Show and Tell Read online

  “It’s the strangest proposal I’ve ever made.”

  “I’m—” She’d been about to say that she was married, but what difference did that make? Harper didn’t want her. She had this horrible, terrible feeling that even if she took him back, he’d be sneaking off to his lover the first chance he got.

  In six months, he’d never made her feel desired the way this man did with his utterly preposterous yet tantalizing request. But really, she couldn’t.

  “You might be an ax murderer.”

  He held up his hands. “No ax.” He dug in his front and back pockets, the breast pocket of his shirt. “No weapons.”

  Her heart rate picked up. Letting a stranger into her room, wouldn’t that show everyone, including herself, that Harper hadn’t hurt her in the least? Yeah, it was better than having a good cry to get that bastard out of her system. Right? And she’d wanted something totally, utterly mind-blowing.

  “Keep your cell phone on the bed right beside you so you can make an emergency call,” he added.

  “That means you can’t get too close.” Yet she thought about his gaze touching her body, and she heated inside, outside, the tips of her breasts, between her legs. Any minute, she’d go up in flames. And she wanted. God, no matter how crazy or preposterous or dangerous, she wanted.

  “I won’t even get on the bed with you.”

  “No touching,” she said. Look but don’t touch? Basically that could be a metaphor for her life. Good old look-but-don’t-touch Trinity. It was too sad for words, because she wanted to be touched. Badly. She wanted a man’s hand to make her explode into a million tiny little pieces.

  He tipped his head slightly, and his voice dipped low. “I just want to watch.”

  Maybe having him watch was enough to detonate her. Oh yeah, way more than enough. She’d never felt quite so aroused. Or intrigued. She didn’t have to impress him. She didn’t have to worry about mussing her hair or smudging her makeup. All she had to do was close her eyes and make herself feel good. And let him watch. Her body tightened thinking about it.

  “You’d have to leave as soon as I’m done.” God. She wasn’t really saying yes to this. It was a lark. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. But God, she wanted to, badly. Her nerve endings screamed so loudly she was surprised he couldn’t hear them.

  “I won’t get on the bed. I won’t touch you. And I’ll leave right after you come. I promise.” His voice trickled like champagne down each and every one of her shrieking nerves. “Let me watch.”

  Harper had rejected her in the cruelest way possible. Yet here was a man who wanted her sight unseen after listening to her through a wall. Diddling herself for his pleasure, however, was a pathetic way to rebuild her trashed self-esteem. She’d regret it in the morning. She knew she would.

  Yet she had the insane urge to touch herself for him even as she stood there, a death grip on the door.

  One short hour ago, she’d gazed at her image in the mirror and swore she’d stop denying herself the pleasures she deserved. She’d craved something mind-blowing and hadn’t quite achieved it.

  Touching herself as he watched? That would be mind-blowing.

  Trinity stepped back and opened the door all the way. She’d call herself crazy later. Tonight, she’d take what he offered.

  IN his room, he hadn’t questioned that she’d be a goddess. With that voice, Scott couldn’t imagine her being anything less. The reality was she could have been any body shape, any size or age, not to mention bearing the face of a Gorgon. And he would have wanted her anyway.

  Yet his mystery woman truly was a goddess. He wanted to kneel down and kiss the floor when she agreed to let him in instead of slamming the door and calling security.

  The room was the mirror image of his, and neat despite her being a woman. After all, he’d lived with three of them, and he knew what it could be like. Yet not a single bit of clothing lay strewn on the floor. The only personal item was her purse on the desk. If she had a suitcase, she’d hidden it away. The light by the king-size bed was on, the covers rumpled, the pillow still bearing the imprint of her head, his favorite wall socket right beside it. No wonder he’d heard her as if she were in his bed.

  She climbed on the mattress on all fours. The sight gave him heart palpitations despite the fact that her magnificent ass was covered by her green satin nightshirt. Looking over her shoulder at him, she tore back the covers and flopped down. He pulled out the desk chair, twirled it around to face the bed, and sat, gripping the wood armrests. Damn, he needed to do something with his hands since he couldn’t touch her.

  “Turn on the light.” She pointed to his left, her nails polished in a muted shade. Scott figured her for a woman who would sometimes wear sizzling red and sometimes a prim pale pink.

  Depending on whether she felt like being naughty or nice.

  He flipped on the standing lamp between the desk and the entertainment center, its glow bathing her body in light and shadow when she shut off the bedside lamp.

  Angling slightly toward him, she closed her eyes, turned her head on the pillow, and ran her hands down her thighs.

  Christ, she had gorgeous legs. Long with firm feminine curves. Like a snake charmer, her hands forced his gaze to follow as they slid slowly over her hips, her abdomen, up to her breasts. Pinching both nipples through the nightshirt, she hissed in a breath, her hips arching off the bed. She moaned, and the sound sent his blood pressure skyrocketing.

  That voice. He was hard. He wanted to come. Now. Instead he forced himself to relax into the chair, and he watched.

  She unbuttoned three buttons and spread the satin to reveal two small pink-tipped breasts, her nipples distended from the pinch she’d applied. She cupped them, for his view he was sure, then moved down to the next buttons. Strips of tantalizing skin appeared, her belly, then she dipped to the bottom buttons and worked her way up to tease him.

  When she undid the last one covering her mound, he realized she’d answered the door without panties. The idea got him all wound up. Like the thought of what a female exec might be wearing under her power suit. Lace and thigh highs. Or nothing at all. Yeah, he sometimes entertained brief flights of fancy at work during a particularly boring meeting.

  This was a whole different caliber.

  Then she spread the lapels of her nightshirt and let them fall to her sides.

  Good God. Her perfection stole his breath.

  Her hands began a slow, sinuous slide down her body once more. To the ridge of blond pubic hair several shades darker than her silky tresses. A real blonde, no less.

  She spread her legs to reveal a beautiful pussy. Having been married for so long, he didn’t have a lot of experience, but enough from his college days and after the divorce to know that women came in a variety. Some had slender lips and a barely there button. Some were fleshy. Or bushy. She was neatly trimmed. Her pink lips invited his mouth, and her clit, already engorged from her earlier play, begged for his tongue. And she was wet. He could see the moisture and hear the sexy slip-slide as she put a finger to her opening to coat herself with her own sweet cream.

  She touched her clit and rewarded him with a moan. He was so hard, his jeans dug into his cock. She circled, arched into her fingers, and tossed her head on the pillow, her hair fanning across the cotton and down over her petite breasts. Then she relaxed into the bed once more.

  She opened her eyes a moment to watch him watching her. He stroked the front of his pants, yet he didn’t take his cock out for a whack. He wanted this to be purely about her. He needed to savor this without missing a single moment.

  Yet not jerking off was the hardest thing he’d ever attempted to do. He undid the two top buttons of his fly to ease the pressure, but it didn’t do much for the ache in his balls.

  Her lashes drifted down once more, and her finger, the middle one, circled her clit, her pace building. She held her breath, bit her lip, then her hips arched off the bed slightly, and she let out one of her special, long sexy breaths
, her pleasure threading through it with a gentle moan. She bucked and circled, going at herself, her breath coming in pants and moans and a myriad of pleasure sounds that wrapped around his erection like a luscious pair of lips.

  When he was sure she’d come and blow the top off his world, she eased back against the mattress, breathing deeply. Then finally lifted her lids to look at him.

  “Don’t stop. Please.” He was willing to beg.

  The barest hint of a smile graced her sensual mouth, the mouth he wanted taking him to heaven and higher. She reveled in her feminine power, in the fact that she could make him beg. Her total lack of inhibition, even if for this one night alone, drew him like a drone to its queen.

  “Please,” he murmured again in the quiet of the room.

  She cupped her breasts, held them out for him. She wanted him to watch. She loved it, he was sure. Then she pinched the pearled tips, sucking in her breath with the pleasure-pain of it, her body writhing on the bed. He felt the touch in his groin.

  “Fuck yourself for me.”

  She did, sliding one hand down between her legs, while with the other she slowly caressed her throat, her breasts, her belly, then her hips and thighs. Her body rocked, her finger in constant motion. She used only the one, and beyond the first time she’d dipped down inside herself for her own cream, she played her button exclusively. Her body mesmerized him. If he ever got a chance to make her come, he knew exactly how. That button. Her ripe, hard clitoris. With her clit under his finger and her nipple between his teeth in a tender bite, he knew he could make her scream.

  “Come for me, baby.” He wanted a closer look, to drink in her heady sexual perfume. It filled the air, and he wanted her up close, to rub his finger in her juice and pass it over his lips so that he could catch her aroma for hours. What if he did crawl on the bed and put his hand between her legs? His body screamed, “Do it, do it, do it.” The thought that she might stop and throw him out kept him glued to the chair.

  He recognized the climb. Pink tinged her skin, and her sounds got louder. She had a sweet hum in her throat, then she opened her mouth, panted, sharp, fast exhalations laced with her sultry voice, until she broke into a low cry of mindlessness. Like the most erotic music, her voice wrapped around him, took him under, her cries rising as her body twitched and bucked beneath her finger. She rode out her orgasm, head thrown back, hair covering her face, breath hard and fast, until finally she clamped her legs together around her hand and rolled to her side. An orgasmic aftershock rolled through, and she shuddered, then lay still, a tiny hum of pleasure vibrating through her breath.

  Jesus H. Christ. This was way up there as the hottest ten minutes he’d ever experienced. A wet spot stained his jeans, his balls ached with need, and his mind reeled. Yet it was such a damn good place to be.

  Then he did what he promised. He rose from the chair and walked out of her room. Outside her door, he waited long moments until he heard the deadbolt close behind him.

  He didn’t know her name, and he didn’t care. Tomorrow night, with the investor meeting long over, after twenty-four hours of replaying every second of the encounter in his mind, when he’d savored the memory to the point of madness, he’d jerk off to the sound of her voice in his head.

  HE’D called her baby. She hugged the word close to her still pounding heart. Take that, Harper. Oh God, oh God, that was so good. So perfect. Never, ever in her life had she come like that. She’d let go, really let go. A deep lassitude spread through her limbs, and her lips flirted with a tiny smile.

  Until she heard the snick of the door closing behind him. And suddenly, she remembered she didn’t know him. He was a complete stranger.

  Good Lord, what had she done?

  Trinity plopped the pillow over her head.

  What had possessed her to let a strange man into her room no matter how yummy he looked? Who had she become? It wasn’t only tonight. It was running out on her best friend’s baby shower. It was sneaking off to Tahoe—after knowing Harper a month—for a quickie wedding when all her life she’d wanted the white dress and a walk down the aisle on her father’s arm. It was how badly she’d disappointed Daddy by cutting him out of that special day.

  Finding Harper with that woman, she’d had the thought that she’d momentarily lost her sense of self. The truth was far worse. She’d never had a sense of self at all.

  Will the real Trinity Green please stand up?

  She came up for air, shoving the pillow aside, then rushed for the door to slam home the deadbolt.

  She was her daddy’s little girl, Harper’s trophy wife, the country-club debutante, the elegant heiress. Yet she felt like the princess in Shrek. She wanted everyone to think she was the gorgeous Cameron Diaz when actually, beneath the enchantment, she was just a troll. Or was it the other way around, the troll was the enchantment and Cameron was real? Whatever. Trinity couldn’t remember. The point was she didn’t even know herself.

  And she could now add to the list being an exhibitionist who masturbated for a complete and total stranger. And loved it.

  What evil demon spirit had possessed her?

  But, honest to God, it had been the hottest moment ever. Bar none. She hadn’t cared how she sounded, braying donkey or not, or how she was splayed on the bed. It was the most liberating experience of her entire existence on planet Earth. Because he was so damn hot for her.

  After her big moment, as she’d floated back down in a million little pieces like ash from Mount St. Helens, he’d white-knuckled the armrests. If she looked, she was sure she’d find little crescent moons in the wood.

  He’d wanted her. Without makeup. Without her daddy’s money. Sight unseen, he’d knocked on her door because her voice had driven him crazy with desire. Now that was a power trip.

  Better than mind-blowing, she’d had the absolute best orgasm ever. With a total stranger. And he hadn’t even touched her.

  She wanted more of it.

  Which was why it was a darn good thing that he didn’t know her name and she didn’t know his, much less have any way to contact him.

  BY dawn’s early light, Scott knew he couldn’t walk away and leave it to the fates as to whether he saw her again. He’d fallen asleep to fantasies, half hoping she’d wake him in the night with the sound of her voice through the wall.

  Instead, the call of the alarm had dragged him out of bed.

  As he closed his door behind him, there wasn’t a sound from beneath hers. Since it wasn’t even five o’clock, he didn’t expect there to be.

  He couldn’t pinpoint any one thing that made him want her with this intensity. Sure, there was the mystery element. Who was she? And yeah, she was goddess material, the way she looked, her moves, her sighs. She was also a lot younger than him, which brought to mind the midlife crisis issue. Except that he wasn’t having a midlife crisis. He’d had that when Katy divorced him. Now he was moving on, doing well. He didn’t have any desire to buy a fast sports car or marshal a younger woman around on his arm to show he was still virile.

  His desire might have a helluva lot less to do with his mystery lady and far more to do with his state of mind at this time in his life. He needed connection, romance, passion; whatever the hell you called it, he wanted it. She captured his imagination with her voice. Her sexy, sultry bedroom sounds had wormed their way into his vitals, and he’d never get her out unless he followed through on this need. For him, she spelled excitement, and he wanted that feeling. He’d missed it during the last fifteen years of his marriage, started craving it the year before Lexa went off to college, before Katy had torn his world apart. He’d thought he and Katy could find each other again, recapture love, yet she’d checked out of the relationship long before she actually told him.

  Now, he didn’t care how he got that passion back. He didn’t care how long the thrill lasted. He wanted a taste of it for any length of time he could grab hold of. It was probably ridiculous to hope he could get what he needed from a stranger, but then fantasy was all
about believing the impossible could be possible. He wanted a woman in his life. He wanted this woman. Days, weeks, months, he’d take whatever she’d give him.