Restricted Release Read online

  Chapter Three

  Nothing screws with your head like waking up in the dark without being able to remember actually falling asleep. I rolled to my belly. Six p.m. Streetlights threw white discs of light onto my bedroom wall. I heard a gentle tapping and realized it was rain—maybe even sleet—hitting my house.

  “What the hell?”

  I remembered being sprawled on the bed in a patch of sun and talking to Cat. I remembered hanging up and lying there, my mind playing over every slate-colored shade in the pencil sketch Matt had done of me. And then I must have dozed off. Since becoming single, my sleep usually came in violent fits and starts. We wrestled each other until sleep usually won and I went down fighting.

  This time it seemed to have settled on me like a soft blanket. Another oddity for this strange day.

  I climbed to my feet and my stomach rumbled. I was hungry. Really hungry. But first I had to pee. A spur-of-the-moment nap will do that to a girl. In the bathroom, I took care of business and washed my hands and face. Braiding my hair, I caught a flash of motion from the bathroom’s floor-to-ceiling window. When I peeked I saw a naked, toned Matt Millen stepping out of his shower. The man had no curtains yet.

  “Score,” I whispered softly and laughed at myself. But I didn’t even pause to consider. I simply cut the lights and stepped up to the tall thick-glassed window.

  Matt was a work of art himself. His back and shoulders were expansive and muscular. He sported some seriously cut arms and a chest that made me emit a little inadvertent sigh. Water glistened on his super-short hair and he ran his towel over it just once to dry it.

  I shifted on my feet, the attraction I felt for him beating a steady rhythm in me. I was wet, I realized, and it gave an urgency to my emotions I hadn’t felt for a long while. Wanting him wasn’t just an abstract feeling at the moment. It was a true need. My gut instinct was to march over there and jump Matt like a crazy sex maniac.

  “A sex pervert,” I snickered. Which was what Cat had always said when we were growing up and dating a new guy. I hope he’s not a sex pervert.

  Only I was pretty sure—after a super-long dry spell and the bizarre instant attraction to this new man—that I was sort of hoping he was a sex pervert.

  A kinky, kinky sex pervert…

  He turned in profile toward his medicine cabinet and toweled off. His cock was semi-hard and impressive.

  These houses feel close together by nature, but you don’t know how close they really are until a moment like this one.

  I used to joke with Mrs. Desalvo that if she ran out of toilet paper I could hand her a roll in a pinch. Now a nude man who I lusted after was in Mrs. D’s bathroom with a semi-erection. He felt no more than a gnat’s ass away from me.

  It seemed utterly natural when I slipped my hand into my jeans and found my clit. It had been ages since I’d had sex but it has also been about a month since I’d even gotten myself off. And now—now my runaway pulse told me—I needed to get myself off. I needed an orgasm. It felt like a bare-bones necessity; it was as simple as that.

  It didn’t take much. I watched him shave and brush his teeth and perform all his manly bathroom rituals, all the while as naked as the day he was born. Tight ass, strong back, flat stomach, buff arms. My fingers twirled effortlessly over my clitoris, which was singing with blood and pressure, and then I slid my fingers into my wet depths. I curled my fingers aggressively—there was no time to be gentle with myself, not now—and agitated my swollen G-spot.

  My knees were rubbery and my breathing was fast. Fat circles of condensation bloomed on the leaded glass as I leaned against the window and touched myself.

  I was the kinky, kinky sex pervert. If he turned to stare this way he just might see me pressed against the floor-to-ceiling window, masturbating like a crazy woman. But decorum was suddenly lost on me. I pressed my forehead to the cool pane and gave a final thrust, grinding my palm to my clitoris.

  When I came, I didn’t bother being quiet. I let it all out. Every month that had ticked by without a man in my bed. Every day of the last thirty or so that had marched by without a physical release.

  I let it all out. And for just a second he seemed to glance my way. I backed into the shadows and watched Matt Millen leave the room, shutting off the light as he went. Leaving me in darkness but for ambient light from the street.

  “I guess I’ll go eat something,” I said to no one.

  Chapter Four

  I ate a grilled chicken sandwich with pickles with some chips and a glass of wine. I loved to cook so taking the time to make myself a really nice, hot, grilled chicken sandwich wasn’t a chore. But it had been ages since I cooked for someone who was not my sister or my friend Marie.

  What that really meant was it had been a long while since I’d cooked for a man. The thought occurred to me when I wondered if he’d eaten anything. Some men didn’t think of stuff like that. They ran on empty until they were ravenous, and then much like the bears, they ate everything in sight that wasn’t suspended from a tree.

  I looked out the window, wiping my mouth with a napkin. I could only see the lights on, not where he was in the house. It was the first time I could remember wishing my house were closer to the Desalvo house. But it wasn’t the Desalvo house anymore.

  The email chime went off on my laptop and I turned the computer toward me on the breakfast bar.

  Speak of the devil and she shall appear. It was Marie.

  From: [email protected]

  Subject: Your sister!

  …says you’re smuggling hot new neighbors into your house! Spill. Tell me everything, all of it. Does he have a big thing? Call me tomorrow, I’m half out the door with Robert. Love you! :-D

  I snorted and saved it as new. Does he have a big thing? That was a classic Marie question. As if I would know already.

  “But ironically, being a peeping Thomasina, I do know. That yes…he does in fact have a big thing.” I toasted the computer with my wine.

  When I turned I nearly dropped it. He was standing in his kitchen window—shocking, still no curtains yet—watching me and smiling.

  My throat tightened and I swallowed hard to move it along. “Jesus.”

  He waved and then disappeared.

  Damn. I tried to finish my meal but failed. Instead I sat and answered some emails regarding lightning, genetics and the solar system. Once I was done with that I poured wine and found a sexy movie from the eighties. Had Cat been here, or even my beloved crazy Marie, they’d have said, Don’t do it. Don’t do it…

  But I did it. I watched Kim Basinger’s sexual adventures until I found myself panting. I couldn’t shake the fact that I’d gone all this time without missing men or sex or the touch of another person and then…bam! Matt Millen shows up and shakes the peaceful snow globe of my life. Now everything was a chaotic flurry of white snow—only instead of snow it was sex and lust and arousal. Lots and lots of arousal.

  He was fucking her. It was rough. Rough sex on the screen. The snap of panties and cries of first denial and then pleasure. I stood so fast the afghan on my lap puddled at my feet and almost tripped my silly ass.

  “Right!” I said to the screen. “This is stupid. If I was bold enough to say it I should be bold enough to just fucking do it.”

  I turned off everything but a single light and put my key in my pocket. Then I ran the ten steps to the Desalvos’. Also now known in my head as home of the sex stud.

  * * * * *

  “Hi,” I blurted.

  He grinned at me and warmth curled in my belly. A wild untamed fear of what I was about to do flooded my veins.

  “Hi there.” Matt grabbed my wrist very gently and pulled me in the house. He knew. We both knew.

  “I came to…I wanted to…” I sighed.

  He leaned against a huge stack of moving boxes, most just labeled by room. Living Room, Kitchen, Den and some were marked JUNK. When I said nothing he said, “Wanted?”

  “You,” I blurted. “I wanted you. I saw…
” I swallowed hard. “God, I really suck ass at this, you know?” I growled.

  That earned me a laugh and I finally noticed his hand was still wrapped around my wrist. My pulse jumped madly beneath his fingers.

  “I saw you naked,” I whispered as if he were the only man to ever be naked in the history of the world.

  He chuckled again. In my mind his laughter was made of smoke and cashmere. It was soft and slightly sinister but soothing as well. It was a fucking enigma is what it was.

  Matt put his hand to his chest in mock shock. “Oh no…not…naked.”

  I nodded. “Yes, naked. And I wanted to…I wanted you,” I said, despite the fact that my face felt like it had caught fire. “And I figured if I was bold enough to admit it at my house earlier I should be able to just put on my big-girl panties and say it to you. Even thought it is utterly insane. Like lock-me-up crazy.”

  I took a deep breath as if I’d just surfaced from swimming.

  “So that’s what you have on then?”

  I blinked slowly, trying to figure out what he meant. The fingers of his free hand curled in the waistband of my gray leggings and he pulled me toward him. I took the staggering step and realized I’d been forgetting to breathe.

  “What?” I finally gave up and asked.

  “That’s what you have on? Your big-girl panties?” He pulled my waistband out and peered into my panties.

  My heart shot up into my throat and then started beating in my temples. I couldn’t remember what panties I had on. Shit, I couldn’t remember if I had panties on.

  “No,” I sighed.

  He pushed fingers into my knickers and simply cupped my pussy. His hand was insanely warm and his middle finger curled snug to the split of me, pressing very gently against my clitoris.

  All the air had left the room. All of it. I felt like a fish out of water. A girl chained to the bottom of the pool. I was drowning.

  But then he kissed me and I could breathe.

  Chapter Five

  “Were you watching me?” he whispered against my neck, surprising me.

  He had me pinned to the side table in his foyer and his hands cupped my ass so that I couldn’t get away. I had no choice. Honesty was the only way to fly.

  “Yes. Why? Did you…” Had he seen me masturbating at my window? Dear God, what a nightmare. How shameful and yet under it all was a thrill that radiated through my bones.

  “I saw a bit of movement. Streetlights on shadows. Like a person. I’m used to observing shadows and movement and people and…” He pushed my leggings and panties down so they were around my hips but no farther. His hands covered the exposed skin of my lower back, the top of my buttocks. He waited, kissing me like we had all the time in the world.

  I could feel his cock, hard and ready but still covered by fabric, pressed to the split of my pussy lips. The air in my lungs felt meager. I slipped my hand between us and found him. I gripped his erection through his gray sweatpants and he groaned.

  “You’re so pretty,” I confessed. “In sweatpants and nothing else. And you are gorgeous naked.”

  I pushed myself to say the words. I was having an out-of-body experience, I thought. Or more accurately, some strange woman with a big mouth had taken over mine. Most men, most arousal, most attraction scared the shit out of me.

  However, fear was not an option. If I wanted him I had to be bold.

  “Isn’t it me who should be flattering you, Clara?” He sucked my nipple right through my cornflower-blue shirt. It hung off one shoulder like the tops I’d worn as a teenager. My nipple spiked inside my thin bra and I gasped. He sucked harder.

  “I guess.” It was the smartest thing I could think to say, sadly.

  “Are we going to do this? I need to know.” He stroked up my flanks and along the knobs of my spine, his mouth constantly moving along my throat and over my face. The softest kisses I could ever remember receiving.

  And I realized I felt safe in his hands. It was a very foreign feeling to me. Security was extinct in my world.

  “Clara?” He pulled back, dark eyes studying me. Instead of feeling the urge to shrink away I felt the urge to tempt him.

  I couldn’t focus on it or it would terrify me.

  I nodded. “We’re going to do this. Yes. But I need something from you.” I found my bravery and leaned in to kiss his neck. He smelled like soap and coffee and saltwater. The smell was intoxicating, like huffing human vapors. I smiled and licked him to see if he tasted the same way he smelled.

  “Jesus. What? If you’re going to do that right there you might have to drug me so I don’t come in my pants.”

  A bubble of laughter burst out of me and I said, “Well, that’s sort of what I was getting at. I wanted to ask you to go slow.” I pressed my mouth to his ear and then licked him again. I felt his cock jump to press against my palm. He was big and Lord, was he hard.

  My body let loose a lubricating rush of moisture. I had not wanted a man like this since before my marriage. I had not wanted a man period for what felt like decades. But my want was back with a vengeance because I wanted this one. For hours and hours, I wanted him. And then I wanted him again.

  “I can go slow,” he said and pushed my leggings down farther.

  When you come from a background like mine and find yourself nude in front of a new man, you have the urge it to cover up. To shield yourself and your undoubtable ugliness from him. So you won’t offend. I had to force myself to squash that impulse.

  “Arms up,” he said.

  “You have no curtains. Anywhere,” I murmured even as I obeyed him.

  Matt yanked my top off and dropped it. My bra was next to fall victim to his nimble fingers. He latched his hot mouth around my nipple, his hands gripping my hips with a strength that startled me.

  “I do right there,” he said against my skin, vaguely nodding toward the front window. And then he sucked again.

  Heat spiked in my gut, my womb, my cunt. When he drew on my nipple again there was a slight tickling in my throat and a resounding tug in my pussy. He pushed a finger into me as if he knew how wet I was and I arched up to meet him. He curled his fingers and pushed a bit deeper.

  “Congratulations on that curtain,” I said, smiling.

  “Thanks.”

  I was naked and he was not. It was making me nervous. “You need to take something off or put something back on me,” I said. I rubbed the hard arc of his cock. I could see it clearly pressing against the faded and worn fabric of his sweats.

  “Right.” He pushed his pants down. He was bare underneath. When he kicked them off to the side, his cock arched up, pressed to my thigh. “Done.”

  “That was easy.”

  Matt grunted and kissed me. His mouth tasted like something sweet—soda, wine, tea. I bit his tongue gently and he growled. “Easy if you want me to last.”

  “I’m starting to think if we finish fast we can start again.” I curled my fingers around his shaft, sliding my loose fist gently up and down. I refused to examine my boldness. I just went with it. Sex, gorgeous man, a sense of joy in my chest—why question it?

  “Good plan.”

  My ass hit the side table and I curled a leg round him to draw him close. I didn’t need to though. After donning a condom, he was already stepping forward to get closer to me. Heat baked off him and I wanted him in me. That fast, no preamble, no worry. I took him and guided him to me.

  “But don’t you…I mean that wasn’t much as far as forepl—”

  I cut him off, appreciating the concern in his eyes but also terrified of it. “It’s fine. I want it. I want you in me.”

  And he was in. A single rough thrust and he was seated deep, barely moving. “You’re so hot,” he said.

  I blushed. I was hot and wet and my mind was firing off pleasure like small fireworks. I hadn’t been fucked in a year and I thought if he moved just a hair either way, I was going to come.

  Matt found my nipples with his fingers—talented fingers that had sketched
me in a moment very much like this—and he pinched. Hard. Much harder than I ever thought I’d care for. But I did care for it.

  The pain burst in that tender skin but quickly blossomed into a heated pleasure that moved down my belly in waves. My pussy flexed in sympathy and he felt it. I saw it in his eyes. Matt chose that moment to withdraw just a touch and slide back into me on a fluid motion.

  I came, pressing my teeth to his shoulder to quiet myself, to stifle my pleasure. I pushed my mouth to him and silenced myself but at the last moment he pushed his hand beneath my chin and levered my head back. “Let it out, Clara,” he said. “Don’t swallow it.”

  Matt continued to move and another fast burst of release took me under. He kept his hand beneath my chin, fingers curled to my throat, so I couldn’t swallow my cries. I had to set them free.

  Chapter Six

  “So you saw me in the…?” He was rocking into me. A sleepy kind of motion that had me sliding gently against the wall as he cupped my ass.

  “I saw you in the bathroom. I saw you…” I put my lips to his jaw and felt the stubble already sprouting there though he’d just shaved.

  “Saw me naked. And?”

  “And…” I swallowed hard.

  He hooked my legs around his waist and stood fully. His cock still in me, he started to walk. Which made me panic and clutch at him wildly like a lunatic. Matt chuckled. “Easy, Clara. Stay still.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing, sweetheart. If it falls out it falls out. But if you keep doing that you’re going to injure me and the whole night’s dead in the water.”

  I stopped moving and he tugged my hair lightly saying, “Good.”

  Up the steps slowly, me holding him and silently praying as he moved that we would not tumble down the stairs, break our necks and die mid-coupling.

  “Only to be found by a local cop who knows my dad and has to break it to him that his daughter died mid-orgasm…”

  I must have said that part out loud because he laughed again. “Are you mid-orgasm?”