Chapter Five Chapter FiveThere was a chest at her peephole. Estrella knew instantly that the chest belonged to Jesse. But when he stepped back in the hallway, giving her a view of the rest of him, the air went out of her lungs. Her fingers and toes and tongue—even, seemingly, every hair on her body—curled.
His face tilted toward the peephole. “Estrella?”
“Yes. Give me a moment.” All ten fingers were wound around the handle of a mop. She pried off five to unlock and open the door, looking over her shoulder at the apartment. She’d lapsed in her weekly chores and had spent the day catching up. Eve would expect the place to be perfect when she arrived home tomorrow.
Estrella absolutely could not invite Jesse inside.
She peered around the edge of the steel door. Clearly, he’d come straight from work. The orange vest was gone, but his blue T-shirt and jeans were ripe with the day’s sweat and dirt. A damp stain around the collar testified that he’d washed up as best he could.
“Jesse.” She widened the door. “Come in.”
He hesitated, looking through to the shining apartment, an ice palace with white marble floors, spans of glass and mirror, and walls so pale, it was nearly impossible to discern they were blue. “No, thanks. I’m a mess. I only dropped by to—” He pulled an arm out from behind his back. “—give you these.”
Flowers? Estrella’s eyes widened. A half-dozen sunflowers, big and gaudy as Mexican dinner plates, wrapped in green tissue.
“I chose wrong,” he said, frowning at the apartment.
“They’re beautiful. They’re perfect.” She put every emotion into her voice as she took the paper cone and it seemed to her that the vastly unoriginal and inadequate words rose out of her to bob in the air like helium balloons. “I love them. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He smiled with one side of his mouth. The wry side. “I’m not really the kind of guy who brings flowers, but they seemed like ones you’d like.” His eyes went again to the apartment.
She shoved the mop aside. “You caught me playing Cinderella. Are you sure you won’t come in? I don’t mind that you’re di-dirty.” Her tongue stumbled. She colored, certain that he remembered how she’d told him she wanted to get dirty with him. “I, um, owe you an apology for . . . you know. And I’d rather do it inside.” Was that also suggestive? “I’d rather we sat down, I mean.”
She walked away from the door, juggling the flowers as she wiped her hands on the back of her jeans. “Take a seat. I want to pop these in a vase.”
The apartment was open concept, so she had no reprieve from his tracking gaze even in the kitchen area, which had been designed to disappear within the sleek modern decor. Estrella had never seen a less kitcheny kitchen. She’d taken days to learn the whereabouts of the few usable cabinets with their touch latches cleverly hidden in the seamless expanse of high-gloss surfaces.
While she filled a crystal vase at the tap, she smiled nervously at Jesse, perched uncomfortably on a low Barcelona chair made of bands of woven white leather and crisscrossed steel legs that looked like they might snap under his weight.
Why had he returned, and with flowers? The flowers were either a last shot at getting into her pants or a sign that he had actual feelings for her. Both options put her on guard.
She plunked the vase on the granite countertop. The sunflowers were glaringly out of place here, but they’d cheer her own drab place immensely once she got them home. Lavish arrangements of white lilies and roses were placed around Eve’s apartment. As she’d instructed, they’d been freshly delivered that morning to be at their peak for her arrival.
Jesse had noticed. He rubbed a finger behind his ear, staring at the bowl of white roses on the glass coffee table. “I really got it wrong.”
“No, you didn’t.” Estrella wondered if she should explain, but decided not to. Better to wait and see what he wanted.
She seated herself on the sofa, dread growing as she thought of the doorman downstairs. He was a friend, but she couldn’t expect him to cover for her. Bad enough that he’d stopped her that morning and wordlessly, amusedly, handed over a small envelope that turned out to contain her ripped panties. “How did you, ah, find me?”
“The doorman wasn’t too sure about letting me up,” Jesse admitted. “I look disreputable, huh? He even tried to deny you live here, but I pointed out the mailbox label for E. Romero on the sixteenth floor.”
“That’s you, right? I guessed it had to be.”
“You found me.” She knitted her fingers in her lap. Okay, what now? Her eyes went to his arms. The wave tattoo was covered by a short sleeve, but on the other arm were two marks, not even remotely threatening in the light of day. “About the other night,” she started.
“Forget it. I understand. You changed your mind.”
“Not exactly. It wasn’t that I stopped wanting you.” Oh God. She flushed. His face drew her eyes and she had to force them back to the tattoos that hardly seemed to matter anymore. “To be honest, I still want you. Just looking at you makes me—” Sweat.
“Makes me remember. How it was.” She blew out a breath. “And then you bring flowers.” Her head bowed. “It was just . . . I had a moment of panic. Because of your tattoos.”
He nodded.
“Irrational, hm? But that was it.” She lifted her hands, palms up, then dropped them back to her lap.
Jesse didn’t speak until she looked at him and saw the patience in his face. “Let me show you,” he said, getting up to sit beside her.
He reached for his sleeve. She held herself very still. “This one I got in Japan, on my first overseas job. Most of the guys had some nautical theme going. I went for the more artistic version.”
“It’s faded.” The inked outlining was all in blue with a faint shadow of gray. With his tan, the tattoo might have been only a tracing of veins just beneath his skin. Her hand rose, then stopped midair.
“Go ahead,” he said.
She put her palm over the wave drawing, like a child playing peekaboo, though there were no feelings of fear. That moment had passed. There was only a quickening desire. Her fingers played scales against the firm muscle, then drew down the inside of his arm, where the real veins rose to the surface. She wanted to take his hand, but he was pointing to his other tattoos.
“Here, a hula girl from a crazy weekend on Oahu.”
She almost laughed. Could there be a less ominous tattoo?
His thumb rubbed against his forearm. “And this one.”
A small blue star. And silence.
“No story?” she prompted.
“Prison,” he said. “The guy used pen ink.”
She pulled air through her teeth. “You’re lucky you didn’t wind up with hepatitis. Why did you get it?” Imagining gangs and threats.
“Boredom,” he said first, then corrected himself. “I missed the sky at night.”
She lifted his hand, pulled his arm into her lap. Outlined the star with one finger. “That’s my name, you know. Estrella means ‘star’ in Spanish.”
Jesse smiled.
Coincidence or not, the revelation seemed significant. She leaned toward his arm, her hair falling forward to veil her face as she closed her eyes and kissed the tattoo. Tony’s not here, he’ll never be here, I got away and I will be safe, she said in her head, a promise that had been repeated many times since her move and the painful break with her family, but that finally, finally seemed real.
She realized her lips were still pressed to Jesse’s arm. And he was breathing hard. He stroked her hair, smoothing it away from her face. She let her gaze slip sideways. Wetly opening her lips until suction pulled his skin against her teeth, she kissed again, a slow dragging caress that plucked at the tattoo. His hand curved around her cheek, and although he applied no pressure, she couldn’t have resisted the magnetic pull into his arms even if she’d wanted to.
She reached her face toward him. He dropped his forehead against hers and their mouths met. The first small peck became sensuous licks and searchings of his velvet tongue. Their hair interlaced, their fingers too. She smelled his earthiness, tasted his tickling breath, shared the sweetest desire, underlaid by coals that needed only a poke to flare to spark and hot flame.
A pressure—hot electric tension—had built in Estrella’s chest. She pulled back, biting her lip. If she opened her mouth, more of the bright shiny balloons would appear, ones that might say absurd, romantic, far too hopeful things.
“I’ll go,” he said.
“No!”
“It’s okay. I shouldn’t have come by like this. We can see each other some other time.”
She imagined him showing up unexpectedly, when she was in uniform. Or worse, Eve opening the door. Who would probably point him toward cleaning an air filter or unclogging a sink before he could get Estrella’s name out. Impossible.
“What if it’s now or never?” she asked.
“Is it?”
“It might be.”
He raked his hands through his hair. “You’re hard to resist.”
Then why are you trying? she wanted to ask, but he stood to walk away and she felt a thudding defeat. She put her head in her hands, berating herself for the irrational fears that had let him go—made him go—earlier. But she had to follow her instincts, didn’t she, even when they were reacting to remnants of the past? She had learned the hard way that listening to herself, believing in herself, saved many a mistake.
The sound of the sliding door to the balcony interrupted her reproach. He wasn’t leaving!
Estrella stood, brushed back her hair. She gave herself orders not to be so artless. He would know soon enough just how plain and simple she really was.
Outside, the air was balmy, faintly redolent of the jasmine that grew on a neighboring trellis. Below was the geometry of walkways and gardens, the aquamarine rectangle of the pool. Beyond, the dazzling city lights.
Jesse stood at the balcony railing, breathing deeply as he looked up. She followed his lead, hoping to see stars, but the night wasn’t clear. Only a few dulled lights showed through the clouds.
“It’s an impressive view,” he said. “I can almost hear the ocean.”
“It’s farther than it seems. But sometimes I think that too, hearing the waves.”
“You should live in a house on the beach. Close to the earth, even if you are a star.”
“I’d like that. The beach or the country, even the city if I had a cozy neighborhood, somewhere with room for a garden. Someday I will.”
She moved closer, pressing her arm against his, her hand splayed, their fingers touching. But she didn’t say anything more. Didn’t make eyes, or brush her breast against him, or let out any of the hundred other ways she’d imagined coaxing him to try again. Let him make up his mind.
The lights of moving vehicles streamed along the thoroughfare where she had first seen Jesse. When she closed her eyes to a slit, the lights blurred and melded into streaks of amber and red, looping like a pinwheel at the intersections.
“Estrella,” Jesse said, and she knew he’d decided even before he added, his night-dark eyes burning into hers, “My shining star.”
A shiver shook over her skin like powdered sugar through a sieve. She moved into his arms.
He held her away. “Wait. This shirt—I’m rank.”
“Then take it off.” She pulled the T-shirt from his waistband and slid her hands beneath it, following the pleated hem as he yanked it off overhead. She stretched on her toes to lock her fingers at the back of his neck, her body elongated against his length. She kissed him.
“You can have a shower if you want.” A teasing giggle. “If I get to watch. But it’s not necessary. I like the way you smell.” Luxuriating, she pressed a hot cheek to his chest and found that his skin was even hotter. Her mouth opened; her tongue unfurled. She laved his beautiful bronzed skin. “And I love the way you taste.”
She felt the thudding of his heart. Then the stirring beneath his zipper, which produced a similar heating and thickening in her. She was so filled with longing, it oozed out of her. Longing and happiness and nervousness and the deep demanding need that had refused to go away.
Jesse’s hands came up to grasp her waist, holding her still against him while his mouth tracked a leisurely kiss over her bare shoulder, into her neck. He nosed her chin up, nuzzled beneath it, his lips and tongue working on her throat. She melted, blood humming in her ears like honeybees. He reached her mouth and kissed her hungrily.
“Take me inside,” she whispered.
He peeled her hands off his neck, kissed each pinkened palm and clasped them together as he led her through the doorway, stepping backward so his eyes never left her. “Which way?”
She nodded toward the open archway to her right, where mirrored sconces lit a path like moonlight on the shining marble floor.
He let go of one of her hands to push open the double doors into the master bedroom. Even in the dark, the room shone with reflective surfaces and crisp cleanliness. The bed was immense and white, freshly made with lavender-scented linens that Estrella knew for a fact had a thread count higher than a perfect bowling score, two frames. Her conscience twinged. Eve would die if she knew . . . or she would see that Estrella did.
I don’t care. I’m bad, I’m wild, I’m a dirty, dirty girl. I want Jesse—
Abruptly, she stopped thinking and spoke instead.
“I want you spread-eagled in the middle of the bed.” Her lashes dipped, her insides fluttered, her lips curled. His face was deliciously dumbstruck. “Naked, of course.”
“You want—what?”
She pointed. “You, on the bed, naked.”
“It might be better if I wait until—”
She stripped off her tank top, dropped her jeans, then had to wrestle around to get them and her sandals off in one jumble. By the time she straightened, her breasts were falling out of her low cut bra, so she got rid of that too, leaving her in nothing but a thong.
Jesse, oddly, was slow on the draw. She was able to drop him onto the bed with one firm push at his chest. “Shoes first,” she said cheerfully, kneeling before him to tackle the laces of his work boots. The rawhide laces weren’t difficult to undo, except that he’d double-knotted them, and then she had to tug at the boots. She did it with a particular zest, knowing that he was watching her breasts bobble and sway. The room was air-conditioned, but by the time she was finished, her skin was giving off a moist heat and she still had his jeans to do. The oozing jelly was practically bubbling between her thighs.
She reached for his zip, sending him a smoldering look beneath her lashes. “I had expected you to be more of the take-charge type.”
He spread his hands, amused, then dropped them behind him and leaned back, turning his torso into a golden-bricked lane she very much wanted to follow. “This is your show.”
Deliberately she studied his bulging package. “I’ll show, you tell.”
“Tell what?” His teeth met with a click when she gave the taut zip a wicked tug.
“Anything you want. About you, about me, about the man in the moon.”
“I’m a doer, not a talker.”
“These jeans are very tight.” She’d had to stand to work them down his hips and once again his eyes were burning holes into her dangling breasts.
“Only going to get tighter,” he said needlessly.
“I’m doing this,” she said, and Dios, was she ever, as he lifted his hips a little to help her get the jeans down. “Showing you off,” she added under her breath as she peeled back the clinging cotton of his briefs and his cock sprang out. Good thing she hadn’t bent any closer or he would have put her eye out. She knelt again to slide the jeans and underwear off his legs, her hands working blindly. Once they were gone, she motioned for him to lie back on the bed, more toward the center. “And you’re the teller,” she finally remembered to say, stopping for a moment to marvel before she slithered up his body and cupped her hands between his legs.
He inhaled. “You think I can talk when you’re touching me there?”
“I can stop, if you prefer.”
That earned another of the wry, lopsided grins. And a quick, “Okay, I’ll talk. About anything, right?”
She should have looked at him before she answered, but she was absorbed elsewhere. “Mm-hmm.”
The springy hair on his thighs tickled her. “Spread ’em wider.”
She should have wondered why he was compliant, but she was still absorbed elsewhere.
He jerked under her touch. Fascinating creatures, penises. So hard and yet soft. So alive and purposeful. She used the tip of one finger to follow a pulsing vein and when she reached the rim of the head, already engorged to the point where she wondered how he would ever fit inside her, it jerked again. Petting the creature wouldn’t calm it, but she tried, grasping the shaft between her palms, stroking and cradling it. The thing insisted on pushing itself out of her grasp. Still growing. Perhaps she should attempt a soothing lullaby? She grinned. Or a kiss . . .
Estrella looked up. “Jesse?”
His eyes were squeezed shut. “Yeah? Oh, yeah.” He shook his head. “I forgot what I was going to say.”
She let go of his penis, put her hands on either side of his hips and got her legs up under her. Looked at him expectantly.
“Uh, right. I want to talk about you.”
“I’d rather hear about you, but go ahead.”
He paused. “You taste like cinnamon. And sugar.”
“That was the churro I had for a snack. I was craving one, so I stopped at Pasquali’s Bakery on my way back from the dry cleaner’s.”
“You had dry cleaning in the convertible on the day we met.”
“Well, Eve—everyone with a white fetish has a lot of dry cleaning.” She squeezed his balls.
Good distraction. His eyes rolled back in his head and he arched off the bed, forgetting all about dry cleaning. She wondered what would happen if she sucked them into her mouth.
Not yet. But if he continued to ask questions, she might resort to any number of illicit distractions. For now, she gentled her touch, rolling his warm sac around in her fingers. “You were saying?”
He got a determined look on his face. “I was saying you taste like cinnamon sugar. Sweet. But that’s not all. You’re spicy too. Hot and tangy.”
“Um-hmm.” She took the head of his cock between two fingers and bent her head. Said, “Keep talking,” and then opened her mouth.
“Peppery.”
Extended her tongue.
“Pungent,” he blurted.
She stopped a fraction of an inch away from the pearled slit. “Pungent? Does that mean smelly?”
“No. It means, uh, well-seasoned.”
She chuckled. “I’m not sure about that one, but go ahead.”
“Got a thesaurus handy?”
She smiled. “You can always talk about another subject.”
“No, I like this one.” His eyes gleamed at her from the shadows at the silk-padded headboard, like a cat lurking in the bushes. “I could tell you about how it makes me crazy when your nipples get all hard and dark pink. The way they are now.”
She resisted the urge to touch them. “Wait a minute. Is this all going to be dirty talk?”
“You disapprove?”
She worked her thighs against each together. The thong was drenched. “I guess it’s okay.”
“That’s nice. Because I love your round little body, and seeing you turned on like this. It would be even better if you played with your nipples.”
More of the hot honeyed flow, funneling down her center. She tried to sound blasé. “No, I’m busy. You go on without me.”
“Ungh.” His hips gave another involuntary jerk as she stroked his erection, putting more pressure into it. She pumped, released, then felt sorry for the frustration on his face and wrapped her hands around him again. “Tighter,” he said, straining to speak. “That’s right. Tight. Like that. How your body will be, squeezing down on me.”
“Oh?”
“God, yesss. Your pussy will be tight. I know it.”
She made a questioning sound as she puckered her lips and fitted them to the end of his penis, lightly sucking before she slipped the tip of her tongue along his opening.
“Ahh.” Jesse shuddered. The coverlet wadded in big wrinkles as his hands clenched spasmodically. “So . . . damn . . . tight.” At first, he forced the words out. Then they came faster. “The way I had you that first night. In the pool. Naked and sleek. Hot and tight. Clenched around my fingers so damn tight.”
She pressed her hands flat to the bed. Went after him with only her mouth, jaw practically unhinged as she opened to suck him into the heat and wetness that she knew would drive him over the edge.
“You wanted it so bad. But you stopped.” He breathed through his nose like a bull, lifting his hips to thrust until she made a small choking sound, gorged on the thickness filling her mouth. At once he drew back. “Tonight you won’t stop.” What should have been a statement carried an underlying questioning tone.
She looked at him with the eyes of a seductress, giving him a lollipop suck before she popped free. She licked her lips. “I won’t stop. But you keep going.” She crawled forward and lowered her body over his, filling his hollow with her curves, enclosing his jutting sex between her thighs. “Tell me more.”
“I want to feel your skin, your beautiful skin.”
Her body caressed his, moving like a wave across the sand.
“I want to taste you in my mouth.”
Crooning, she freed her breasts and pillowed them against his face for him to nibble and kiss and suck.
He groaned. “I want to feel you on my cock this time. Riding me.”
The words were a sweet shock, the last push she needed to tumble headlong into full-out abandon. She levered up higher, opening her legs and rocking into place. He was iron pressing against her softness. But she was strong too. Although her body would yield, she wouldn’t be broken.
With his steady voice and patient ways, Jesse had made her know her own will. Already she was a little bit in love with him, if only for that.
He put a hand on her hip to stop her. “Get my jeans. My wallet.”
“Ah.” She twisted off him to reach for the floor where his clothing had been tossed aside. The position poked her rear end in the air and he took the opportunity to get his hands on her, dragging down the thong and squeezing her buns, together and then apart, the tips of his fingers delving into the hidden places where she was hot pink and succulent. A tremor followed each stroke, drawn through her in a shower of sparks like the tail of a comet. Her hands shook as she extracted the condom packet—muy grande, no surprise—and pushed it at him, not even thinking of trying to do it herself. Empowerment went only so far, at least their first time.
They hunched together, her hands hovering near his, both of them breathing hard. Once he was sheathed and she rose up on her knees astride him, ready to impale herself, he grabbed her face and kissed her, hard and deep. His fierceness had returned. She was exhilarated, outlandishly aroused. Her hands twined in his long dark hair as his mouth traveled over her face, her shoulders, her breasts. She clutched at him, dying over and over, wild new sensations coming one after the other until the pleasure was too much to keep hold of by herself. She had to have him or burst at the seams trying.
She reached for the wide stem of his cock, holding steady as she fitted him to her swollen opening. He was large, much larger than any other man she’d been with, and she had to force herself down, feeling her flesh slowly give way as he entered, a thick spike of steel and heat and raw passion.
I want him. Wild me, naughty me, sweet nice kind me. Brazen, she pushed at his shoulders, tilting her weight into him so they tipped over onto the mattress with a jounce. His hands remained at her hips, his cock wedged inside her. They were locked—the plunge onto the bed had given her another inch of him, and then more as she rocked her pelvis, opening, spreading with short panting downward thrusts. She was full, too full, and there was more of him to take.
“Slow,” Jesse whispered. “Easy. Give yourself a minute to adjust.”
She leaned into his chest, drained and weak. “I’m greedy. I want you all.”
“You’re small. But we’ll get there.”
His face was strained, every muscle in his abdomen rigid and quivering. He was trying to hold back and instead of understanding she gave him a hard biting kiss to incite him. Nasty me. “I want to be there now.” She grabbed his shoulders. “You have to fuck me.”
“Damn it, Estrella.” His head twisted away. “I was trying to be considerate.”
“I know. And that’s appreciated. But now I’m giving you permission”
“Fuck,” he said, and she thought, yes, please, as he clamped her body beneath his big hands and rolled her over. She barely had time to wind her legs around his lean hips to keep him close, but it turned out that didn’t matter, because as soon as her butt hit the bed, he was pile-driving into her, forcing the air out of her lungs, the bones from her hip sockets, the “Sweet” from her cry of “Jesus!”
She loved it.
He slammed her. She asked for more, and faster, inflaming him with her willing body. Their mating wasn’t pretty or graceful. It was about sweat and hunger and hard-core sex. They fed into each other and off each other, twisting and grinding, unwilling to slow until they came, together, crashing through to the point where they’d lost all contact with physical sensation except the white hot burn-out of a roaring climax.
“Oh man,” Estrella said some time later—she wasn’t sure how long—as the feeling came seeping back in through her fingers and toes. “I think I passed out.”
Jesse was facedown on a pillow. “You okay?”
“I will be.”
He put his hand between her legs. Like a homing pigeon, she thought, wincing a little as she straightened a knee. When had she bent that way? Better yet, how?
There was something nagging at her, but his fingers were more important. He caressed gently, easing the burn. Oh yeah. Eve.
“Listen.” Estrella tried to raise up on her elbows, then gave up, flopping over into a slanted patch of moonlight. “Jesse.” For a couple of seconds her fuzzy brain lingered on the satisfaction of saying his name, but then she flexed her tongue and refocused. This was Very Important. “You can stay, but we’ve got to be up early. I have work. Okay?”
“Sure. So do I.”
“Don’t forget.” There was a clock to set and they had lots of time between now and then, but if he always screwed so hard, there was no telling what she’d lose track of—the time, her head, maybe even her heart.