Don't Deny Me Read online

  “You can rack,” she told him, and went to the glass-front fridge Bernie had salvaged from a convenience store being remodeled. “You want a soda?”

  “I’ll be up all night.” Mick grinned.

  Alice smiled back and lifted her brow. “And?”

  “Sure. I’ll have one.” Mick grabbed two cues from the wall rack and handed her one, taking the can of cola from her. “You want stripes or solids?”

  “Stripes.” Alice took a drink and set the can down, then put some chalk on her cue. She was truly terrible at pool, that part hadn’t been a lie. But bending over the table and shaking her ass to keep him distracted? That she was good at.

  They played for about five minutes before the sound of shouts from upstairs made her pause. Mick hadn’t heard them; he was in the middle of a joke when she held up her hand to hush him. To give him credit, he did at once, looking concerned.

  “You okay?”

  “I heard something.” She went to the bottom of the front staircase, head tilted to listen. “I thought it sounded like Jay.”

  Mick put his cue down and stood beside her. “I don’t hear anything.”

  She didn’t either, now, just the huff of their breathing. The heat of him brushed her bare arm. When she turned her face, his mouth was there. The kiss felt like an accident, or at least like something they could pretend wasn’t on purpose. His lips urged hers to open. He pushed her back against the wall, his hands on her hips.

  Everything else was forgotten then. The pool game, Jay’s shout, the late hour. Alice wound her arms around Mick’s neck. She opened for him, hips tilting forward. He slipped a hand beneath the back of her knee so he could press against her center. She let out a long sigh against his lips.

  “I’ve been wanting to do this all night,” he murmured. “God, Alice, you taste so good.”

  She pushed her fingers into the thickness of his hair, tugging. “Less talking. More kissing.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He laughed and went back to the job of kissing her.

  They kissed for a long time. No urgency. Lips and tongues moving. Teeth clashing every so often. He nibbled at her jaw and throat, pausing when she arched and shivered to do it again, a little harder that time. His hands moved over her body, no place terribly intimate, just belly and hips and sides, until she couldn’t stand it any longer and took his hand to cup her breast.

  “Ah,” Mick said into her ear. “Okay, then.”

  From upstairs came the shuffle of feet in the kitchen, but nobody came downstairs. The lights went out, casting the stairwell into dimness. Mick turned them both so he sat on the lower steps, Alice straddling his lap. He rocked her against him. His hands roamed her back, digging in just hard enough to make her moan into his open mouth.

  It had been some long months since the last time Alice had kissed anyone, and then it had been nothing like this. Mick’s mouth and hands on her, his kissing, were all magic. She didn’t want any of it to end, not even to take him to the bedroom, strip him down, and fuck him until neither of them could walk.

  Alice wanted to kiss Mick forever.

  He shifted beneath her. The press of his cock hit her just right through the barrier of his soft khaki shorts and her dress, tangled around her thighs. She let out another low moan, swallowed by his mouth. His hand came up to fist in her hair, his fingers digging gently into the base of her skull and tugging her head back so he could get at her throat. The top slopes of her breasts revealed by the dress’s scoop neck. A little lower, his nibbling lips found her erect nipples, hard enough to poke through her bra and the dress.

  “Yes,” Alice whispered. “That.”

  With a low chuckle, Mick pulled her neckline down to gain further access to her bare flesh. Her bandeau bra, lightweight nylon, slipped easily down. For a second, just a second, Alice hesitated. She arched into the slide of his tongue along her skin, the tug of his lips on her nipples, but common sense, her stupid brain, did tell her to slow down. Before she could pull away, though, he did.

  Mick kissed her mouth as he let her neckline return to its original place. Then he buried his face against her neck, holding her close. They sat that way in silence, breathing in unison. Under the press of her lips on his neck, Alice felt the beat of Mick’s heart slowing in time with her own.

  She waited to feel rejected—she’d been half naked, her tits in his mouth, after all. He hadn’t even tried to get his fingers in her panties, not that she was sure she’d have let him. But all Alice felt just then with Mick’s arms around her was a strange sense of contentment.

  She lost track of the time they sat there, just that it was long enough for her to need to stretch. They moved at the same time, disengaging. Uncoupling. She stood and shook her foot, which had started to fall asleep. Mick got up, one hand on the stair railing, and cracked his neck.

  “It’s late,” Alice said.

  Mick smiled. “Yeah.”

  He reached for her, and she stepped back into his arms. Her head fit neatly under his chin, something she wasn’t expecting. His hand ran down her back, pausing just above her ass, and though she totally would not have minded had he taken a little squeeze, Mick stopped there. Alice discovered she liked that even better.

  “Good night, Alice,” he said into her ear.

  She let her lips brush along his cheek as she stepped away from him to climb the stairs, looking back over her shoulder. “Good night, Mick.”

  * * *

  Good night, Alice.

  Good night, Mick.

  It had become their ritual. Each logged into their laptops and tucked into bed for an instant message conversation that always meant to be a few minutes or so but almost always lasted for hours. Sometimes they talked on the phone, too, but the distance between them and expensive cell phone minutes meant IM was easier. On the rare nights they didn’t manage to connect for even a quick chat, without that Good night, Mick found it hard to fall asleep.

  They’d met a month ago, but it seemed a helluva lot longer. Sometimes, Mick felt like he’d known Alice Clark forever. Sometimes, he felt like forever wouldn’t be long enough.

  With an hour and a half drive between them, dating Alice wasn’t convenient, but that only made the time they’d managed to spend together even better. They’d seen each other three times since Bernie’s party. Dinner, movies, one night they’d gone bowling. She’d kicked his ass, and her victory dance had been so cute he could hardly stand it.

  He was falling for her. Hard. It was like the universe had taken a look at Mick’s secret checklist of everything he’d always wanted in a woman—sense of humor, smart, passionate, considerate. Beautiful. Damn, she was so beautiful it hurt his heart. And thickened his dick.

  It was getting hard right now, as a matter of fact. He’d been dating a few different girls when he went to Bernie’s, but since meeting Alice, Mick had stopped returning their calls and messages. Less drama that way, he figured. It wasn’t like he had anything serious with any of them, anyway. Easier to simply let it fade.

  Thinking of her now, the memory of her mouth sent a surge of desire flooding him. That girl kissed like a fucking dream. She could do things with her lips and tongue Mick had never even dreamed of, and that was a fact. He could still remember the taste of her perfect pink nipples, though. The way she’d moaned when he sucked them. Shit, his cock was straining at the front of his sweatpants now.

  Mick slipped a hand into his waistband and found his hard-on. Two nights ago they’d had a steamy phone conversation, full of teasing and innuendo, but it hadn’t quite made it into phone sex. The same with a few of their instant message sessions, which tended to be even more frank on the subjects of sex and love, maybe because it was easier to be honest about what you liked when you could feel at least a little anonymous. He knew a lot about what turned Alice on, and off, just like he knew how she voted, her views on religion, hell, even what size shoes she wore. But so far, though they’d danced around it, he had yet to get her off … or hear her getting off.