His Brand of Beautiful (17 page)

“Are you cold?” he asked, tracing her cleft with a finger, leaning over her.

“Are you kidding?”

Her clitoris was ripe. Melon‐soft.

“You’re so wet, Christina”

“I’ve been like that all day.” Her hands flicked the elastic of her knickers. “Take them off.”

He anchored the crotch against her inner thigh, held it, let the material snap back into place. “Ask me nicely.”

She sucked in a breath. “Please, Tate. Take them off.”

Kneeling between her legs he bent forward to lift her arse and help her kick a leg free. Her hips moved beneath him and he forgot about her other leg because she’d shifted again, hooked an ankle over his back and tilted her pelvis at him somehow so the head of his cock was about to split her apart.

“Wait, Christina,” he said with a muttered curse. “A condom... I haven’t... do you need me to?”

“Don’t stop,” she begged, locking her ankles around him and making it impossible to concentrate on trying to locate his jeans in the dark and the packet in their pocket. “It’s safe, Tate. Don’t stop. Please...”

She rocked at him, impaled herself inch by sweet inch and he almost shouted aloud it felt so damn good. She was so wet he couldn’t help but slide further inside. It had to be ten degrees hotter in there.

“My God. The way you fit,” she whispered when he filled her to the hilt and they were breathing like trains.

She was all velvet inside and he thought:
Fuck taking it slow.

He swapped her rhythm for his own and her hips arched and rocked and slammed and his chest crushed her breasts and her kisses grew hotter and wetter and harder.

“Tate yes, just like that.” She buried her face in his neck. “
God
. I’m going to come.”

“Let it go, baby. Let it go.”

He felt every muscle in her body clench. Her shoulders wrenched from the sleeping bag and fingers clawed his back and he dove in again and again and knew he was about to explode.

She buried her face in his neck and her fingers dug in his shoulders, hanging on.

Fireworks took hold of the back of his balls and he buried himself as deep as he could, felt her grip him like a glove and he held on as the world rushed in and the tent expanded out and he shot and shot and shot.

“Wow,” she whispered after a while. “That was amazing. Thank you.”

“
Thank
you
?” He kissed her nose, eased his weight off. “You don’t need to thank me.”

“Sorry. I’m all messed up. Tired. Dumb thing to say.” Her words slurred.

He brushed his knuckle against her cheek. It came away wet.

Her knickers were still trapped around one knee and he slipped them off her ankle.

He left her only long enough to entwine the two sleeping bags into one. She rolled to her side. He put an arm over her flank and nestled into her back. His heartbeat thumped her spine.

A dingo howled.

She mumbled something once in a voice thick with sleep. It sounded like
ripe grapes
and he knew she already dreamed. Her arm twitched once then stilled and he held her as she slept.

Lily Malone

A car murmured past.

Sunlight filtered through curtains he hadn’t given her time to fully shut. It struck Tate’s overnight bag, which was curled in the corner of Christina’s bedroom like the cat someone forgot to put out. The clothes he’d stripped from her hung where he’d tossed them, dress half off her sewing chair, tights dangling in a noose around the mannequin’s neck, boots and belt on the carpet near Christina’s handbag.

Sweat tainted the air, his and hers; all of it wrapped in the salt smell of afternoon sex.

“We can’t keep doing this,” Christina said in the buttery voice he loved, fingers spidering playfully across his ribs.

Those fingers didn’t match her tone and Tate laughed. It was impossible to take her seriously while she sat astride his hips, dusky nipples jutting at his chin.

“Why not? I’m on holiday,” he said.

She glanced at the bedside clock. “You might be on holiday. I’m not. I have a winery to run. I have a fun run to run. I haven’t done any training for a week. I’m lucky Lace is still on her honeymoon.”

He stroked her thigh. “You’ve been getting other exercise.”

“It’s four o’clock in the afternoon and look at me,” she held her arms wide. “It’s the fourth time this week I’ve told Marie I have a city meeting.”

“You’re an important woman.” His fingers accepted the burden of her breast. “And you look beautiful.
Bountiful
.”

“Bountiful?” She lifted herself off his hips to flop beside him, an arm behind her head. Chestnut hair spread across the pillow, close enough to tickle his ear. “Is that your way of telling me my bum looks big?”

He rolled to an elbow, drew circles around her belly‐button. “Bountiful like a Rubens’

muse. My brand of beautiful. But I’m still disappointed.”

“You’re disappointed?”

He grinned. “We’ve been back a week now and you haven’t read me a single page of porn.”

“Hey, buddy, I
won
the bet, remember? You’re the one who needs to cough up my brand.”

“Cracked Pots is a work in progress, you know that. Don’t change the subject. One measly little sex scene is all I want. I thought you were the girl who tried anything once.”

There was a slide of sheets and her body seemed to tighten in on itself somehow.

“What makes you think this would be the first time I’ve read a guy porn?”

“I don’t know about any guy. It would be the first time with me.” He said it softly, but it had weight.

Abruptly she sat and her fingers toyed with the fringe of burgundy quilt. He could see the faint glow of perspiration shimmer on her skin.

“Why do you do that, Christina? Push me away, just when I think I’m getting close.

What are you afraid of?”

She wouldn’t look at him. “I told you I’m crap at relationships. I let everyone down.

Don’t fall in love with me, Tate.”

“I asked you to read me porn, not meet my parents.” He kept his voice light.

She aimed a swat at his chin. “I didn’t mean to wreck the mood.”

“Yes you did,” he said, gently, getting up to pull the curtain properly shut. “You think you’re warning me off, but what you’re really doing is pulling away. You figure if you’re the one to pull away first, you can’t get hurt.”

For a moment she just looked at him. Then she rolled away, groping beneath the wrought iron bed.
Call Girl By Night
came up cover‐first, pages yellow as she sat cross-legged on the bed to thumb through it. He returned to the bed, switched on her bedside lamp then reclined on the pillow, arms behind his head.

He could see the shadow of her pubic hair, darker than the hair on her head.

“That’s hardly lady‐like,” he muttered, eyes on the pale pink glisten between her thighs. He felt his body stir.

She bookmarked a page with her thumb. “I’m not channelling my inner lady right now.”

He laid his hand lightly on her wrist. “Let me worry about my heart and who it loves, Christina, okay? Whatever you throw at me I’ll cope.”

She touched her bottom lip with her tongue, bobbed her head once and began to read.

“Ted was already sitting on the edge of the bed when I entered the room. It was a
king‐size bed with midnight blue sheets. He beckoned me with one hand and I walked
toward him, stopping a foot away from his knees. I moved my hand to the zipper of my skirt
but he stopped me. ‘Let me,’ he said and his voice was already thick.

“His hands were warm as his fingers brushed my stomach.

“My skirt slid to the floor and I kicked my feet from it. I wasn’t wearing panties and I
sensed he liked that. ‘Keep the shoes on please, and take a seat, Lucy,’ he said to me. He
untied the towel that had been wrapped around his hips and let it fall to the side. He was
already erect. I sat on his thighs in my white stockings and pink stiletto suedes and I could
feel his beautiful dick straining against my leg. I’ve never had a client who didn’t like white
skimpy underwear on me: they get the virgin and the whore in one easy package.

“Ted pulled my face to his. Our kiss started gentle, then exploded. His tongue fucked
mine.”

Tate’s hand dropped to his cock and stroked. “Say his tongue fucked mine, again.”

Pink flushed her cheeks. “His tongue fucked mine.”

“Good girl, Christina. Keep reading.”

“He unbuttoned my shirt and pulled it from my shoulders, kissing every bit of bare
skin on the way. He was slow and so gentle. When he had the shirt off, he just looked at me
for a moment. I hadn’t worn a bra, either. My breasts are small but they’re perky and none
of my men complain. He ducked his head and nuzzled my nipples. The left one first, then
more attention to the right. I could feel the buzz growing in my pussy.

“‘You’re getting me wet, Ted,’ I said.

“‘Good, angel. Lie still.’ He lifted me from his lap and rolled me across him until I was
lying in my stockings and suedes on his blue sheets. He spread my legs.”

Tate reached for the junction of Christina’s thighs. The nub of her clitoris was plump and swollen and he circled it, heard her gasp. He flipped so he was lying on his stomach, Lily Malone

cock so hard beneath him he thought it would never be soft again. He uncrossed her legs, positioned himself between Christina’s open knees with her sex spread before him and stroked the inside of her thighs until he heard his favourite moan: the one that was more like a purr.

“Keep reading.”

“I thought he would mount me then, but Ted knelt between my knees, bent his dark
head and started licking my clit—”

Tate spread Christina open. Took a long taste of her special salt. The book bumped the top of his head.

“—licking it, then slowly sucking it. Sucking it then tongueing it. Working from my clit
to my pussy and back again. It felt incredible and I was already so close to coming. I moaned
again.”

Tate’s finger penetrated Christina’s silky heat.

The book toppled. Flopped over the edge of the bed and hit the floor. Violent hands clapped hard on the back of his head and she bucked beneath him, legs spread, knees raised, hips arching to meet his mouth.

He sucked her clitoris, circled it while his cock jammed in the friction of sheets and she moaned again, a new, frantic edge that was almost a keen. She opened her legs wider.

“Please, Tate. Give me your tongue. Fuck me with it.”

He speared his tongue through her outer lips and she buried her fingers in his hair and came in his mouth, lips open, head thrown back.

****

Christina left Tate singing
Born To Run
in the shower and padded on cold tiles to the kitchen, switching on lights. Next week, it had to stop. Michael and Lacy would be back from Bali and she’d promised to have something on Cracked Pots to show her brother. June twelfth was circled on her fridge calendar. Four more days and the honeymoon would be over. Theirs.

Hers.

Her glance inside the fridge was quick and depressing. Rice milk. Mint sauce, eggs, chutney, mustard and a bunch of wilted spinach. She glugged rice milk straight from the carton. Since Tate told her what farmers did to dairy‐cow calves, she’d sworn‐off dairy.

She shut the fridge and put her carton‐cold hand to her cheek. It was no wonder her skin felt hot and flushed.

When Tate made love to her she felt stripped bare. Like some classic old car taken down to its shell and lovingly rebuilt. Customised. He had this way of plunging inside her before a slow withdrawal, till the very tip of him teased her outer lips and every part of her ached to have him buried back deep.

Sometimes he used his cock like some kind of primitive plough, rubbing her crevice up and down before he’d plunge inside. Other times he withdrew it completely, paused at her entrance until she couldn’t wait any more and she’d lift her hips and fuck up onto him like he was her own special pole.

It made her hot just thinking about it.
Hungry
.

****

Twenty minutes later Christina shoved the front door open, her shopping bag bulging with fresh food from Mr Loh’s. Bono’s plaintive vocals greeted her, aching through
Bad
.

It was warmer in the cottage. She pulled off gloves, scarf and beanie, hung her coat on the rack.

Tate sat absorbed in the widescreen attached to his laptop, an open beer near his hand, bare feet tapping on the barstool step. His sinewy fingers alternated between the keyboard and a stylus that he used to colour graphics. He looked up as she entered the kitchen and the love in his smile made her heart bounce. Her step faltered.

“Damn heels, I’ll break my leg one day,” she said. Only it wasn’t the heels. It was fear that made her stumble. Fear because he could so easily make her care, too much.

Lumping the bag to the counter, she slid a box of water crackers and a tub of organic hummus toward him in a daze. Luckily, both items missed the bottle.

She thumped a half‐bunch of celery into the crisper and extracted a carton of free-range eggs.

“That’s my favourite U2 song.”

“Hmmn.” He wasn’t listening and that was a good thing. When he concentrated on his work she could have run around the kitchen singing
Bad
in the buff and he wouldn’t bat an eyelid, he wouldn’t notice how the colour had drained from her face.

Stabbing a cracker into the dip, she savoured the garlic and lemony taste, then pulled out a white plastic chopping board and her biggest kitchen knife and started slicing wheels of leek. She cracked five eggs into a bowl and stuffed the carton back into the fridge.

Tate tapped the screen. “Do you want to see this?”

“It’s ready?” The knife clattered against the bench and she scooted around to look over his shoulder. He adjusted the screen a little, tilted it lower.

“Just remember it’s still rough.”

Her heartbeat quickened, this time with adrenalin. “I’ll remember.”