DELAYED.

DELAYED.

“Come on,” Julia Radman murmured as she scanned the hard-to-read rows of flights. “Don’t be—”

CANCELED.

Of course.

With a sigh, Julia shrugged the strap of her leather bag higher on her shoulder and looked at the line of people queuing in front of the customer-service desk. None of them looked any happier than she did. Julia glanced at her watch, then at the line, and finally outside the terminal windows to the late-afternoon sun shining as golden as honey. The weather in Texas might be hot and dry, but apparently the entire East Coast was being slammed by an ice storm. Newark, JFK, Philadelphia—nobody was getting in or out.

She might as well sit down. She wasn’t going anywhere, not for a while, and standing in line wasn’t going to make the time pass any faster. She settled into one of the curved plastic chairs close enough to the desk so she could see what was going on and pulled out her iPhone to let her fingers dance over the keys. She pulled up Hobby Airport’s Web site, but there wasn’t anything there she didn’t already know. They had a nice slideshow of planes landing and taking off, but after those three minutes of her life had gone by, she had nothing to do but check the weather. Fifteen minutes later the line hadn’t moved much at all, and the rest of the plastic seats had filled with disgruntled and grumbling passengers.

“You too, huh?”

The seat next to her had been empty for a few minutes, but now a heavyset man in a long overcoat had taken it. She’d already moved over as far as she could, and he huffed a little as, he squirmed into the space between Julia and the woman on his other side.

“Where you headed?” the man continued as though she’d answered.

“Philadelphia.”

“Newark,” he told her. “Got my wife waiting for me. Grandkids, too, prolly.”

“That’s nice,” Julia said. The only thing waiting for her would be a pile of mail, a cold apartment and a goldfish named Larry.

The man sighed heavily. “I only got a coupla more years before I can retire. Let someone else take over, ya know? I’m tired of all this traveling.”

“Especially when it’s like this.” Julia nodded sympathetically.

She loved traveling, actually. Business or pleasure, she spent hours planning her trips to take advantage of local sights. She wasn’t going to end up like her parents, who always talked about the vacations they wanted to take but who’d never gone farther than Niagara Falls—the American side! The weather was making this trip inconvenient, but she wasn’t going to swear off traveling because of it.

The line had inched forward, people peeling away from it with angry faces. The ticket clerks looked harried, tight-lipped smiles giving the minimum of polite, forced cheer. Julia didn’t envy them their jobs at the moment.

“You been up there yet?” The man jerked his double chin toward the desk.

“No. You?”

“Yeah. Don’t look good, ya know? They told me I could sit and wait or I could take a flight out tomorrow. They’ll put me up in the airport hotel. Hilton, they said. But I tole ‘em, I wanna get home, ya know?”

Julia shifted in her seat to look at him. “You’re going to wait?”

He nodded. “See if Newark opens up. They say I got a coupla hours to wait. Might as well, ya know?” His hearty chuckle sounded forced and his red-rimmed eyes held no hint of humor.

Julia looked at the line and decided it was still too long to wait. “If they offer me a free night at the Hilton, I’ll take it.”

“You don’t got nobody waiting for you at home?” The man frowned. “Pretty girl like you? That’s a shame.”

Julia looked down at her hands, folded loosely in her lap. “Thanks.”

There didn’t seem to be much else to say to that. He was only trying to be nice, and she didn’t really want to get into her personal life with a stranger. How she was single by choice, not for lack of offers; how she’d decided it was better to be alone than settle for something that didn’t make her happy.

“My Maggie, now, if I’m away from her for more than a few days, I miss her something awful. And I been away for a week this time. We got the grandkids coming to stay with us over Christmas break on account our daughter and her husband are going to Mexico. You ever been to Mexico?”

“Yes. It’s nice.”

“Nice, huh?” Her newfound friend looked dubious. “I can’t even eat Mexican food. Messes with my stomach. But I can’t wait to see the kids, ya know? They been there two days awready.”

“I’m sure they’ll get you home as soon as they can,” Julia assured him.

He didn’t look convinced. “Yeah. I hope so. Well, I’m going to head over to get something to eat, I guess. You need anything?”

“No, thanks. I’m going to wait here for the line to get smaller and see what I can do about getting out of here.”

He nodded and heaved his bulk off the chair. “You have a safe flight, then. Hope you get home okay.”

Even if I don’t have someone waiting for me, Julia thought as she smiled and waved goodbye. At least he hadn’t gone on and on about it, or offered her dating advice, the way the elderly woman sitting beside her on the flight out had. Or tried to fix her up with a nephew, cousin, grandson or brother-in-law. She’d had all that, too.

What had Jane Austen said about a man of a certain age and position needing a wife? Well, Julia was of a certain age, thirty-two, and of a certain position, VP for Customer Relations at the biggest health-insurance provider in Pennsylvania, and while she sometimes thought she wouldn’t mind having a wife if that meant there would be someone to cook and clean and do her laundry, she was pretty sure she wasn’t suffering from her lack of a husband.

Boyfriends, she’d decided, were like seashells. Every once in a while you found a pretty one to put in your pocket, but most were broken, some were sharp, some had a bad smell. Her last boyfriend had been a nice guy, a sweet guy. A spineless, couldn’t-make-a-decision-to-save-his-life sort of guy. The one before that had been the opposite, a big, brawny manly man who’d delighted in treating her like a helpless, fragile doll.

She wasn’t opposed to dating or marriage. She just wasn’t going to hold her breath or put her life on hold until she found the One. Nor was she willing to put aside her standards for a quick fling, or to settle for a relationship just to have one rather than be alone, the way some of her friends had done.

The line moved forward slowly, each person seemingly needing a long, long time to get their arrangements straightened out. With one eye on the line, Julia pulled out her iPhone, doubly grateful for the distraction of the Net as she browsed her favorite gossip site and checked her e-mail, then surfed over to her account on Connex, a popular social-networking site. There she played a few moves in her online version of a popular board game and checked out the updated photos on her friends list.

The line had moved, but not much.

Idly, she skimmed through her messages from Connex. She had the usual winks and hugs from random users who’d found her profile interesting and some friend requests she deleted. She liked Connex because the blog function allowed her to keep up with real-life friends she didn’t see often, but she wasn’t there to collect “friends” the way some people were. She never friended anyone she hadn’t met in real life. She was getting ready to disconnect, when a new message arrived in her inbox. The username made her smile every time.

Onemanwreckingmachine.

His real name was Graham, and the first time she’d met him he’d been blindfolded and at her mercy.

Their companies had been merging, resulting in some new corporate policies. The week-long occupational health conference last year had been meant to strengthen relations between the corporations and bring the department heads into mutual compliance with new policies. The atmosphere had been more casual than the yearly conferences she’d attended in the past, and meeting all the new people had lent an air of excitement missing from the past years’ educational programming. Along with the traditional dry business meetings there had been a few more parties and fun events in the name of team-building.

Julia had arrived late to the conference and been ushered at once to the room they’d set aside for team-building exercises, where she took her place with the only unpartnered person. He’d been standing with one-half of the group, their eyes covered with black cloths, waiting for their partners to lead them with words through a maze created by traffic cones on the ballroom floor. Julia would never forget the way he’d turned his head at her hello, or how he’d taken her every direction without hesitation. They’d won the contest because Graham had negotiated the maze at her command without knocking over even one cone. She still had the pen engraved with the company logo.

She wouldn’t forget her first sight of his eyes, a hazy gray-blue, when he took off the blindfold. Or the sound of his name when he’d introduced himself, or the press of his palm in hers when they shook hands.

“You’re good at taking direction,” she’d said.

“You’re good at giving it,” had been his reply, and his smile had sent heat trickling all through her.

The session had continued, but if anything important happened, Julia didn’t remember it. All she thought of when she looked back to that day was Graham. She’d thought about him a lot over the past year.

Later that first day, they met in the hotel lobby at the elevator. They’d struck up a conversation on the ride up. He’d impressed her at once by referring to their transport as the Great Glass Elevator. The elevator opened into a short hall, open at either end. The rooms themselves formed a square around the lobby below. He’d gone one way, she the other, and found their rooms had been almost exactly opposite one another.

He’d waved. She’d waved back. Inside her room she’d leaned against the door and laughed to herself at how something so simple and small could feel so big so fast.

The attraction had been instant and undeniable, at least to her. Graham stood at least six-three, with long, long legs and long, long arms, and big, long-fingered hands. He alternated between well-cut suits with funky ties and casual, long-sleeved T-shirts and the type of jeans fondly known amongst Julia’s circle of girlfriends as “dirty denim.” Not that the jeans themselves weren’t clean—just that the cut and style and contents brought to mind dirty, dirty thoughts.

They’d been partnered in a trivia contest and wiped the floor with their competitors. They’d sat together at dinner. They’d talked long into the night about topics as diverse as comic-book superheroes and global warming and her love of snow, which he rarely saw in his native Texas. He had an easy sense of humor and laughed at all her jokes. They’d only known each other for five days.

A lot can happen in five days.

The after-hours events had been a bit more raucous than the daytime meetings. Casual flirtations that would never have gone further than the office seemed an entirely different animal going on away from home. Alcohol made people stupid, something Julia had determined never to be, particularly not in front of her boss’s bosses and around people with whom she had to work on a daily basis. Even with people she would never see again. Maybe especially with people she would never see again.

The conference had ended with an awards dinner on Friday night. Many of the attendees who weren’t heading out immediately for home had ended up in the hotel bar, where they drank and danced and generally let down their hair.

Julia and Graham had shared a booth with several people neither of them actually worked with. There had been drinking and music and flirtation she couldn’t ignore. His thigh had pressed hers beneath the table. She had reached to brush a nonexistent piece of lint from his collar. They hadn’t been alone but nobody else had mattered.

Last call came and with it a decision. They’d taken the Great Glass Elevator together, tension thick and sweet as honey between them, but when the doors opened and let them both out, Julia had mumbled something about it being late and turned. She’d walked away.

Would he have said yes if she had asked him to go with her back to her room? She would never know, because she hadn’t asked. She’d wanted it desperately, fiercely, the need of it a physical force that had dried her throat as it moistened her palms and dampened between her thighs—but she hadn’t asked.

Their flirtation had begun casually and grown exponentially each day, until that last night there should have been no doubt of her intentions or his. But despite the fact he had looked into her eyes and she could almost feel the heat his gaze was giving off as if it was an actual flame—despite all of that, Julia, in that last moment, had faltered. Chickened out. Because he might have said no. More frightening, he might have said yes.

And then what would she have done? Taken him to her room, used his tie to bind his hands or to cover his eyes. Ordered him to service her with his tongue until she came. Ridden him like a motherfucking pony until he screamed her name. The possibilities had been as endless as her fantasies, but they all came back to one single theme. Graham Tremaine on his knees in front of her, doing whatever she pleased.

It was what she wanted, but not what she allowed herself to take. After five days she liked him too much to risk disappointment. She hadn’t even held out a hand for him to shake, afraid that simple touch would give away the sheer force of her desire and embarrass her. She had simply wished him good-night and turned on her heel to walk away without daring to even look back. She hadn’t dared look across to see him going into his own room, either. She’d swiped her key through the lock and gone inside, closing the door tight and leaning against it again, her heart pounding as if she’d run a mile with wolves chasing her.

She’d never seen him again.

She had his business card and his company email address, but had been unable to manufacture a business-related reason to use it. A couple weeks after the conference, though, he’d friended her online at Connex. No message, just the friend request in her inbox.

She hadn’t accepted it right away. For four days she’d looked at his user picture and thought about his smile and the feeling of his hand in hers. She’d hovered her cursor over the “accept” button and pushed it aside, until finally she clicked on it. Nothing amazing had happened. Her computer didn’t catch on fire. Neither did her pussy. A few days later he sent her an e-mail and she answered, bland messages fraught with unspoken emotion—at least on her part, every word agonized over to make sure she said neither too much nor too little.

Unlike most of the users on the network, Julia was careful to keep her Connex blog bland and impersonal. She had no illusions about the anonymity of the Internet, and she didn’t fancy the idea of just anyone being privy to her particular kinks. Yet every once in a while when writing about what she’d done over the weekend, the places she’d gone and the people she’d been with, something managed to slip through. Subtle, or at least she hoped, but there for anyone who might understand it to interpret it.

Sometimes he commented on what she had to say. Sometimes he didn’t. Julia checked his page often, reading his infrequent but always dryly humorous blog entries and unashamedly looking at the photos he posted of trips and holidays. Sometimes she didn’t comment to him and sometimes she did, but eventually their semi-occasional-casual blog replies had turned into a semi-occasional-casual instant message.

And then, more than that.

They chatted online more days than they didn’t, though it was all still mostly bland and friendly and eventually, Julia began to think the heat between them had been in her imagination. It had to be, didn’t it? Because Graham, for all his following her on Twitter and forwarding her LOLcats, never said anything that could possibly be considered flirtatious.

At least until they’d talked about cake.

She’d written about diets and self-discipline and the seduction of chocolate cake. She’d been thinking about sex when she wrote it, about how it seemed she always wanted what was bad for her the way she always wanted chocolate cake rather than a piece of fruit. She wanted long nights and red flags instead of fields of flowers and poetry, and what kind of woman wanted that?

There’s nothing wrong with knowing what you want and having it, Graham had replied.

As in having my cake and eating it too?

As in a woman who knows what she wants and takes it instead of worrying about whether it’s good for her or not is sexy.

The conversation had veered away after that, but Julia had thought a lot about Graham’s words over the past few months. She’d known what she wanted for a long time, but taking it was something else entirely. She’d tried, in the past, but it was hard finding men who weren’t intimidated by a strong woman.

And now here she was in a Texas airport, her flight cancelled and an undetermined layover trapping her here, and who was the only person in the entire world she knew who lived in Texas?

Graham Tremaine.

Who was, she saw, with a jolt of anticipation, online right now.

Maybe it was the extra-large cup of coffee she’d consumed while waiting to find out if she’d make the next leg of her trip home. Maybe it was the devil-may-care attitude that seemed to have taken over many of the travelers whose flights were being canceled due to the horrible weather back East and were looking at spending the night camped out on the airport floor. Or maybe it was something as simple as the long, lonely passage of time and the anonymity of the Internet that made it possible for her to take the step she’d been unable to make when faced with it in person.

She typed quickly before brain could catch up to her fingers. Unexpected layover. I’m stuck in the Hobby Airport. Bad weather.

She hit send and sat back, with nothing to do now that the message had gone out into the ether.

It was harmless enough, she told herself. She was bored, needed a way to pass the time. He was online, so was she. It was only an e-mail, not a marriage proposal.

The line had gotten much shorter, and she slipped her phone into her bag and took her place in it, mostly so she wouldn’t torture herself by constantly checking to see if he’d replied. The woman behind the desk looked tired and ready to break. Her fingers tapped the keys, her brow furrowed, and when she looked up, Julia could see her visibly bracing herself.

“I’m sorry, but the Philadelphia airport is still closed to all incoming and outgoing flights. We had another flight scheduled for 8:00 p.m. tonight, but it’s booked solid. You could take a seat on standby, but...” The woman drew in a deep breath. “Well, honestly, I doubt that flight’s going to get out, either. It’s a mess out there.”

“Yes, I know. That’s okay.” Julia’s smile seemed to surprise the woman and relieve her at the same time. “What about tomorrow?”

The woman’s fingers flew again. “I can get you on a three-thirty flight, if that’s all right, assuming of course the weather allows it. And we’ll be able to give you a voucher for a room tonight at the Hilton right here at the airport.”

“And my luggage?”

More tapping, then a pause. “You won’t have to recheck it. It will go on to Philadelphia as planned.”

Uh-huh. Julia didn’t quite believe that would go off without a hitch, but she had everything she needed with her, anyway. There was no point in getting upset by any of this. Besides, she’d get a free night in a business-grade hotel, and though she really would rather have made it home to her own bed and sheets and shower, she wasn’t going to make this woman’s life any harder by being a bitch about it.

“That’s fine.”

“Really?” The woman’s entire body relaxed as her fingers tapped again. “Just let me get all this information entered.”

“No problem. Take your time.”

The woman looked over Julia’s shoulder at the rest of the line, and hurried anyway. She printed out new boarding passes as well as the voucher for the hotel, and gave Julia all the instructions.

“Thanks,” Julia told her.

“Thank you” the woman said sincerely. “For being so understanding.”

Julia shrugged. “Stuff happens. It’s not your fault.”

With one thing and another, it was almost an hour before she made it from the airport to the hotel, checked in and made it up to her room. She tossed her overnight bag on the bed and unzipped her computer case to pull out her computer. Her phone was great and kept her connected to the world, but for advanced Web surfing Julia preferred the big screen and mouse on her laptop. She opened the lid and powered up, not thinking twice about paying the fee to log on to the hotel’s wireless Internet. She had to be here overnight, she didn’t watch much television and Internet access was more than a luxury, it was a necessity.

Her e-mail pinged softly with two pieces of junk mail, a couple of forwarded surveys and photos from her sister...and a notification from Connex about a message from Graham.

Her heart thumped as she dug out her wireless mouse and waited for it to connect to the computer. She relished the anticipation as she clicked the link in the message that took her to the login page at Connex. She positioned the cursor over the message, but didn’t click it right away. His answer would probably be as innocuous as her message had been. She checked the time received, noting it was only moments after she’d sent her message. He’d replied fast, but that didn’t mean anything other than he’d happened to be online.

S—That’s what you get for living in a place that gets cold instead of here. Still love snow now? G

She laughed out loud at that even as her heart thumped. Graham was a stereotypical Texan, proud as all get-out of his home state. During the week they’d spent together in Houston they’d traded quips about who had the better state, but she knew she’d never been able to convince him a Keystone could ever be better than a Longhorn. He was still online, according to the blinking notice beneath his user picture, which accompanied his message.

She opened up her instant message program and saw his name. She typed. No snow. All ice.

His reply came a moment later. You’re not on your way home yet?

No. They put me up in the Hilton here at the airport. Can’t get a flight out until three-thirty tomorrow.

Nothing. Graham’s name went gray. He’d gone offline, she thought, but in the next moment another response came through.

I can be there in an hour.

Her heart bungee-jumped and her breath hitched. Her fingers hovered over the keys and she took her hands away to fold them in her lap. She watched the screen, the blinking cursor, the garish, irritating ads surrounding her inbox and her list of messenger friends. He was on the other side of that box, their computers like some sort of Alice in Wonderland pair of looking glasses. The question was, what was on the other side?

It would be simple enough to say, later, when she’d gone back home and there was no threat of her being able to take him up on the offer, that she’d logged off. That the hotel Internet had been wonky and cut out on her. It would have been easy enough to lie.

Instead, she told the truth.

I’ll be ready.

When her answer appeared in the text message box, Graham let out a low whoop he covered up by coughing into his fist. Not that there was anyone around to hear him, and not that Julia could see his response. He could do nothing to hold back the grin, though, so broad it crinkled his eyes at the corners. He sat back in the chair and spun it slowly in a circle once before getting back to the keyboard.

Fuck looking too eager. He wasn’t going to play those games. If she thought the speed of his reply meant he was interested in her, she’d be right. And Graham wasn’t going to let this chance pass him by. Not like he had a year ago, or all the months since.

I’ll meet you in the lobby. He gave her his cell number.

Hers came through a moment later, and Graham stared at it with another grin so big it almost hurt his cheeks. Now he could call her. All he needed was an excuse.

Graham pushed away from the computer again. He’d told her an hour. It would take him forty minutes to get to the airport, unless he hit mad traffic. Which meant he had twenty minutes to shower, shave and change.

Graham looked down at his raggedy sweatpants and ran a hand through his hair until it stood on end. He’d better hurry. He brushed his teeth as he ran the shower, but it was barely hot when he jumped in it. No time to luxuriate in hot water. The clock was ticking.

He took his time with the shave, though. With his skin still prickled from the cold water, it was going to be hard not to cut himself. He managed, then smoothed aftershave over his face. Ten minutes gone, shit. He was going to be late.

Clothes were an issue. Graham stared at the shirts, one in each hand, he’d grabbed from the closet. Dress up or down? He went with up, not caring that she might notice he’d made an effort. Hell. He wanted her to notice.

Dressed, he grabbed his wallet, keys and jacket and took the steps two at a time. He was already backing out of his driveway as he buckled his seat belt. He dialed a minute later, eyes scanning the traffic as he listened to the sound of ringing and waited with his heart in his throat for Julia to answer.

“Hello?” Her voice was the same, pitched low and without the subtle slow drawl infused in the voices of women around here.

He’d only known her for five days, but he’d never forgotten her voice. It had been the first thing he’d known about her, before her face. Even before her name. He’d been blind and waiting for someone’s words to lead him, and the next thing he knew, her voice had been telling him where to go. Graham had heard plenty of East Coast women speak. Most of them sounded clipped and harsh to him. Hurried and just this side of snappish. Not Julia. Words didn’t shoot from her lips like bullets. They fell from her mouth like drops of honey. She was a woman who meant what she said and said what she meant, and her silences could say more than a dozen chattering women ever could.

“Hi. Julia? It’s me.”

“Graham. Hi.”

She hadn’t asked “who?” and he grinned again. “I just wanted to tell you I’m running a little late.”

“That’s all right. I wanted to freshen up anyway. Why don’t you call me when you get here.”

“Sure.” He didn’t want to hang up. “I should be there in twenty minutes. I thought we could go to dinner, if that’s all right.”

“Oh, good. I’m starving.”

Graham eased onto the highway. “I was thinking about Italian.”

She liked Italian. He remembered that from before. He remembered lots of things.

“Sounds great.”

He heard shuffling and imagined her running a brush through her thick, dark hair or peering close in the mirror to slide on some mascara. His ex had often finished getting ready to go out while she talked on the phone. The ability of women to multitask never ceased to amaze him.

Traffic had slowed, and Graham muttered a curse. Julia laughed. “Oh, really?”

“People drive like idiots,” he explained.

“I’ll still be here,” she said. “Slow down. Be safe. Don’t get a ticket.”

The murmured warning would have annoyed him from any other woman. Yet when faced with Julia’s dripping-honey voice, her slow and easy command, Graham found himself wanting to do as she said just as he’d instinctively followed her command the first time they’d met.

“Call me when you’re here,” Julia said and disconnected before he could say more.

For a year they’d been e-mailing and instant messaging, but none of that compared to listening to her speak. Graham had no doubt none of it would compare to seeing her again, either. He eased into an opening in traffic but didn’t let the speedometer creep up higher than five miles over the limit. He could afford a ticket and would have risked the cost, but he wasn’t going to risk her disappointment.

He hadn’t yet figured out what it was about her. Flirtations, the road not taken, lost opportunities, chance meetings. He’d had them all before. You couldn’t be a single guy hitting the bar scene with your buddies and not have a few what-ifs along the way. All he knew was the five days they’d spent together had been the most intense he’d ever spent with any woman.

Even now when he closed his eyes at night, just before he drifted off to sleep, he sometimes heard the low murmur of her whispers, telling him which way to turn and how many steps to take. She’d led him through the maze without a single false step, and Graham had been unable to stop thinking about it ever since. How it felt to put himself in her hands that way, and know she wouldn’t let anything happen to him.

It wasn’t something he could tell his friends. They were guys who mocked each other without mercy as “pussy-whipped” if any of them bought their girlfriends flowers or chose to stay home instead of going out to drink overpriced beers and watch sports. He never told them he thought a man who didn’t put his woman first was the worst sort of pussy, but not because he was afraid of what they’d say. He just knew they wouldn’t get it, and it wasn’t worth his time to try to explain.

Julia wasn’t his woman, but Graham intended for that to change. No more hiding behind blasé blog comments trying to play it cool. No more pretending he didn’t think of her every time his hand wandered to his cock, or that her voice didn’t haunt his dreams. They’d stood in a hallway with the promise of potential tying them together, and he’d let her walk away. He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

Ahead was the turnoff for the airport. He was almost there. He dialed her number. “I’ll be there soon.”

“All right. Should I still meet you in the lobby?”

Graham signaled and took the exit. “Yes. Sure.”

He heard the soft sigh of her breath and pictured her expression. She’d be smiling. Julia had a gorgeous smile.

“I’m waiting, Graham.”

“Okay.” He caught sight of his eyes in the rearview. Crinkled again. He couldn’t help the grin.

Julia’s laugh had always sent a thrill through him. He’d gotten a hundred hard-ons thinking of it over the past year. That and the way she tipped her head back when she laughed, and how smooth the column of her throat was, and how much he’d fantasized about kissing her there...and other places.

“I’m almost there.” His voice had roughed a little, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“I’m looking forward to it.”

“I can’t wait.”

Silence followed that, and for an instant Graham wondered if it had been too much. If maybe the entire year he’d spent cursing himself for what an idiot he’d been to let her walk away had been based on nothing more than wishful thinking. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d misread a woman, but then Julia put his fears to rest. The silence became another sigh and another sweet, low laugh that raised the hair on the back of his neck and thickened his cock.

“Me neither.”

Other voices filtered into the background. The ding of the elevator. He pulled into the parking lot and killed the engine.

“I’m really glad you e-mailed me, Julia.”

The click-clack of heels on a hard surface muted, and more voices swirled around hers. Overhead as he got out of the car, the rumble-roar of a plane taking off echoed in the phone. Graham looked across the lot to the Hilton’s glass front doors.

“Are you?”

He locked his doors but kept the phone to his ear as he walked. “Yes. I am.”

“Why?” she asked, and he had no trouble picturing the sly, sideways glance she’d give him with her smile.

“Because it’s been a long time.” He didn’t count the steps it took him to reach the building, or how many inches his arm had to reach to yank open the door. He was inside, his eyes already scanning the lobby for her when she answered.

“It sure has.”

He didn’t measure the distance between them when he saw her. He only did his best to make it smaller. And then she was there in front of him, her smile the same as he remembered it. Her eyes the same blue, hair a little shorter but the same dark shade.

Julia looked up at him, her head tipping back as she smiled. Her gaze swept over him, head to foot and back again to his eyes. “Well, hello,” she said, and disconnected the call.

* * *

Nothing about Graham had become unfamiliar. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the tip of his smile, the flex of his jaw and throat when he spoke. All those small details had been burned into her memory and kept fresh viewing the photos on his Connex page.

His hair had grown, feathering over his ears in tufts the color of a wren’s wings. There was nothing else avian about him. Nothing else so soft. Every line and angle of his face looked as though it had been drawn with a fine brush, the edges sharp and clear, not blended or fuzzy.

“It’s good to see you.” Graham slid his phone into the pocket of his khakis.

She expected him to reach for her, even if only in a purely casual social gesture. When he settled for an incongruously impersonal handshake, her heartbeat stuttered at the simple touch of fingertips and the heat of his palm, and she was grateful he hadn’t embraced her. It would have been too much.

“You, too.”

Never had there been words so bland yet so fraught with tension. Julia lifted her chin a little but turned her gaze to keep from looking at him full-on. She didn’t want to burn him with her eyes.

“Are you ready?” Graham looked around the lobby, then back at her. “Hungry?”

“Yes. I kept thinking I’d grab a snack while I waited, but then they’d announce something else about the flights and I’d hang out to see what it was...” She trailed off with a shrug and put a hand over her stomach. The rumbles and roars inside had only a little to do with hunger, at least the sort that could be satisfied with food.

“C’mon. I’ll take care of you.” Graham held out his hand, and she took it.

He didn’t drop it as he led her across the parking lot to his car, a two-seater Mini Cooper convertible. He opened the door for her and kept hold of her hand to help her inside. The thud of the door as he closed it reverberated in her belly and between her thighs, which Julia pressed together under her skirt.

She’d showered quickly and changed her clothes, though it meant she’d have nothing clean to wear home tomorrow. It had been more important to look good now, when it mattered who saw her. When it mattered that Graham saw her.

An entire year vanished as they drove. Graham asked her about the new fish she’d bought for her fish tank, the only pets she allowed herself since she traveled so often. The fact he’d been paying attention sent her pulse racing. So did the way he shifted gears, his big hand engulfing the gearshift. She only had to move her leg half an inch to the left, and his knuckles would brush the fabric of her skirt. The corner he took made the decision for her. Graham glanced at the shifter, then at her, and Julia looked back.

What had she been so afraid of, anyway? Why had she wasted so much time? They could have been cyberfucking for months, even if they hadn’t done so much as do anything more in person than shake hands.

She’d been stupid.

Graham pulled into the lot of a cozy-looking restaurant and turned off the car. For the first time, their conversation died. He turned in his seat to face her, and Julia braved herself to look at him. Why had she thought this would be so difficult?

“Are you ready?” Graham asked.

If she touched him, Julia was convinced electricity would arc from her hand to his. It crackled unseen between them. She could smell it, the tangy ozone scent of desire.

“Absolutely.”

One word said quite a lot. His smile said more, and all at once she had no more doubts. No fear of rejection, or of making a mistake. The urgency didn’t fade, but it shifted. First dinner and later, then...the rest. The cake. There’d be time for all of it. Graham’s smile told her so.

Maybe it was her answering smile that had emboldened him, or maybe he’d come to his own realization, but Graham made no pretense that this was anything other than a date. Last year, the setting and their companions had constrained them, but here there was nobody to judge. This wasn’t work.

It was all about pleasure.

He stayed back to allow her to slide into the booth first, and handed her the menu before lifting his own. Julia held the stiff, printed sheet but didn’t study the selections right away. Graham’s face drew her attention. It fed her as easily and fully as the fettuccine Alfredo and garlic bread they both ordered. It quenched her thirst as well as the good red wine the sommelier recommended.

The booth could easily have sat six, and they both pretended it was as crowded. His thigh pressed hers as he leaned to offer her another slice of garlic bread oozing butter. Julia took it, and their hands brushed. She bit into it and the full flavors of good Italian bread, sweet butter, spicy garlic, exploded on her tongue. Graham’s tongue slid over his mouth at the sound she made.

“That good, huh?”

“Try it.” She offered him the slice from her hand.

His fingers circled her wrist to keep her hand steady as he took the last bite from her. He lipped her fingertips, suckling gently and so quickly only the answering tug of desire in her clit proved he’d done it at all. Without letting go of her wrist Graham chewed. Swallowed. His mouth gleamed with butter, and Julia wanted to lean in to lick it from his lips.

Under the table, their legs touched. She waited, holding her breath, for him to kiss her. Graham’s mouth parted and he leaned forward...but he didn’t kiss her. His breath nuzzled her cheek and the scent of garlic and butter and wine all mingled until he was as tantalizing as the meal.

Julia tensed at the brush of his mouth on her ear. She could turn her head and take his mouth with hers, but the tickle-tingle of pleasure his lips were creating against her neck as he spoke was too delightful to give up. Her nipples peaked against the satin of her bra as her eyes fluttered closed. Could he see that, the evidence of her arousal? She didn’t care.

“Are you ready for dessert?”

It wasn’t exactly what she’d expected him to say. Julia opened her eyes, her mouth already tipping into a smile as she turned to look at him. “Are you?”

Graham’s fingers slid from around her wrist to link with hers. Palm to palm, their hands came to rest on the table. Below it, their thighs touched, moved apart. Touched again.

“Whatever you want, Julia.” Graham’s eyes weren’t blue or green or gray but some mixed-up shade of all three. Now the pupils had gone wide and dark, with the table’s candlelight reflected in them.

Julia also saw herself, hair tumbled over her shoulders. Her mouth a slash of red, tinged from wine, and her cheeks flushed pink with the heat of his closeness. His admiration had become her mirror.

She meant to speak but her throat at first wouldn’t let her. She licked her lips, and he watched her do it. His fingers tightened on hers. She drew in a breath, then another.

Graham’s gaze flickered, but he didn’t look away. There’d be no taking back the words, not that she wanted to. Julia leaned closer, just a little, to allow her lowered voice to reach his ear. Their mouths were scant inches apart, but they were not kissing. This close she could count the individual hairs in each of his brows, his lashes, in the line of his off-center widow’s peak. She could trace the tiny lines at the corners of his eyes with her gaze.

“I think,” Julia said slowly, “I’d like you to take me back to my hotel.”

* * *

The car ride had been eternal. Unbearable. Julia had turned on the radio and opened the roof, and the wind whipping her hair into tangles around her shoulders had also taken away their conversation, leaving only the sound of her laughter.

In the parking lot she said nothing but looked at him over her shoulder as she moved toward the hotel. She didn’t have to crook her finger to get him to follow. The invitation was in her eyes, impossible to misinterpret this time.

The lobby bustled with people coming and going. They got on the elevator, where Graham took a spot along the back wall next to Julia. She stared straight ahead, but he could see the tilt of her smile. The crowd pushed in on them, but even in the crush of people he could feel her. Smell her. She was the only woman there, as far as he was concerned.

The elevator stopped. They got off. Down the hall he followed her, and still they hadn’t said more than a murmured word or two. At her door she paused.

Now it comes, he thought. She’d say good-night and leave him with his cock aching and his heart pounding. But Julia glanced at him over her shoulder and slid her key card into the slot. She pushed open the door and walked through.

Graham went after her.

She was already turning as he stepped inside and the door started to hiss closed behind him. In two steps she was in his arms. In another she had him pushed against the door, her knee between his thighs, both her hands laid flat on his chest.

She didn’t kiss him.

They stared. He was breathing hard, his pulse like thunder in his ears. The perfect breasts he’d fantasized about for months rose and fell beneath her silk blouse, and though his hands itched to cup them, Graham didn’t move.

Julia looked at him and tugged her lower lip into the grip of her even, white teeth. Her hands, fingers spread, moved down his chest to his belly. Her knee hitched higher, pressing her thigh against his balls, and his cock surged.

Her eyes widened a tiny bit at the sound of the moan he couldn’t hold back. Her tongue swiped her mouth. Holding his breath, Graham watched her gaze move over his face, his jaw, his throat, the small part of his bare chest exposed by the undone couple buttons on his shirt. Her eyes licked kisses all over him.

His hands, which had gone naturally to her hips when she put herself against him, clutched, but something in her gaze kept him from moving more than that. Julia’s thigh moved slowly back and forth between his legs, the pressure not enough to do more than tease.

And still they hadn’t spoken. The sound of their breath, mingled, was harsh and loud even over the room’s noisy air conditioner. Through the door behind him Graham heard the mutter of voices, the squeak of wheels. He opened his mouth to say something, but had nothing to say.

“I shouldn’t have walked away.”

It wasn’t what he expected her to say, but once the words left her lips Graham couldn’t have imagined anything more right. He half nodded, not trusting his voice.

One hand moved down his chest to his belt buckle, and he held his breath again. Her other hand slid over his heart. Her gaze went there next. When she leaned to press her mouth to his shirt, when she felt the leap and stutter of his heart at her touch, Graham said the only thing that came to mind.

“You’re not walking away now.”

Her breath seeped hot through the cotton and her lips traced shivery patterns on him when she spoke. “No. Absolutely not.”

In his imaginings he’d had her on the bed already, exploring that luscious body with hands and tongue. But now, here, in the reality, with the slow but steady rocking of her thigh against his balls and her hand only inches from his cock, Graham couldn’t move.

She wasn’t waiting for him to make the first move. He knew it though she hadn’t said so. Julia wasn’t waiting for him to kiss her, or touch her. Julia, Graham thought with another small groan easing from his throat, was the one in charge here. All he could do—all he wanted to do—was acquiesce.

When she looked at him this time, her dark blue eyes flashed. Something passed between them in that look, and though Graham wasn’t sure exactly what it was, Julia nodded slightly, as though she approved.

Her thigh pressed him again, and this time he couldn’t stop the breath from hissing out, or his hips from pushing forward. Julia smiled. The hand on his belt moved to cup him. She weighed him through the khaki, his cock stiff and his balls heavy; when her hand stroked him, the material blunted her touch but did nothing to diminish its power.

Graham’s hands fisted in her shirt, just above her hips. “Julia—”

“Shh.” She shook her head a little. “This is all right. Isn’t it?”

He didn’t know what to say. No other woman had ever pinned him to a door. It didn’t matter he stood a good half a foot taller or that he could easily have captured both her wrists with one of his hands. She held him prisoner not with her size or strength but with her will.

It was fucking sexy as hell.

Her gaze still locked on his, Julia nimbly opened his belt buckle. Then the button and zipper. When she slid her hand inside both his pants and his boxer briefs, when her hand found his hot, hard cock and stroked it flesh on flesh, Graham’s head went back against the door with a thud. It stung, but the sweetness of her touch took away any pain. He wanted to watch her face, but his eyes closed as automatically as his mouth opened from the pleasure.

She stepped away from him, and his hands fell away from her. Graham forced himself to look at her again, even as the ecstasy her hand was making on his prick wanted to take all his attention. Julia’s expression had gone serious, her smooth brow furrowed. She wasn’t looking at his face, but at the place her hand disappeared into his pants. Up. Down. She jerked him slowly, constrained by fabric.

When she met his gaze, she smiled. “It feels like you have a nice, thick cock, Graham. But I’d like to see it.”

His hands went at once to his waistband and pushed at it. His briefs got hung up for a moment on his erection, but he was practiced enough at stripping past a hard-on to get beyond it. Julia, still gripping him, used her other hand to help him, but the pants went no farther than his upper thighs.

It was enough, apparently. Her eyes gleamed as she took in the sight of him. Watching her look at him sent a surge of pleasure from his balls to his cock, held so firmly in her fist.

“Gorgeous,” she said.

No woman had ever said his penis was pretty, much less called it gorgeous, and heat flooded his chest and up his throat to his cheeks. She tilted her head to stare, her hand still moving at a torturously slow pace.

“Does that embarrass you?”

The blush embarrassed him more, and Graham shook his head.

Her grip tightened. She squeezed the head of his cock gently, then stroked down. He jerked under her touch. “It’s not nice to be untruthful.”

“I’m...not...It’s not that.” Graham swallowed, then laughed. “You do realize it’s hard to talk when you’re touching me like that.”

“I figured as much.” Julia’s low, throaty laughter sent more heat spinning through him. “What do you think would happen if I sucked you, instead?”

“I—”

It was all he had time to say before she stepped back far enough to push his pants farther down as she stepped into the crotch and used her foot to shove them all the way to his ankles. In the next moment she’d gone to her knees in front of him. She hadn’t yet let go of his prick, and Graham looked down, stunned.

She gave him a quick smile before she took him in her mouth. His hands found the silk of her hair and his head went back against the door again. His cock leaped as her tongue stroked the head, and when she sucked gently, Graham muttered a low curse.

Julia hummed laughter around his cock and sucked a little harder. Her hand followed her mouth’s path. When her other stroked his balls, Graham cried out her name.

Julia had such a beautiful mouth there was no doubt he’d more than once imagined it on his prick, but even in his wildest fantasies Graham had never pictured her like this. Hell, even as a teenager horny from watching soft-core porn on late-night cable he’d never believed something like this could happen. He’d had blow jobs, but a woman had never gone down on him like this.

Her soft sigh drew his attention and he looked down to watch her, getting off on the sight as much as the sensation. Julia’s hand had left his balls and gone beneath her skirt. He couldn’t see it, but the way her arm moved told him she was stroking herself. The sight of it and the thought of her touching herself while she got him off zipped a lightning bolt of desire through him. He was going to shoot like a teenager and couldn’t hold back.

Julia’s mouth slowed. Her lips closed over him but her tongue kept up its work inside her mouth, flicking and licking along his shaft and the head. She pulled away, then dipped her head again to flutter her tongue over his balls. Graham’s hoarse shout was loud enough to be heard in the hall, but he didn’t care. Couldn’t. Not with her kiss on the tender seam of his balls and stroking his cock, not when her hand was moving faster under her skirt and her breath had started coming faster.

“I’m going to...” A groan interrupted his warning. He looked down at her through a red haze of desire, his climax rising in him as inexorably as a tsunami.

She looked up at him with heavy-lidded eyes, her mouth wet. Julia’s smile eased over her face like slowly melting butter. She leaned in to lick his balls again as her hand moved on his shaft, then up and over his cock head. She cupped it, giving him something to fuck into, and that was finally too much.

Orgasm ripped out of him as his hips pushed his cock into her waiting grip. Heat spat from his prick, jetting into her palm. The scent of it, that evidence of his ejaculation, sent another burst from him. Graham fell back against the door as he came into Julia’s hand, her tongue pressed to the frantically beating throb in his balls.

When he could breathe again he looked down at her. She’d sat back a little, but her smile hadn’t dimmed. She got to her feet and grabbed his tie to yank him close enough for her mouth to reach his.

Their teeth clashed. Their tongues lashed. She devoured him and took his breath as his cock softened in her fist.

“Now,” Julia said against his lips, “it’s your turn.”

* * *

Her doubts and fears seemed so ridiculous now that she’d pushed him against a door and sucked and stroked him until he shot all over her hand. Why had she been so afraid? Because he might balk at her being in charge? She reached to the left and snagged a hand towel from the rack just outside the bathroom and wiped her hands while he watched. Julia kissed him again and waited for him to react to what she’d just said.

Graham broke the kiss to stare into her eyes. “Anything you want.”

“That’s the right answer,” she murmured and gave his tie another tug.

Something almost like recognition but not quite flickered in his eyes. Graham kissed her slowly and thoroughly, and Julia let him take the lead. His hands came up to cradle her head, his fingers tangling in the hair at the back of her neck. They were both breathing hard when he broke the kiss.

“Julia.”

“Mmm?” She smiled, waiting. Hoping. Refusing to fear this would sour.

Graham opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. Julia let go of the tie and stepped out of his arms. “Graham,” she said after a minute in which her heart beat faster and refused to slow. “Would it be easier for you if I told you what I wanted you to do?”

He licked his lips before he answered. “Is that what you want?”

“It’s what I like, yes.” She tossed the towel onto the bathroom floor and eyed him as she unbuttoned her shirt. It hung open, showing the satin of her bra and the stripe of her belly above her skirt. Then she shrugged out of it and tossed it aside.

Graham processed this for a moment. Most any man would’ve looked silly with his pants around his ankles and his shirt barely covering his prick, but Graham didn’t seem to know he was supposed to look silly. He looked damn sexy, instead, especially when he stepped out of the pants altogether and then loosened his tie, pulling it from his collar. He tossed it on the floor, then opened his buttons and took off his shirt, too.

“I want to do what you like,” he said after a pause.

Naked, he moved toward her and sank to his knees. He didn’t have to look up as far as she had from the same position. He was not the first man she’d ever had in front of her that way, but he was the first ever to do it on his own accord, without an order.

It left her weak.

Sharp-toothed fear bit at her insides again, and she took breath after trembling breath to quell it. This didn’t have to be more than it was, an interlude in a hotel room that would give them both something to remember. This didn’t have to be more.

Just over her right shoulder and next to the bathroom door was the metal shelf and hanger rack. She’d hung nothing on the hangers, and they rattled when she shoved them aside. The metal was cold on both her palms as she gripped the bar. She held it tight.

“Touch me.” Her voice snagged and ripped the silence.

Graham pushed up her skirt. His thumbs ran along the inside of her thighs. He stopped just below the lace of her panties. When he leaned in, his eyes closed, to breathe her in, Julia blessed the bar to which she clung. She might have fallen without it.

Graham nudged her skirt higher with his face and held it there with his hands, which came to rest on her hips. He pressed his mouth to her, his breath hot through her panties. It didn’t take much to see this was going to be complicated, but before she could direct him, Graham figured it out.

He kissed her pussy gently as he reached behind to undo her zipper. He left her body only long enough to let the skirt fall to the ground and help her step out of it. She wore no stockings, just her panties and flats.

He looked up at her again. “I want to taste you.”

Julia smiled. “Well, here I am.”

Grinning, Graham hooked his fingers into her panties and eased them aside. Julia tensed, her grip on the bar tightening. His breath kissed her first. Then, his mouth.

Oh, God, it was heaven when his lips found her heat. When his tongue stroked the seam of her cunt and opened her, Julia cried out. When he found her clit, already swollen, her hips bucked forward. The hangers rattled, but she didn’t let go.

Graham licked her just once or twice before sliding a hand under her thigh and lifting her leg over his shoulder. Both hands clutched her ass, then, and held her still while he feasted on her clit. His fingers parted her buttocks, one slipping down her crack to find the often-ignored heat of her anus.

Fuck, oh, fuck. Graham didn’t probe or push, just gave her the perfect amount of gentle pressure as his tongue lapped and stroked her from the front.

“Good,” she managed to say. “Oh, fuck, Graham, that’s good.”

He shifted, hitching her leg farther over his shoulder. His tongue fucked its way inside her, deep as it would go, then out again and up to circle her clit. Her hands, sweating, slipped on the bar. The leg on which she stood trembled, her thigh muscles jumping. Her hips rocked as she fucked his face.

She’d gone down on him for just this reason, so there’d be no distraction for him when he ate her pussy. Now Julia had time to regret it, because her cunt clutched on nothing, aching to be filled. She wanted him to fuck her hard, against the wall or on the floor.

Later, she thought as his lips nibbled and teased her, and she smiled.

He took his hand from her hip and angled it, surprising her when he pushed a finger inside her.

“Yes!” She risked letting go with one hand so she could fist the other in his hair. His groan might have been of pain, but she didn’t think so.

His tongue kept up the steady circling on her clit as he stroked his finger in and out. She wasn’t going to last much longer. The triple threat of his tongue on her clit, finger inside her and another pressing her in the back was too much. The hangers rattled harder as Julia shook.

Her eyes wanted to close, but she forced them to stay open. She wanted to see him when she came. She watched Graham’s face as his mouth worked, his eyes closed, lost in his concentration on her cunt.

“Graham,” she said hoarsely, wanting him to be looking at her when she came. Needing it.

His eyes opened and his head tilted, though his mouth never left her body. He looked at her. Julia shuddered into orgasm on his smile.

Graham licked his mouth and bent his head to kiss the inside of her thigh. Julia let go of the bar with one hand as she moved her leg off his shoulder. She touched his hair, then threaded it into her fist.

At the tug, he looked up. She thought he might speak, but Graham only turned his face to kiss her thigh again before he got to his feet and gathered her into his arms. Julia let out a sigh at the relief of pressure from her palms. She’d been clutching the bar so hard her fingers had gone a little numb.

Graham took her hands and rubbed them between his. “Are you okay?”

“I need to sit down.” Julia gestured at the padded chair by the desk, and in a moment Graham had led her there and eased her into it. Her knees, still weak, bent, and she sank gratefully onto the seat.

There was only one chair, and after a second’s hesitation, he crouched next to her to rub her hands a bit more. “Is that better?”

His concern touched her, and she nodded before pulling her hands gently from his grip. “Yes. Fine.”

They stared at each other until she laughed and reached to stroke his cheek. Graham, laughing too, turned his face to press his lips to the inside of her palm. His eyes closed as he leaned into her touch, and Julia caught her breath at the sight.

“You’d think in a hotel this nice there would be more than one chair,” she said.

Graham opened his eyes and winked. “Who needs two chairs with a bed that size?”

“Good point.” She leaned to take his face in her hands and held him, their mouths half an inch apart, before she kissed him. “But right now, you’re on the floor.”

“Right now,” Graham whispered against her mouth, “I’m right wherever you want me.”

* * *

Whirling ghosts of steam danced between them as the shower pumped out hot water on Graham’s back and shoulders. Julia, hair tied on top of her head, soaped up a washcloth and rubbed it over his chest. She dabbed a glob of suds on each nipple and swiped a grin of bubbles on his belly before the water sluiced away the smiley face. She laughed.

Graham, unable to resist, kissed her.

Julia’s laugh cut off in mid-giggle, quickly turning to a sigh as her lips parted beneath his. She pulled away after only a second. “Turn around. Let me get your back.”

“I’m still enjoying what you’re doing to my front.”

She laughed again, but the steely glint in her eye flashed. “You’ll like what I do to your back, too. I promise.”

He kissed her again, just because he thought it might please her, but turned obediently after that. This entire night had become like something out of A Thousand and One Horny Fantasies. He wasn’t complaining.

“Put your hands on the wall.”

He did, grinning and ducking his head so the water splashed down his back instead of in his face.

“Tell me something,” Julia said after a minute or two in which she’d done nothing but rub the soapy cloth over his shoulders.

“Anything you want,” Graham said.

“Do you trust me?”

The words reminded him of the first time they’d met, and every muscle in his body tensed. He looked over his shoulder, but Julia’s face had gone serious again and she wasn’t looking at him. She swiped more suds over his back, and Graham turned his face back to the spray.

“Absolutely,” he said.

Her hand drifted lower, over his ass. His cock stirred, thinking of round two. The taste and sound of her arousal as he licked her and of knowing he was doing it to her had filled his cock despite the blow job she’d given him. He was going from semi-erect to full-on steel rod now.

At the touch of her mouth on his back, Graham smiled. Eyes closed, he lifted his face to the water. When her mouth moved farther down the line of his spine and her tongue teased the top of his ass, though, he drew in a breath and moved to turn.

“Trust me,” Julia said.

He stayed put, but both hands went up to the wall as he leaned forward a little to keep his face out of the direct spray. Water pounded the back of his neck and shoulders, the heat making tension hard to form. But not impossible. When Julia’s tongue eased along his crack, Graham’s muscles tightened again.

Her low laughter sent a shudder through him. His cock twitched and filled, stretching until the head tapped his belly. His hands skidded a little on the shower wall as his fingers curled.

Julia ran her hands over his butt and down to his thighs, then up again, her nails scratching. He felt the heat of her skin against his calves and gulped back a groan. She was...fuck, she was on her knees again. This time, behind him. Her mouth skimmed his ass and her teeth found the hypersensitive spot just below the curve of his cheeks.

Graham closed his eyes.

Julia teased his flesh with lips and teeth and tongue. She pushed his feet wider apart and in the next moment her mouth suckled his balls, one, then the other. Graham’s cry was too low to be heard over the sound of rushing water, but he felt it rumble, raw and powerful in his throat.

Her nose nudged him. At the touch of her tongue stroking and probing Graham couldn’t stop his hips from jerking forward. He felt rather than heard her sultry laugh against him, and the intimacy of it, the strangeness, shot fiery desire through his cock.

In the hours he’d spent thinking of her over the past year, Graham had imagined many things. The scent of her hair. The softness of her breasts. The taste of her pussy, and how it would clench down on him when he fucked her.

He’d never once imagined her tongue in his ass and her hand jerking him at the same time.

“Oh, fuck...” he muttered, pushing into her fist.

If he hadn’t come once already, he was sure he’d have been spent by now. Her tongue swirled and dipped along his body, finding places no woman had ever touched. Hell, places he’d never known he wanted to be touched.

“Mmm. You’re so hard.” She lightly bit the back of his thigh as her palm twisted on the head of his prick.

Graham couldn’t answer. Not coherently, anyway. Water sluiced over his face as he tipped it upward, eyes still closed. He opened his mouth, not to drink, but to fill it with something since he didn’t have her mouth or body to kiss.

Pressing her body against his, Julia got up. She put her arms around his waist and laid her cheek against his back. His cock throbbed and leaped as she ran her hands over his belly but refused to touch it again. Water sluiced over them both and she pushed at his hips until he turned to face her.

“I’d like you to fuck me now,” she said.

Graham spat out the mouthful of water, hoping he’d have a voice to use. “Here?”

Julia shook her head. “No. On the bed.”

And with another of those low laughs that went straight to his dick, she got out of the shower without waiting to see if he would follow.

* * *

Graham wouldn’t know she was shaking, but she was. Julia stripped off the bed’s comforter and pillows, leaving the bed vast and empty and ready for them to fill it. Her hands smoothed along the sheets as she centered herself on the mattress.

She pressed her face to the cool sheets and closed her eyes. She knew he was there by the sound of his voice and the subtle scent of soap and water. She knew the picture she made, her ass in the air, inviting him. He’d be able to see her cunt from this angle. She hadn’t dried off after the shower, and her pussy would gleam not from water but from her own arousal.

She wanted him to see her that way. Open. Waiting.

“Condoms are in the makeup bag on the table.” Her voice was hoarse but not hesitant. She slid a hand between her legs to circle a fingertip on her clit. Slowly, softly, just teasing herself until he filled her.

This was how she liked it best. Knowing he would do as she told him and do it because he wanted to. Julia had never gone for whips and chains. Leashes, in her mind, were for dogs. She didn’t fuck dogs. She fucked men. Hard, strong men who weren’t afraid pleasing her made them soft.

She heard the crinkle of plastic and his low grunt. She smiled into the sheets and pushed her ass higher. Her clit pulsed under her fingers and she eased off. She didn’t want to make herself come just yet. She wanted him inside her when she did.

The bed dipped as he got behind her. His hands found their now-familiar place on her hips, and Julia bit her lower lip as she waited for him to push inside her. The condoms she’d brought were lubricated, though her cunt was wet enough to take him all the way without extra lube needed.

Graham’s cock nudged her, and he took a hand away to guide himself inside. They both groaned as he did. Julia arched to take all of him in, as deep as she could. She bit her lower lip again as he did, that lovely thick cock stretching her almost but not quite painfully. It had been too long since she’d had a man inside her instead of her fingers.

“Yes, that’s it,” she urged. “Fuck me. Harder.”

He moved, but too slowly. Testing her, perhaps, uncertain she could handle him. Julia pushed back against him, feeling her ass slap his belly.

“Harder.”

Graham’s hand tightened on her hip as he thrust. Still slow at first, then just as she’d asked. Hard and harder.

Julia lost herself in the pleasure. “Touch me.”

His hand moved around to stroke her clit, each thrust moving her cunt on his fingers until she could only clench her hands in the sheets and ride his cock as he fucked her. She’d already come hard on his tongue earlier. Her orgasm was slower to build this time, but Julia knew her body. This one was going to take the top of her head off.

Graham said her name in that low-deep, grumbly growl she’d adored from the first moment she’d heard it. His pace didn’t falter, not even when she rocked back and forth to meet each thrust. Every so often he added a simple twist of hip that had her gasping, then writhing.

“I thought about this for an entire year,” he said.

Julia had little breath for laughter. What trickled out was half a sigh, have a chuckle. “Oh, God. Me, too.”

His fingers tapped her clit, a Morse code of passion, the message unmistakable. Her cunt opened to him, easing each push and pull with her liquid heat. Julia moaned his name and it ended on a sobbing cry.

This wasn’t going to last long. A year of foreplay had made that impossible, and so had what they’d already done. But Julia had never believed longer automatically meant better. With the surge and roll of orgasm washing over her, all she could think of was how good he felt inside her.

She came with a hoarsely muffled shout, her face buried in the sheets they’d rumpled. She put her hand over Graham’s to stop him from stroking. Pulsing pleasure shuddered through her. “Slower,” she said, and he slowed.

Julia lifted her head from the pillows and pushed back against him. His cock throbbed inside her. Each breath she drew brought the scent of him and their fucking to her, and she shuddered.

She looked over her shoulder at his face, taut with desire. Sweat gleamed along his hairline. He rocked his hips slowly inside her, and she could see the effort it cost him.

“Graham, I want to get on top.”

He nodded and slipped out of her with a hand on the base of his cock to keep the condom in place. Julia, her breath coming more easily as the pleasure of her climax dissipated, punched the pillows into place so he’d have something to lean against, and she gestured for him to trade places with her.

With Graham propped on the pillows, she straddled him and slid down onto his prick with a sigh. The entire switch had taken only a few seconds, but when her heat enfolded him he let out a groan and thrust upward. In this position his cock rubbed her just behind the pubic bone, and Julia bit her lip at the sensation.

“Put your hands on the headboard,” she said.

There was no point in making him do that other than the pleasure it shot to her clit to watch him obey. He did without a second thought, those big hands gripping the wooden spokes of the fancy headboard the way she’d clung to the metal bar. She remembered suddenly the sight of his face bisected by the dark cloth, how full his mouth had been and how she’d wondered about the color of his eyes. He arched when she lifted herself, then slid down his erection. She did it again, then again, as she leaned forward and her hair fell around her face.

“Fuck me,” she said. “Harder now. Oh...God...”

He moved up as she moved down, and the wet slap of their bodies meeting pushed pleasure through her. It seemed unlikely that she could come again and even more impossible that she could stop herself. Her nails dug into his hips as they rocked and thrust, and Julia lost herself in the feeling of being filled.

Her orgasm tingled this time, not roaring, but it was delicious just the same. She gasped out his name, urging him to come with her. Giving him permission. And then, demanding. And again, he obeyed. With a deep groan he thrust into her one last time.

When their breathing eased, she leaned to kiss his lips, tasting of salt. He let go of the headboard to hold her. They breathed together until she rolled off him with a sated sigh. Graham turned on his side to spoon her. He kissed her shoulder, his hands resting lightly on her belly. She thought lazily about reaching to pull up the blanket, but before she could say a word, Graham had done so.

“You’re very good,” she murmured, wanting sleep.

He paused before answering. “At...?”

“Fucking me.” She laughed a little. “But that’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?” He didn’t sound as sleepy as she felt.

Julia yawned and snuggled farther into his embrace. “Giving me what I want.”

More silence, this time so long the doubts tried to rear up again. Julia did her best to push them aside. Now wasn’t the time. They’d had amazing sex, and tomorrow, she’d leave to go home. That was all this had been. The consummation of a dream.

“I’m glad.”

She yawned again. “You can stay, if you like.”

At first she was sure he’d decline, and she braced himself to believe his excuse, no matter what it was. “Thanks.”

He held her closer. His breathing slowed. Julia, warm beneath the blankets and deliciously worn out from the sex, began to drift into dreams.

“Why did you walk away?”

Sleep fled. She tensed but forced herself to relax at once. She thought of several answers but in the end decided to trust him with the truth. “I was afraid.”

“Of me?”

“Of me,” she said.

Graham kissed her shoulder again. They rested in silence for a bit until he spoke again. “And now? Something changed your mind, Julia. Something gave you a reason to e-mail me.”

“I didn’t know you’d offer to take me to dinner,” she said with a small laugh. “It’s just chance and coincidence I had the layover, you know. I wasn’t planning on meeting you here.”

His arms tightened on her. “But when you knew you were going to stay overnight, you e-mailed me.”

Julia shifted in his arms. Her ass pressed neatly into his groin, and though she couldn’t imagine him being able to get hard again so soon, she felt him stir a little against her. “I did.”

“So, what changed?”

“I wanted my cake,” she said honestly. “I knew what I wanted and I guess...I wasn’t afraid to have it anymore.”

His voice was amused. “I’m your cake?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“I’m bad for you, but you want me anyway?”

She thought for a moment before answering. “I thought what I wanted...what I liked...was bad for me. It was the only reason I could think of for why I couldn’t ever find what I wanted with any man. That it was wrong to want it. That’s what I meant. That’s what I was afraid of. That’s why,” she said softly, “I didn’t fuck you a year ago.”

“My friends,” Graham said, surprising her, “have this idea about what makes a man a man. Most of them think they’re good ole boys, you know? Macho. They like to brag about getting head but never about how they spent an hour using their mouths on a woman. Their entire idea of themselves is wrapped up in this...image.”

“A lot of people are like that.”

Graham’s fingers played on her belly. “Are you?”

“I never liked to think I was,” Julia said and turned to face him, their heads sharing a pillow. “Are you?

“Nope.” Graham linked his fingers through hers and brought their hands to his mouth. He kissed her knuckles. “Do you remember the first time we met?”

“Of course I do.”

“The trust exercises.”

Her heart thumped and she had to duck her head for a moment. When she looked back at him, though, she couldn’t hide the broad smile. “They turned you on, didn’t they?”

“Yes.” He kissed her hand again.

“Me, too.”

“But you were afraid?” His curiosity didn’t feel aggressive or judgmental.

“Graham, I like...”

“I know what you like, Julia.”

Julia tensed but forced herself to relax at once. “Do you?”

“You like Italian food. And snow. Goldfish. And you like to be on top.”

He said it casually enough, but Julia sat up to look at him. “And do you like to be on the bottom?”

“If you’re asking me do I like to be tied up and spanked, the answer’s no,” he told her lightly. “But do I like to make a woman happy? Yes. I do.”

Julia drew her knees to her chest and folded her arms around them. “I like to be made happy.”

Graham sat, too, the sheet pulled across his lap. “So why not let me try?”

There were a hundred, no, a thousand reasons to point out to him why it wouldn’t work, but Julia could only put voice to one. “I’m going home tomorrow.”

“So we have until then.” His grin was unrelenting.

She couldn’t resist poking him just a little. “And after that?”

Graham put a hand over his chest and made a little bow. “I’ll have to keep trying, won’t I?”

“It won’t be easy.”

“It doesn’t have to be hard.”

Julia raised a brow and gave his lap a pointed glance. “It does at least sometimes.”

They laughed together and sank onto the bed in a sea of pillows and blankets. Side by side, hip to hip, thigh to thigh. Her head found a place on his shoulder. When he stroked her hair, she thought she’d fall asleep right there, but she forced her eyes to stay open. She didn’t want to miss a minute. He nuzzled into her neck and settled there.

“How is this going to work?” she mused aloud.

“Pretty good, I think,” Graham said. “But I figure you’ll tell me.”

She pinched his nipple, lightly, just hard enough to tease. He hissed in a breath. Julia smiled. “I’ll have to learn a little bit more about you, Graham.”

“Height, weight, education, that sort of thing?”

She ran her hand from his nipple to his balls. “More like...limits.”

When she toyed with his cock he drew in another breath and went very, very still.

“And we’ll have to figure out a way to make the long-distance thing work,” she added, already plotting.

“I’m very good at taking direction,” Graham said and groaned when she stroked him.

“And I,” Julia replied as she leaned to kiss his mouth. “am very good at giving it.”

And that, she thought as she rolled on top of him to stroke and kiss, was enough to start with.

* * * * *