Naughty Wishes Part II (4 page)

She saw licks of flame in his brown eyes. “I don’t know,” she said. “Can I?”

“No. You can’t.” He opened her fingers, letting the ice drop with a clatter to the wood planks. Bringing her cold palm against the heat of his body, he warmed it without flinching, without moving his attention from her face. The man was arousing her with nothing more than how he was looking at her. With hunger, with a need to take, held back only by his own restraint, by whatever thoughts were moving through his mind. “Tell me what you want,” he said.

“I want to wash you.”

Surprise flitted through his gaze. He’d need a full shower to be clean, but she had a different purpose from cleaning. All she needed was his acquiescence. “May I?”

He didn’t agree or disagree, but he didn’t stop her. After a weighted moment, she sank back to her heels and untied his work shoes, removing them and his socks, fingers caressing his arches before she rose to her feet. “Will you stand for me?” she asked.

He did so, a big man in a small space, though he’d made the sloped roof so he could stand up straight, even with the interlaced branches above him. Hooking her fingers in the rings of the canvas belt of his camo pants, she pulled it free and unbuttoned the top of the pants. She left them that way as she bent and retrieved the washcloth. As she did, she stilled, for his hands slid over her hips, catching her belt loops as he did earlier, only now his touch slid lower, cupping one buttock. When she straightened, his hand stayed on her hip, fingertips curved into her back pocket. The other captured her breast, thumbing her nipple through the thin T-shirt.

Her reaction to his touch spiraled out, sending electric tingles throughout her upper torso. She made herself focus, though, sliding the washcloth over his shoulder. The excess water rolled down his chest, his back and arm. She moved the terry cloth in slow glides over that same terrain, and when she moved closer to him to run it behind his neck to get the sweat and grime there, he obligingly dipped his head. His large hand descended even lower, his firm hold pressing into the seam of her jeans at the base of her ass. A tiny breath escaped, a shudder going through her. As he curved over her, she ran the cloth over the widest part of his back and he shifted his grip to clasp her buttocks in both hands.

The way he was looking at her made the space much smaller and more charged with heat in a blink. She thought he might finally have a few more things on his mind than being mad at Geoff or her. It made her dare to ask him the next question.

“Do you want me to take anything off?” Her voice wasn’t much over a squeak.

After three long heartbeats, he reached out to finger the hem of her T-shirt and tug on her jeans waistband. “Everything but the panties,” he said roughly. “I want to watch you wash me in just those.”

His manner wasn’t as overt as Geoff’s, yet he took her over just as powerfully. Chris was more like a strong undercurrent that ran below the surface, arousing her with how it teased and tugged at her submissive side, while giving her more freedom to play around him and explore.

“Like a slave girl washing her Master,” she said, though her lips couldn’t quite curve in a smile, especially when he didn’t smile back. He waited.

She pulled off the shirt and shimmied out of the jeans, shoes and socks. She was wearing thin white panties with a touch of lace, and she was sure the front
panel was as damp with her arousal as his shirt had been with sweat. His gaze slid there, then back over her stomach, her quivering breasts. His arousal was growing thicker and more insistent beneath the camo pants. The pants were now half-unzipped because of the strain being put on the fly.

Bending, she dipped the washcloth into the bowl again. She ran it over his chest and arms, moving around him to do his back. Rivulets of water slipped down his lower back and beneath his waistband. After rubbing the cloth over his arms and down to his hands, she rewet the cloth so she could do an even better job cleaning the dirt from his palms. She pulled out a fresh washcloth and dipped it into the ice container, enough water there to dampen the cloth. Back on her toes again, she wiped his face, passing it over his eyes as they closed for her. Then the bridge of his nose, his lips and cheeks, the strong jaw.

A higher stretch let her reach the back of his neck once more, and his broad shoulders. His arms slid around her, hands taking possession of her ass again, though this time there was nothing between the heat of his palms and her flesh except the thinnest barrier of silk. He fondled her with obvious male enjoyment as she swayed, her lips parting.

Taking the cloth from her, he dropped it on the floor and leaned back against the wall, bringing her closer so her breasts pressed against his chest, her cheek to his shoulder. He held her that way, his hand holding her skull and his other hand stroking, rubbing and fondling her ass. The position put her mound against his thigh, his erection against her abdomen, and she wanted to rub, to entice.

She expanded the fantasy in her mind. Maybe he wasn’t her Master the prince, but the royal gardener who loved the slave girl. The gardener would tell her he wanted her to wash him the way she’d wash her Master. He wanted her to
show him it wasn’t money or royal power that commanded her obedience, but the nature of the man.

When Chris split her legs open by insinuating one of his muscled thighs in between them, he seated her right against that flexing muscle. She grabbed his biceps for balance as he began to work her against him, creating explosive friction.

“Chris,” she gasped. His hand tightened.

“I want to hear you come, Sam. I want to hear you come without that vibrator you use. No pillow to muffle those sexy moans you make.”

Her gaze snapped up to him, color suffusing her cheeks. His jaw set. “I’ve jerked off listening to you, the bumps and creaks of your bed,” he said roughly. “I want to hear you come for me, because of what I’m doing to you, how I’m touching you. Not because of . . . anything else.”

“Anything else, or any
one
else?”

She meant it as a gentle tease, because his hesitation implied the word as clearly as speaking it. A blink later, she wished she’d let the powerful arousal gripping her keep her from speaking at all, because apparently it was the wrong thing to say if she’d wanted them to keep going in the direction they were headed.

For just a second his grip constricted on her hard enough to bruise, then he released her and straightened. He moved her off of him decisively enough it sliced into her heart. Bending, he scooped up her clothes and handed them to her. He fastened his pants, retrieved his T-shirt and pulled it back on before he gave her an even look, his expression wooden.

“I told you it was better to leave me alone,” he said gruffly. He picked up the
bowl, dumped the water out the window and stuffed it and the washcloths back into the tote. “Put your clothes back on and come back to the house.”

He didn’t wait for her, though he took everything she’d brought with her so she didn’t have to navigate them down the ladder. When she was alone, watching him stride back toward the house, the tote on his shoulder, Sam stood there, holding her clothes against her tingling skin despite the chill settling over her. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t.

This was just a bump in the road. She wouldn’t turn it into a huge life-or-death drama, no matter the size of the jagged lump in her throat.

Even so, it took her a half hour to find the courage to return to the house. When she entered, she hoped he was there as much as a craven part of her wished he wasn’t. The shower in their shared bathroom was steamed up, telling her he’d used it, but he was in his room, the door shut, his TV on. She didn’t bother knocking or trying the door, knowing it would be locked.

She should have gone to work with Geoff.

*   *   *

“Not all Doms are obvious alpha males, and many alpha males are
not
Doms.”

Her friend Flo had told her that. Flo was a Domme herself, so she’d know. Lying on her bed in the dark, Sam thought that through. Geoff was alpha with a capital
A
, automatically assuming leadership of any situation. A strong overachiever in college, he’d finished at the top of his class.

But Chris was no less resolute than Geoff on the things that mattered to him.
When he’d told her to strip for him, the look in his eye told her he wasn’t necessarily acting on whatever understanding he had of Sam’s submissive desires, but pursuing interests of his own. Chris was always his own man.

Several years ago, a string of hurricanes had hit the coast. Chris had come home with enough money to start his own landscaping company. Yet as usual, he banked it and went back to tending yards in Charlotte as part of Esteban’s crew. He wasn’t lazy, not in the least, and he was entirely self-sufficient. He just seemed to prefer working for someone.

Esteban was really good to him, because the company owner was no fool. Chris was a rare find. A twentysomething who worked hard, had a natural talent for landscape design and could be trusted with any task, large or small. Chris was smart enough to run all aspects of the operation when Esteban took a vacation, but he had no obvious desire to make that situation permanent.

The only time he and Esteban had had a disagreement of any seriousness had been when a new homeowner wanted a tree taken down because she didn’t want the sprawling maple blocking the street view of her house. She felt the tree detracted from the house’s curb appeal. Chris had explained it was nesting season for a great many animals and birds. If the owner insisted on killing a perfectly healthy tree, she should at least hold off until later. The customer disagreed.

The tree came down while Chris was on a lunch break, but when he returned and found Esteban and the crew about to cut up the branches and trunk, he shouldered them aside and fished through the branches until he found three nests. Two of them still had live birds. He gathered up the tiny bodies of three that had been thrown from the nest and hadn’t survived the tree’s fall. He also found a nest with squirrel babies.

The customer’s eight-year-old daughter had been playing in the yard, and Chris’s discoveries horrified her to tears. Chris had comforted her, letting her help him carry the nests to a neighbor’s house, who’d agreed to let them put the nests back up in his trees, where the babies would be close enough their calls might bring the parents. Chris camped out in his truck on the street until he verified the parents returned to all but one of the nests. That one he brought home and hand-fed the babies until they could be released.

Esteban never again agreed to take down a healthy tree so readily, and never during the spring. The attention Chris’s actions drew from surrounding neighbors, as well as the embarrassment of the homeowner when she had to deal with her daughter’s dismay over the dislodged nests, even inspired Esteban to change his company’s brand. Cortez Landscaping was now promoted as an environmentally conscious and wildlife-friendly operation. Chris was his “expert” advisor to the homeowners on the best way to live in harmony with nature and still have a beautiful yard.

She smiled a little. Even during that incident, Chris had never once said anything in anger about Esteban. It wasn’t his way to rant or trash talk. He simply made his point and pressed forward, not letting anything deter him from his intent, until he brought everyone else on board.

At home, Chris was always cognizant of her or Geoff’s states of mind. If Geoff was in a bad mood, Chris was the one most likely to coax him out of it. They’d been friends since middle school. According to Chris, they’d met when Geoff had been getting his ass kicked by three other boys for running his way-too-smart mouth. Chris had jumped into the fray. Geoff insisted he’d had everything under control. Nevertheless, they’d been friends ever since.

When Geoff had walked away from his family, he’d literally had nothing, his entire education and housing having been funded by his parents. He’d moved in with Chris. Though he’d eventually secured the jobs and loans he needed to finish his education, Chris was the one who’d given him a place to stay and food to eat until that happened.

She sighed, turning on her side. Chris never said what he didn’t mean, so when he’d said this wasn’t about her, she understood that the two of them had to work it out. But patience wasn’t her strong suit. Not when she’d already opened Pandora’s box.

She put her hand on the wall. Even by herself in the dark, she flushed as she thought of what Chris had said. He’d heard her masturbate, despite how quiet she thought she’d been. And he said he’d done the same, listening to her. While thinking about that heightened the arousal she’d been able to choke back down to simmering since the tree house, she wanted something more than the physical from him right now. As selfish as it might be, she needed some type of acknowledgement that they were still friends. That it was going to be okay.

She tapped the first few notes of “Itsy Bitsy Spider” on the wall, waited, and hoped. It was their usual bedtime good night, but she told herself it didn’t mean anything if he didn’t respond. After the day he’d had, he could well be asleep. She closed her eyes, swallowing the lump in her throat.

. . . went up the water spout.
The taps came a few minutes later, when she’d resigned herself to falling asleep with only her own thoughts for company. Her heavy heart thumped with hope as she did the next few notes. He finished it, then did the two taps he always did at the end to say good night.

She did the same, two taps, but tonight she added three.
I love you.

It soothed her enough to send her into a fitful sleep, but she woke around midnight to hear Geoff moving quietly down the hall. She was surprised to hear him open Chris’s door. She couldn’t determine from the murmur of male voices what was being said or the tone of the conversation, but then they both quieted and the house was still once more.

Whereas her mind was now spinning like a top. It took her another hour to get back to sleep.

*   *   *

Since Esteban’s crew went to work at dawn, usually Chris was in the bathroom first in the morning. However, from his closed door, it appeared he was sleeping in today. Esteban had probably given them a day off after their nonstop work in Mississippi. Geoff’s door was closed as well. She suspected he’d be working from home after such a late night at the office, unless there was a meeting or trial.