The damn sweater dress hugged her ass just as helpfully as it did her chest. White had become the least innocent color in the world. That particular shade she wore he called white on white, which sounded pure but was dirtied up by just a hint of blue and green and buckets of his raunchiest thoughts. He wanted to spill paint into her shadows and crevices, put his color story all over her.
Wendy was going to laugh her fool head off about this. She’d taken against Ivy from the start, and managed to bring Chloe up every time the four of them shared a meal on the patio. He’d asked her to stop, and Mac had traded a conspiratorial look with her. They relished their little games.
But let them. Because he was going to relish a game of his own. One that revealed every color Chloe kept hidden under all those white clothes.
He did not want to schmooze hospital people. Wendy's insistence ensured he’d submit the bid. If he won, great. Like Chloe observed, he sucked at selling himself, so if nepotism worked, fine. Gabe had nothing against nepotism. Great things happened when someone talented met someone with power, and he had talent. Wendy had power. It would likely be enough to help him rise to the top of the pool, and if not, how much more would pushing his gumbo at doctors do?
Besides which, his main aim just at the moment was to strip Chloe. She was toying with him, no matter if she did have friends to greet and social obligations to perform. He hung where he was, near to his own front door, and every few minutes she turned from her confabs to look at him. Blazing looks. Looks that proved she was eager to forget all she’d claimed and climb the spiral steps to his bed.
Maybe he wouldn’t even let her get that far.
“What’s wrong?”
He turned. His buddy Manny had slid up beside him, and Gabe hadn’t noticed in the least. “That goatee is what’s wrong.”
“Hey. I look amazing.”
He eyed the guy. “You do look good. You lose weight?”
“Man, shut up.”
“You’re the one over here, preening like some swan.”
The goatee shifted in funny-ass ways when Manny grinned. “Yeah, and you’re the one looming over here like some vulture. Whose carcass are you going to feast on?”
It took everything to stop from looking over at Chloe again. Manny was a keen observer, part of what made him excellent with the charcoal sketches he sold for enough to keep him in quality paper between gigs with Lassiter. Not that Gabe worried about people knowing his business, but something about this thing with Chloe felt private for now. Maybe because they weren’t naked yet.
Not yet.
But a few chats, a spin on the dance floor, and a longneck later, she returned to his side. They'd made enough eyes at each other for him to feel confident about their nonverbal communication, and a lazy glance up and down her body was all it took before she tailed him into his place.
The door shut out much of the sound, and some of the light. The lock kept him from worrying Manny or someone would walk in to use his toilet instead of the ones in Mac’s house. He pulled the blackout shades as best he could over the evergreen wreaths in the windows. She joined in the effort so it wasn't but a moment before they were secluded, muffled away from the bustle. He'd only lit the one reading lamp by the sofa, normally an inadequate source of light. But he wasn't painting now. Wasn't planning his work out, or debating finishing touches, or inventorying his supplies. All of that faded, and nothing was left except Chloe. Sultry and self-assured and sun-bright Chloe.
“Ready?”
He stripped off his sweatshirt. Started on the buttons. “You just do your best to make me strip at these parties, don't you?”
She moved his way, laid her palms on his wrists. Didn't stop him from opening his shirt. “I thought we might kiss first. Maybe double-check the expectations. Promise each other we are disease-free.”
“We can't follow your checklist once you have me bare-chested?” He wasn't worried about her words. Her actions couldn't be plainer; she'd slid out of her boots and bracelets. Her fingers lingered on his pecs.
“It's as if you think I'm a sure thing.”
“You're the one who said we're fucking tonight. It was your timeline, and you followed me in here. Not but that you're obligated—head out any moment you like, sugar. I'm only giving you a peek at the goods you've been eyeing all night.”
Just like that, she gave up the pretense. “Fair enough. I'll do the same. And for the record, I am clean, and you'll use condoms, and if your bed has clean sheets I'd rather start up there than down here where it feels like the party is swinging past the window. My exhibitionist days are long past.”
“Is there anything sexier than a pragmatic woman?” He toed off his shoes and backed towards the stairs. She followed. His voice came out rough and ready thanks to the look in her eyes. “I haven't slept with anyone since my last clean bill of health. And I sure like how you said condoms in the plural. That plants all kinds of dirty as hell thoughts in my brain.”
The first thought, the one his cock was almost sure to enjoy as a promise of the next few hours, was to kiss her. Hands playing her ribs, full tracing of her soft curves, the sweet swelling of her breasts. She leaned back against the center post of the spiral staircase, and a sweater dress never looked more obscene. He rocked back to take her in, then crowded himself into her. Pulsed his pelvis against hers in time to his blood rush or the music outside or something more instinctive, he wouldn't swear against any of it.
The woman knew how to fucking kiss.
Something fire, something spicy, something earthy all mixed in the air between them, with a lagniappe of sugar to make it breezy as well as essential. Gabe was not a particular man, not the type to have a type, but he noted that their similar height meant she had a lot of torso he could stroke, while her arms were long enough to range far and wide across his shoulders, his back. His ass. He slipped his own hands under her dress and squeezed in return, fingers tracing her globes and finding her bare.
It might be that his type was the type to wear a thong under a figure-hugging sweater dress. She tamed her kiss and he followed her lead, opening his eyes to find her dark brown ones even darker with the dilation of desire.
Been a long time since he kissed and smiled at the same time. “Well?”
He felt rather than saw her eyebrows lift against his own brow.
“Come on, now, darling. You said we had to check expectations. I’m standing here stripped bare in front of you, waiting for you to decide. This going to pass muster, between us?”
She was heaving, and he resisted sliding his hands up all the way to her breasts. It proved his forbearance like nothing else.
Pass muster? The man was talking about muster at a time like this? She’d hardly needed proof they would fit, and that kiss was off the charts of even her sometimes-elevated expectations. Chloe hadn’t survived the stress of med school and residency and her fellowship and her often-disheartening, often-all-consuming job without getting good at arranging good sex for herself. She’d summed Gabriel Babineaux up in a glance three years earlier when he’d opened the door to her and...whatever her date’s name had been. She’d forgotten that guy behind her on the stoop, but not the image of Gabe snugging Penny up against his chest in that green shirt she would end up wearing home and hoarding for a year.
So, yeah, he passed muster.
She shook her head at him, hiding her grin at his comical fallen face. They both knew they were sexually compatible, that had never been in question. “You never said if your sheets are clean?”
He didn’t answer, just turned—one hand on the bannister, one clinging to her butt a moment longer before shifting to her palm. She didn’t need his tugging to press up behind him as they climbed the stairs. Each bend of her knee sent her hemline higher, and she didn’t contemplate tugging it back down. By the time they stood under the peaked roof of his sleeping loft, her legs were exposed to the hip and her skin itched to unravel the rest of the cable knit.
Gabe looked. She braced her legs further apart, because if the satin of her thong wasn’t yet visible to him, she wanted to correct that. She hadn’t bought the thing just because the dress clung to her waist and hips. She’d seen the seasonal ’Naughty or Nice’ script that would sit right over her clit, and thought of him. After that first moment seeing him, back during her first New Orleans December, she’d known the two of them had potential.
That night, he’d scorched her vision with her first glimpse at a chest that was just as enticing a few years later. It cemented her feeling that they’d sleep together some day. Not that it had kept her from plenty of fine sex in the meanwhile. He was scrumptious, but he wasn’t the only attractive man in the parish.
Wendy had made haste to tell her that Gabe and Ivy broke up after the party last year. She was busy—other tasks, other men—and forgot to follow up once she’s called an end to the fling with Peter. She’d rejected his friend Yori, not that the guy wasn’t yummy. It took more introspection than she preferred, coming to the point she could admit—to herself, never to Wendy—she felt it was overstepping whatever existed with Gabe if she dated his pal.
As December approached, Wendy's hints got more blatant, and she’d shown up this year knowing Gabe would be date-free. Not that it guaranteed this moment, standing planted wide and available in front of him.
It only guaranteed that she’d bought the thong with him in mind.
He dropped to the bed, legs spread. Balled up his shirt and tossed it towards a closet. Reached forward—the tight quarters of the loft meant proximity wherever she stood—and hooked his index finger under her hem. His fingertip brushed her thigh, then his knuckle rested against the thong one quick moment until he drew her a few inches forward.
As soon as she entered their perimeter, his legs closed around hers. “Nice.”
She shook her head. “Don’t just read the last line.” Bracing a hand on his shoulder, she used the other to raise the sweater to her abdomen.
All the dark sugar condensed in his voice. “Is the plan that I check one or the other? Who do I appeal to if I want both?"
She brought his palm up and flattened it against her pelvis. “I’m in no hurry. There's plenty of time for both, if that's what suits you."
His hands took over. His legs, too, scissoring around her so that they were flush again and his mouth was on her. She gave him control of her torso, using the freedom to extract herself from the dress. When she tossed it, it hit the railing and dropped, making her glad they had blocked the view from the lower windows. Gabe's hand followed the path of her exposed skin, climbing her ribs, skimming her breasts, circling her neck. He cuffed her lightly, brought her mouth to his. She resisted long enough to loom over him, make him look up at her breasts, her flowing hair, her stubbornly immobile chin.
The open joy on his face as he beheld her sent her plunging after him, lips chasing lips, tongue meeting tongue. She used her weight to push him back on the mattress; he used his body to cage hers as she followed him down. Straddling him, they tangled together, arms glancing off each other, pelvises grinding, hands working on his fly until it was open and they’d eradicated his clothing. His jeans might as well be a pile of cinders on the floor. Her hope was that the rest of her clothes suffered the same fate.
He pinned her hands at her waist. “Darling, I’ve been looking for you in that lingerie for a good while now. You just hold still and let me have my fill.”
Made sense that a painter enjoyed the visuals. She’d even counted on it. But she was wet and he was hard and she was getting wetter grinding against him, and he was getting harder.
And despite those urgent facts, he wanted to delay his gratification. Fine. She came to her knees above him, lifting the length of her hair and letting it fall as she arched back her head. The brush of the strands against her sensitized back sent more shivers straight to her nipples. It hitched her breath, and she let it out on a moan.
“So, do I pass muster?” She cracked herself up, echoing his words back at him, all breath-light and sultry. She fun as much as the next person, but something about Gabe made her more in the moment, more joyful. It wasn’t a quality she’d sought before. But it might be important in the future.
“Come on down here, let’s do a through check.” His casual invitation sounded almost negligent, until she factored in how his erection pulsed below her, and how his gaze ranged over her body.
“I’ll come all right,” she said, shuffling forward to straddle his shoulders.
He didn’t hesitate. Naughty became nice as Gabe slid the thong’s crotch aside and brought his mouth to her.
“Damn woman, you smell of heaven and sin at the same time.” She gripped the headboard to stay upright as he tongued her clit. A man with skills, this Gabriel Babineaux. A man who knew about feather-brush tongue touches and the alternating high of a firm pull with his lips. He slid a finger inside her, his thumbs bracketing her, his groans after he inhaled a special agony knowing his need was rising along with hers.
Fucking good thing his headboard was sturdy enough to hold her up. Chloe pressed her forehead to the upper rail, blessing its cool hard metallic scent as a way to ground herself as she ground against Gabe. His panting was a faint echo of hers, and his fingers a promising echo of the cock that would soon fill her. He went back to light touches and blew a faint breath across her core, but he was pumping his fingers and peering up at her coiled tense body. Surrounding her clit with his lips, he hummed; the vibrations oscillated from his mouth to her center. The headboard gold her bra white his sheets blue his eyes his hands his lips his shoulders his voice as she cried out, his voice humming “okay” and “darling” and “oh” and “ah” and “mmm” as she undulated against his firm strong hands and came hard and cried out and came.
Gabe about blew himself to pieces watching and tasting and listening to Chloe as he went down on her. Or as she went up on him, if they were to get the geography correct.
What did he know about the compass, though, because she was turning him entirely upside-down.
He righted them both by flipping them over, sliding her against his pillows and standing because crawling over her to get to the condoms would turn him undignified like a randy kid, and for once he was in the mood to treat sex like he possessed all the decades the world had bestowed upon him. With a little reverence and time to appreciate and catalog the sight of Chloe Lee, disheveled to hell and back, in his bed.
“You pass muster,” he said, stroking his erection because how could he resist reassuring himself there was much good yet to be done that night. “Time to strip, though.”
She was a laugher. He wouldn’t have guessed. Combative, sure, he’d suspected that. Assertive was maybe the better word. She gave him an illusion of deference, not deriding him for his command to strip, but he knew damn well she would walk out without even her seasonal panty if he set a foot wrong.
Combative was after all the right word. He’d managed to grab a condom, and her white lace bra went flying over the loft’s edge just like her dress had.
The dress had promised great tits. He’d been guessing at the promise of all those white clothes of hers since the jerk date plastered her shirt to her chest, back on day one.
A silent salutation of thanks to the jerk date. It had taken them years, but he’s gotten her up in to his bed, and every inch naked to his gaze. And all those decades of sex taught him he could squeeze back the urge to jack himself, to come right away all over her dark, peaked nipples.
It was by no means easy, restraint. Her tits bounced and spread as she settled back, making the headboard squeak in an unforgettable, erotic way. Seven years he’d slept in that bed without noticing the squeak, but seven seconds of Chloe watching him pump his cock as she wriggled her thong past her gorgeous hips, and it had a new association.
“What’s the hold up?”
“You staying to my place tonight, Chloe?”
She slid down, kicking the covers aside so he had no impediment to sliding in beside her. Sliding into her. “I believe I am, if that’s an invitation.”
“Just checking. Since that’s so, I’m adjusting my plan.”
She gave him a no-nonsense look. “You realize you haven’t touched my breasts yet, right?”
He realized. He was painfully aware of it. But she wasn’t going anywhere right away, so he sheathed himself and fell to. His knees nudged her legs apart, and she was wide to him. Synchronicity, the way she took his cock and positioned him to thrust, while he kissed her neck, her ear, her collarbone. Thrust. Braced his knees and thrust again, again, again. Her legs wrapped his, and she clawed into his ass to press him harder into her. Like there was an option for him to be fucking her harder. She kept saying it, though. “Hurry” and “yes” and “more” and “more” and “yes” and “that” and “more.”
No negotiation with this woman. No bars held, no balance achieved. He gave her everything, and she took everything, and somehow that meant he had more to give.
And her breasts. He hinged up to watch them sway with his every thrust, and she gave him enough latitude to hold, to strum, to pinch then hold some more. “More,” she said, she demanded, and he gave her more. His balls tightened with urgency, his face he knew matched the desperate rush of thrust and deep and release and moan as he emptied in her arms.
Oh, she was staying the night. It was not in question. Somehow the chill of outside drifted brightly above them as they breathed in unison, collapsed on his bed.
Mac had the sound system on, the jazz holiday standards playlist, she thought. “Blue Christmas” seemed to be in the back of her memory of her time in Gabe's loft, and a version of “First Noel” she always thought was far too full of horns. But now it was all background, faint notes beyond the beating of her heart.
"Hi," he said, and if he sounded any sweeter she'd add his voice as the secret ingredient in the batch of pralines she still had to make before flying up to her family for Christmas.
"Hi, yourself. I don't suppose you have any water up here?"
He half sat up, which stole warmth from her side.
"No, never mind. I have to use the restroom anyway. But just so you know," she said as she hopped up and grabbed his discarded oxford, "you're risking that I'll keep this shirt for the next year."
He was laughing as she scurried down stairs, the metal of the treads thrumming with her footsteps.
The kitchen was tidy and tiny and teal. He must have repainted it. Well, that was a thing painters were likely to do, she supposed: pay attention to their environments. She washed up and took the time to line her boots up by the door and extract her phone from her bag before heading back to Gabe.
He’d followed her down and brushed his teeth while she was being domestic, left a spare brush for her, and was fluffing out the bed sheets by the time she wrapped her arms around his waist.
"You don't mind my sleeping over?"
"Not a bit of it. I believe we mentioned all those dirty thoughts of mine. I don't want you running back at your place before I get to examine a few more of them."
She kissed his shoulder blade and nuzzled the salt-spice of his neck. "You're not the only imaginative one here, you know."
He tossed his head back in a short laugh that nearly caused him to bonk her temple with his crown. "Sorry, darling. You okay?"
"Fine," she said, but moved back so he could finish making up the bed without endangering her. She hung his shirt on the closet door. "What's your schedule?"
"Tonight?"
"Stop with the flirting, you've already got me in your bed." She pulled up the covers so her words were true. "Tomorrow."
He joined her, and she was fully warm again. "Nothing special. Reviewing the bid package for the hospital mural. Blocking out some paintings for my mom and them, should have done that a week ago but I've gotten myself caught up with other things."
"Mmm?" She yawned but presumed he wouldn't take it as a sign of boredom about his work.
He turned off the light. "Mm-hmm. Couple of last-minute commissions. Christmas has turned into a busy time for me. Didn't used to be that way."
His hand tracing light lines of tenderness on her upper arm was making her drift. "No?"
"Sign I'm getting all this to work out for me, I guess. Going to have to develop a schedule for the year, make plans in advance. No more scrounging for one job as the last one ends.”
"Nice." She was mumbling now. Scooted closer to him and put a hand on his chest. He yawned, too, so she decided to doze off instead of reassuring him that he wasn't boring her. "You're very nice, Gabe. Thanks for tonight."
His shoulder shrugged and she patted his heart. He kissed the top of her head, which was all she remembered before falling asleep.
It was maybe a few sentences too long before he realized her was talking to himself. Chloe had up and fallen asleep, just flat-out dreamland, and wasn't hearing a thing he said about his job or the sex or how he planned to make her omelets and pecan rolls for breakfast. Or brunch. It would be crude to shake her awake and explain he'd been gathering his strength for round two. He was gentleman enough to hush himself up and go to sleep himself. Round two could wait, so long as she didn't wake up starving.
He wasn't used to sleeping with the blinds closed downstairs. It did make for a dark atmosphere, even with the more-than-usual amount of light in the yard because of the party. He presumed Mac would have the sense to wait on him to help disassemble the dance floor until later in the day.
Gabe himself had the sense to know that leaving the party earlier than normal, and shutting them out from the crowd, meant Mac would spend the whole of cleanup time digging for gossip and teasing at him. Well and good. Wasn't like he and Wendy had been any kind of subtle about wanting him to get with Chloe. They'd pushed it even more than when he'd first moved in, those months after his divorce, and were sure that Mac’s sister Delaney would be a worthwhile rebound.
He never had told Mac about that date with Delaney. Mind-numbing experience. He wondered if she'd ever spilled the beans.
Not one bean would overflow his cup about Chloe, but it wasn't as if they'd need to pry the basics out of him. Those were more obvious than the closed blind and locked door downstairs.
He drifted off thinking about beans, and coffee, and coffee spilling, and if Chloe liked cream in her coffee cause he didn’t have anything more than an old pint of milk in his fridge. He could grab some from Mac’s kitchen in the morning, but wasn’t inclined to open his door until he had to in order to escort Chloe home. He didn’t even know where she lived by. Or how she took her coffee. But soon he would know, soon as round two....
And he was alone when he woke. Instead of her head on the pillow beside him, he opened his eyes to just the sight of his blue shirt hanging on the closet door, and no trace of Chloe. No white dress or lingerie, no fall of dark hair, not a sound other than the usual hum of his radiator. He peered best he could over the railing to the room below. “Chloe? You down there, darling?”
Crickets.
Pulling on boxers and a Henley, he went in search. Bathroom door open, no boots by the front door. Windows still shrouded, but the daylight was bright at the edges. He nudged aside the shade of the window overlooking the side yard, and blinked at the profusion of sun bouncing off the pieces of the checkerboard dance floor. So Mac had wrestled them up on his own, and he’d slept through that, as well as Chloe bailing on him.
Gabe’s eyes were grit-dry and his jaw ached. The first was usual after a few drinks; the second he opted to blame on subconscious awareness that Chloe wasn’t sticking around. Wouldn’t be the first time he ground his teeth while he slept.
There was a note on the kitchen table. She’d used the back of a flyer for his friend Mika’s gallery, which meant whatever she wrote, he was going to have to keep her words on his fridge until mid-January, when the show opened.
“G –
“I hope I didn’t wake you. I got a call for one of my patients—waiting for my ride now. Listen, this was a good time. I’m glad we did it.
“I’m going to put a word in for you about the mural. I don’t know if the committee is looking for anything as dense and emotive as what I see on your canvases, but it won’t hurt for me to tell them you’re talented and reliable, whatever they think about your work. I hope you get the job. I was falling asleep, but I remember you saying something about not working hand-to-mouth anymore, and I think that’s great. Well done.
“I hear my cab. Okay, you’re not making a sound up there, so I won’t call out a goodbye to you. Call me if you’re up for another sleepover—or something—sometime.
“Thanks,
“Chloe”
She’d added her number in such a scrawl that Gabe would have to verify the digits with Wendy if he was to use them.
“Or something.”
Maybe Mika would send him a replacement flier if he asked. She was gracious about things like that. He could text her for one and toss the one Chloe defaced to label him no-account and talentless. His box of memorabilia wouldn’t know the difference, and meanwhile his fridge was no place to hang people calling him names.