise.

  The end.

  Dirty in Charge

  Here is the first chapter of my other book, Dirty in Charge, which is available on Amazon now.

  Chapter 1

  James

  “I’d kill you if I didn’t think you’d kick my ass. Again.” My brother Joe’s voice is lower and deeper than when he used to whine when we were kids, but the tone is still there.

  We’re in the back of my car, heading to Blake House en route from New York. The glass between the driver and the rear cabin is up. I’m on a conference call with my assistant from my office, while Joe slouches in the limousine seat diagonal from mine, barely conscious.

  The voice on the line is tinny and professional. “…and negotiations will be wrapped up by Thursday for the lawyers to divvy the spoils. You have an awards reception next Friday at Peak Gallery, I’ve emailed the location and…”

  The droning continues both on the phone and across from me.

  “Everything hurts—my abs, my calves.”

  “Your pride,” I offer, holding a hand to the speaker, then go back to my secretary as she continues to run through a week’s worth of notes and updates. I grin at him, but all Joe seems to have the energy to do is glare back at me.

  My assistant continues, “And finally, everything is set for this evening. We’re expecting a hundred or so guests tonight, and then your remaining houseguests and visitors arrive tomorrow. The decorating crew should be finished ahead of schedule. Although the vans will likely still be there when you arrive today. We’ve asked that they pull them to the left of the driveway. We have a note that the floor of the foyer is–”

  I cut in. “Thanks for the summary, Kenzie. Email the bullet points and we’ll call it for today.” When I realize she’s about to launch into some final thing about arrangements, I cut the call short. “Save it for the bride, please. I’ll get back to you when we’re at the house.”

  Beyond the car windows, the sun is shining. It’s a crisp late-October morning in the valley and my brother and I are heading to Blake House for a wedding. His wedding. My brother Joe is marrying his fiancée, Lena, at a week-long house party at the newly rebuilt and renovated estate.

  Blake House has been in our family for years. When we were kids, my immediate family even used to live in a smaller guesthouse at the edge of the property. In its former life, it was one of the great family houses along the bay, similar to the famed Gold Coast of Long Island.
All old money and wealthy robber barons. But, like many others, the giant estate fell to near ruin after the Great Depression. Over the years, my grandparents kept it in the family by the skin of their teeth, but eventually, the main house fell into disrepair and the later generations moved to the outer edges and sold off some of the land. Blake House has been a kind of obsession for my family for years, the idea being that if fortune smiled on any of us, that person would restore the house to its former glory. A few (well, more than a few) start-up business ventures after college later, I was the one who eventually had the money to restore it. The wedding, itself an occasion for the family reunion, is my gift to the happy couple. I promised Lena her dream wedding, and somehow the event bloomed into a week-long family affair capped off with the ceremony on Saturday.

  My brother is a sad mess in the corner of the car right now, but it’s not because of wedding jitters, though there are those, too. I keep a pretty intense workout schedule and little brother decided he wanted to join me—to keep in shape for his big day. Weights, cardio, and then some boxing. OK, a lot of boxing. And we’re brothers, so we don’t go easy on each other. What he didn’t know (and I didn’t tell him) is I’ve been working out for over a year now with a new personal trainer, a former boxing pro. Which meant Joe took a bit of a beating today, though I was careful to keep his face pretty for his big day this Saturday. Still, by the look of him now, I have a feeling I’m going to get an earful about beating up on my baby brother when our mother hears about it tonight.

  We’re still in warm-up clothes from the gym, the only clothes either of us had energy enough to crawl into after the morning’s shellacking.

  “Was it really that bad, Joseph? Come on.”

  “Yes, James, it was,” he says, opening one eye and glaring more. “I feel like I’ve been run through a meat grinder.”

  “More like a tenderizer,” I say, in full on big-brother mode now. “I beat you like a steak.”

  “Yeah, yeah… well, I don’t feel so bad about you paying for my wedding now. So there.”

  I laugh about that, too. “Happy to do it, Joe. You know that.”

  Joe closes both his eyes and his head falls back in the seat again, but I can see him smiling.

  We’re both quiet for a while until the house comes into view as the car glides through the gates of Blake House. When Joe opens his eyes to look, I know it’s his first time seeing the house in person since the renovations were complete.

  “Oh man, Jamie,” he says, trailing off. He looks at me, then back to the house. “It’s just like great-grandma Esther’s old pictures!”

  I sigh and smile, nodding. “That was the frame of reference.” I’m trying to sound modest, but I am very proud of the work we were able to do. It’s completely restored, from the foundation to the roof.

  “It’s like a dream come true. Seriously. The whole family is going to go crazy.”

  “Yeah. Wait ‘until you see the inside. I thought I was going to go crazy.” The project took years of money and effort, all of it meticulously recreated to match the reference of the time, while also making allowances for modern comforts and materials for plumbing and heating. Whole walls ripped out and replaced when possible for the electrical.

  “You didn’t like doing it?”

  I think about his question for a minute before answering. As the car rolls up the drive, we pass stone arches and sculpture.

  “I did it for the family, of course, but halfway through I started to really wonder at the sheer level of detail. Maybe I’m not a builder at heart. It all just seemed so indulgent to me. They had all this money to make an estate for one family that a small village could live in. Hard to see the point.”

  Joe nods slightly but then turns back to the window. “I know, but all the art and beauty of the thing. This is history. Family history, the history of the country even.”

  “So it’s a monument?”

  “Yeah, in a way. But…wait until you see how happy everyone is going to be. I haven’t even been inside yet, and I’m so proud of it. And Lena! She’s going to freak!”

  The car pulls to a stop in front of the grand stone arch at the house’s entrance.

  A massive staff is required this week, even more than the regular crew of folks it takes to keep a house like this going. It’s all bustling and activity as we arrive, more like a hotel than a private house. I don’t even live here, though the house is technically mine; I keep an apartment in the city.

  As we climb out of the car, I watch skeptically as Joe lurches out and makes a show of dragging his sorry ass to the door.

  “Dude, Mom’s not here. Save the performance for her!”

  Like the little brother he will forever be, he grins back at me with all his teeth, then pretends his arms are hurt reaching for his suitcase. I slap his hands away and grab the bag for him, waving off one of the valets with a slight smile. I still open my own doors, carry my own bag and jacket. I do, though, hide a wince as I straighten up with the suitcase. Little brother got a few good hits in today, too. In my head I’m already up and past the high sweep of stairs that lead to my bedroom suite, making a mental beeline for the closest shower and hours of hot water.

  “Holy… what is this, a movie set?” Joe’s voice echoes back from just inside the doors.

  I follow after him…and into something out of Never Never land. A version of it, anyway. The front foyer of Blake House is a giant Art Deco hall, with curved staircases winding up on either side, or the vaulted ceiling rising high. Impressive all on its own, but now the whole thing has been transformed. Rows of towering columns line the long front hall, each with inset shelves covered with ivy and books. When I step in and the door closes behind me, the light of the morning is cut out completely and we’re in the mouth of a half library, half wooded fairyland. I wouldn’t know I walked into a house at all if I didn’t own the damn thing. A fairy cave, maybe, but not my own house.

  Thick ropes of vines and flowers hang around the columns, wound like tentacles along the ceiling, walls and down to the floor. And the marble floor is covered with something that looks like gold speckled leather.

  I take a few more steps into the place. Joe hangs back, checking out one of the columned shelves. I lean closer to a statue on a shorter column, with a naked fairy nymph statue on top of it.

  “Noooooo!”

  A shriek splits the air. For a moment I think the sound came from the statue.

  There’s a rush of air and pounding footfalls behind me. Ahead of me, I see Joe look past my shoulder, eyes wide at the oncoming sound. I hunch down and turn to face the threat just as the attacker moves in. Crouching low, I snatch the attacker’s left wrist in a punishing grip and then pivot backward, using the momentum to swing the assailant out and off balance in front of me.

  Later, I can’t decide if it’s the feel of creamy soft skin in my grip or the lightness of the body as I swing her around, that breaks through my initial rush to defense. When I see it’s a woman, an entirely different instinct kicks in. My body switches from offense to protector and I snatch her close to my chest before she can fall. Off balance, she grabs my shoulders and hangs on.

  Everything stops then. Everything. I am chest to chest, hip to hip with a woman I don’t know. She’s clinging to me. Bright green eyes are wide and looking straight into mine behind a pair of hipster horn-rimmed glasses. Through my warm-ups, I can feel her panting. The friction this causes is like a match striking a kerosene lamp. I’m so close, I can feel her breath on my face. The vanilla smell of her, combined with the feel of her breasts crushed against my chest, provoke another aggressive rush. I still have her in my arms at an angle, her feet have no purchase on the floor, but she doesn’t struggle. Too stunned? Like me?

  We’re kissing distance away, but she doesn’t speak. She’s not screaming anymore, though. A plus.

  I give us both a small shake. “Who are you?”

  It takes another tiny shake before she finally stammers, “Emma.”

>   I jerk back. Holy shit, what am I doing? Holding her gently but firmly by the arms, I help her to stand upright and then I step several feet back, my arms up and in front of me to show her I mean her no harm.

  “Hey. I’m stepping back. Sorry, sorry.”

  “Uh,” she says. “Yeah. No, I’m sorry. I was…I’m crew…the floor…” she stammers. She’s still looking up at me, panting, and I feel a weird rush in my chest.

  “The what?”

  Before I can speak again, my brother Joe steps between us. I’d forgotten all about him. He towers over Emma, and she steps back again in alarm. I put a hand on his arm, tugging at him.

  “What the heck were you screaming about, lady?”

  Emma puts a hand to her long brown hair, sweeps some of it out of her face. She’s blinking behind the glasses and I give my brother a little shove to get him further out of her face.

  “Joe, I think she’s one of the event staff.”

  “Ok, but why was she running and screaming at us like that?” Joe grits out. “And why,” he asks, pointing down at her feet, “are you barefoot?”

  Emma’s mouth drops open in a horrified “O.”

  I look her up and down, the aches and pains of the morning completely forgotten as I take her in. With the glasses, she’s got a sexy-librarian thing going, her face framed by blunt cut dark brown bangs. Round hips, full, high breasts in a deep plunging vee-neck t-shirt. I see a peek of honey-brown skin and toned leg from the slit of her skirt. She’s hot. And–Joe’s right–she’s barefoot, her toes painted crimson.

  “I’m…” she stammers again, before pulling herself together. “Staff. Crew. I’m with Renaissance Events. I am so sorry, but guests were told not to walk on the floors in the foyer. Didn’t they tell you?”

  “We’re not guests. I’m the groom. What are you talking about?” Joe grumbles and looks at me. I shrug.

  If anything, poor Emma looks even more horrified then, gawking. But she answers, “Everyone needs to stay off the floor panels so they can set. I am so sorry for startling you. Can we move over to the corner over there and I’ll show you?”