The Man Next Door Page 4

  “Oh…” It was the same thing he’d said earlier, but this time it was more thoughtful and carried a note of surprise. Before I could stop him, he stepped forward and flipped another sheet.

  This time, I had to turn my gaze away from both the man and the sketch. This time both the shirt and the jeans were gone, and Ander stood in all the glory of his flesh with his backside showing as he stood before a bed some distance from him, where I’d drawn myself, languishing in a tangle of sheets.

  “Ohhhhh…” This time his voice fell into his chest so that the sound vibrated out of him. I still couldn’t bring myself to look at him or the drawing I’d never meant for him to see. “This one… it’s my favorite.”

  I looked up sharply and studied his face. He was still staring at the drawing, but not at himself. He was looking at me, laying in the bed. “Why aren’t you married?” It was bold of me to ask, and possibly none of my business, but I needed to know. I didn’t want a night with him. I wanted a future. If I couldn’t have that, I’d take the night, the affair, but I wanted more.

  His attention shifted from the drawing to me. His gaze was unflinching and unrelenting. “I never let anyone or anything come between me and the success of my business. The business always came first. I’d told myself it wouldn’t always be like that, but it always was. I didn’t know how to give it less of me so that I could make room for more, so I sold it.” He swallowed. “I want more.” His eyes never wavered from me.

  “Oh…” It was my turn to speak the sound as I picked at my fingertips and felt heat rise in my cheeks.

  He turned so that his entire body faced me. He seemed to have grown, to have become larger than life. His shoulders were so broad, and his chest swelled with each breath he took. He tilted his chin forward as he looked down at me, and his hands were no longer in his pockets. And when he spoke, his words hung heavy and large in the quiet air between us. “What is it that you want from me?”

  Chapter Ten

  Ander

  Constance blinked her big doe eyes. Once. Twice. And fear sliced into me that I had ruined the fragile friendship growing between us. The drawing meant nothing. It was her allowing her artist imagination to explore unfettered. It was what she did, what she had to do, to allow herself to explore the possibilities that an artist’s stroke could capture.

  For me, though, I wanted more. I wanted her. I wanted her laying naked in bed atop of sheets we’d soiled with our enjoyment of one another. I wanted her looking at me like the her in that drawing looked at that man.

  She blinked again, licked her lips, then took a deep breath as if filling herself with courage. In the next moment, her body was rushing toward mine. She threw her arms around my neck, plastered her sweet body against me, and kissed me with lips that were more intoxicating than the rarest wine.

  I wrapped my arms around her and held her tight. I was sure that she was going to poof away as I woke from sleep, but her body was warm and supple and fit against me with a solid surety that gave me hope that this was real.

  “Upstairs. My bedroom,” she whispered against my lips with a rush of need that swelled my cock harder and faster than anything else had.

  I grunted my response, not trusting myself to say anything coherent, then I bent, put my shoulder into her hip and picked her up.

  “What?”

  I gave her ass a firm slap and smiled at her squeal as I limped my way over to the stairs and climbed them. Maybe when I’d been twenty I could have taken them two at a time as I carried her upstairs. While I was older now, I still wasn’t dead yet and I was wise enough to know that taking one step at a time would get me where I wanted to go. On top of that, I had a hell of a lot more experience at making women… squeal… now than when I was twenty.

  “Left!” she called out when we reached the top of the stairs, and I followed her directions to her room until I was throwing the door open and limping my way to her bed.

  I’d meant to toss her down on top of it, but her legs wrapped themselves around me and pulled me down on top of her. A second later and she had me on my back as she straddled my chest with her knees on my biceps. I didn’t fight it, rather I laid back and enjoyed the show as she stripped her shirt off over her head. Her bra came off a next, making it infinitely harder for me to keep my hands where she’d put them.

  Her breasts were fuller than I’d imagined—and I had imagined. They would fill my hands and then some, and her swollen, puffy nipples stood out from her glorious globes with a proud defiance that made my mouth water. I needed to taste them, to devour them.

  Pulling my arms free from where she had them pinned beneath her knees, my hands were on her waist next and I flipped her over so that she was under me. I kissed her mouth, then her long neck until I was traveling down over her chest until I captured her first mound in my teeth. I bit and pulled until she whimpered, arching her back up, before I sank my mouth over her flesh and pulled her into me. I twirled my tongue around her tip and only broke away to allow my shirt to pass as she pulled it off my body.

  Her hands were on my jeans next, and there was no shyness in how she tore at them to get them off and I turned my attention to doing the same for her.

  It wasn’t until we were both bare of any thread that our race to experience each other slowed from a haphazard sprint to a leisurely walk. There, on the bed, without anything between what God had given us, I brushed her silky hair away from her flawless cheek.

  I knew that if I wanted to be invited back for a repeat performance that I had to make the first time count. I kissed her lips, her neck, and traveled down her chest. But this time I didn’t stop at her breasts. No, I kept going down the slender canvas of her belly until my shoulders were between her lifted thighs and my mouth was on her nub.

  She cried out as soon as I latched on, her hips lifting off the bed, but I rode her. I stayed in place as she bucked and swooned. My tongue danced and swirled as my come-hither fingers dove into her liquid heat to stroke her to a screaming height that had her fingers clenched in my hair. Her walls clenched as her body trembled, her hips lifted off the bed as her panting breaths filled the room with the sounds of her ecstasy.

  She was the sweetest ambrosia on my lips as her pleasured juices slicked my hand, and I dined on her until her cries softened to satisfied sighs and her demanding hands loosened on my hair to stroke me rather than pull me into her.

  Leaving my place between her legs, I traveled back up her body only to be put on my back. She straddled me, stretched to her bedside and retrieved a condom and unrolled it down my length as I watched her talented fingers work. She shifted, then, raising up and reaching between us. I gasped as her tight channel engulfed me. Then, when she rocked her hips to grind herself against my base, my eyes damn near rolled back in my head. All I could do was put my hands on her and hold on as she used me in every way she needed to.

  “You’re so hot,” she moaned as she planted her hands on my chest and rode me. “You feel so good.” Her back was arched and her breasts bounced with each grinding roll of her hips. Gone was the girl who I’d seen blush so many times. This was a woman who knew what she liked, and I did my best to keep up… and keep up.

  I gritted my teeth and curled my toes as my balls tightened with a heavy pressure that demanded that I let my seed flow. But I couldn’t, not yet, not until she’d come again.

  I dared a glance and her face was rapturous as her nails dug trails against over my chest. It hurt in the best way, and I knew that I’d wear her mark tomorrow, but I couldn’t cum. Not yet. Not until she finished.

  Her quickened breath became laced with whimpered cries. Her hips struggled to maintain their smooth rhythm and they jerked, forcing me to provide guiding assistance with my hands. Holding her hips, I worked her as much as she worked me until her voice grew to a keening as a crimson red blush worked its way up her chest and neck. She tightened around me, then jerked to the side, breaking my last hopes that I could hold on a moment longer.

  She wa
s past her crest but I was just climbing mine. Pulling her down on me hard, I thrust myself into her depths with an overwhelming urgency to spill myself within her depths. It burned away conscious thought leaving only carnal need.

  With a shudder, everything I had to give her poured out of me and into her as a moan stole its way from my lips.

  I was spent, utterly spent, but I must have done something right, too, because her limp body folded itself over me so that her cheek rested on my chest.

  I held her there, wrapping her in my arms in absolute wonder that a creature as perfect as her would want anything at all to do with a man like me, but it wasn’t a question that I was in any rush to ask. Instead, I’d trust that she was exactly where she wanted to be.

  I knew that I sure as hell was…

  Chapter Eleven

  Constance

  It took a moment for the sound that was in the background of my head to make its way forward to my consciousness. It wasn’t until then that I recognized it for what it was. Someone was knocking on my front door.

  I considered ignoring it. I’d done it before when I was immersed in putting the finishing touches on a piece, but the knocking started again, bashing its way through my connection with my art.

  “Dammit!” I threw the paint laden brush down on a pad of old newspapers atop the dining table and marched my way to the front door, ready to rip whoever stood there a new one. Swinging the door open, a stream of obscenities dissolved away on the tip of my tongue as a smile stretched my lips.

  “Ander,” I said, though it came out sounding more like a sigh. He was wearing jeans and a button-up pale blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and in his arms, he had a grocery bag brimming over with an assortment of fresh produce.

  “Don’t tell me you forgot to eat again today,” he said, his low voice washing over me like a promise of other things to come.

  “I…” I had started to counter with more than a little bit of indignity that I had eaten, but as my mind reached back through the start of the day to figure out what, my mind was a complete blank. The best I could do then was to smile brighter and open the door a bit wider. “Maybe I would have remembered to eat if you hadn’t snuck out and left me asleep in bed,” I chided. I wasn’t even sure how long I had slept, but however long it was, it was too long. I had stuff to do, and the clock was ticking. Besides that, I’d been miffed that after our first time together, I didn’t even recall getting a kiss goodbye.

  I stepped aside as Ander stepped through the doorway, closing the door behind him and then following him through to the kitchen. He eyed my mess of paints and canvases as we passed the dining table. “Have you been up all night?” I could hear the concern in his voice. “That looks like a hurricane hit it. I mean, it looked bad yesterday, but only Saturday-night-drunken-brawl bad, not all-out-chaos bad.”

  “I have a gallery show coming up in a few weeks.” I shook my head. “I’d thought I was ready, but the closer it gets it seems like the things I need to take care of are multiplying. The harder I work, the more there is to do.”

  We reached the kitchen and Ander put down his bag of food. “How about you go take a nap while I make us an early dinner.”

  “You don’t have to. Really, you can go.” I was more tired than I thought. It took me several long seconds to even notice the pained expression on Ander’s face. “What I mean—”

  “No, it’s okay,” Ander said interrupting as he pushed past me on his way back out of the kitchen. “Yesterday was fun. When I didn’t hear from you today, I got the message. I just didn’t want to believe it. But, everybody needs a good stress-relief fuck now and then. Glad I could be of service.” Those were the words he spoke, but his voice and his body language said something much different. I’d hurt him.

  I let him get far enough past me that he had his back to me, then putting my hands on his shoulders, I hoped on his back. I had something to say, and I was going to make damn sure he heard it before he ran away. “I sorry,” I whispered into his ear as I locked my legs around his waist.

  He stopped walking, and his strong hands cupped my legs. “I’m listening.”

  “I can be callous and self-absorbed. I can be a terrible friend and an even worse lover.”

  “I don’t know, you weren’t so bad,” he chuckled, and relief flooded through me that his good humor was back.

  “I’m going to disappoint you and almost never do what you think I should. I’ll talk about my paintings for hours and spend time alone with other naked men while they pose for me. I’m difficult and obnoxious and I really, really hope that you’ll still think I’m worth spending time with… because I really, really like you.”

  Ander’s hands moved to my arms and gently coaxed my release of him. I slid off his back, and he pulled me around to his front. There was a smile on his face and a quiet sincerity in his eyes. “Obnoxious, huh?” he said as he pulled me into his arms.

  “Uh huh.” I nodded adamantly as a happiness that was more than I’d felt in a long, long time filled all my senses.

  “That sounds an awful lot like you want me around for more than just sex.” He brushed my hair away from my forehead with the soft brush of his thumb.

  “Uh huh,” I said again, snuggling in closer against him with my upturned chin resting on his chest. “Kiss me.”

  One of his brows quirked up. “Where?”

  My breath hitched as my clit pulsed with the memory of what his mouth had done to it. “There.”

  He growled, and I giggled. In the next moment, I was over his shoulder and we were heading for the stairs. “After this, you sleep, then you eat!”

  “You remember when I said I’d almost never do what you thought I should?” His hand landed firm on my ass and I squealed and then laughed, pretty sure that he was going to get his way… this time.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ander

  I stepped back and examined the erected frame of the gazebo. It looked good, and I smiled at the thought of how much my grandmother would have liked it. I pictured the wood tile roofing I’d picked out and colorful mums planted around the base. I planned to string fairy lights along the trellises and the ceiling to give it a soft glow. I hadn’t built very many things for myself and figured I was due. I’d always been focused on what I could do for other people, so this was a rare treat, and I was enjoying it more than I ever thought I would.

  My mind filled with the vision of being able to sit out here with Constance. It was my goal. She had her house and I had mine, but I wanted a special place that was ours. Maybe—If I were lucky—we have a house that belonged to both of us. I looked forward to building a white picket fence.

  “That’s looking awfully good,” came a voice off to my side. I knew who it was before turning and had a big, welcoming smile in place by the time I saw Constance’s head peaking over the top of the wooden fence.

  “Hey, you.” I walked toward her as she climbed over the top of the fence. Lifting her down was easy, and holding her in my arms so that I could give her a kiss was heaven. “How’s your work coming? Hope I didn’t disturb you too much with all the banging.”

  “Nope, I’m good… now.” Her eyes twinkled as she looked up at me, and I couldn’t stop himself from tasting her lips again.

  “You getting nervous yet? How much longer before the gallery showing?” I wasn’t invited, but it didn’t bother me overly much. I was just happy to see her looking so much better than that first day I’d invited himself over to her house. Every day, just as she’d done for me, I was making sure that she had food in her belly, except that now I had the bonus task of wearing her out every night until she fell asleep, sated in my arms.

  Constance took a deep breath and blew it out through pursed lips, and I felt some of the tension in her body leave under the touch of my hands. “One more week. That’s all I’ve got.” Her gaze fell away from mine as a shy little smile pulled at her lips. She twirled out of my hands and put distance between us as she moved with the aimles
s wonder of a little girl with her hands clasped behind her back.

  I knew her well enough now that he could see that something was up. She was nervous, but it wasn’t about the upcoming gallery show. It was about me.

  I shoved his hands deep into my pockets, doing my best to wait her out, to let her find her words. After a long moment, I finally prompted her. “Babe, got something on your mind?”

  “My Dad is going to be at my gallery show,” she blurted suddenly, doing a half-spin and walking backward, making it possible for us to keep eye contact.

  My mind reached for why that was important information. My mouth formed a silent “Oh” as I glanced back over the fence at her house, where she created her art, before returning his gaze to her. “So, your Dad doesn’t know what you paint?” I could see how that could be awkward.

  “Oh, no! He knows,” she said with an enthusiastic nod.

  I was stumped. “Okay, so why you nervous about him being at your gallery show?”

  Constance plopped herself down on the unfinished steps of the gazebo, sitting with her knees pressed together but her feet planted wide. Her flouncy skirt pulled halfway up her thighs, showing off her gorgeous legs. “Well,” she said, playing with her skirt’s hem, “I didn’t know if that was a problem for you.”

  Confusion overtook me again, and I made my way to the gazebo to sit down on the steps next to her. “Why would I mind your Dad coming to your gallery show?”

  “Because you’re going to be there too. You know, meet the Dad and all.”

  My mouth fell open as the implications struck me. I hadn’t been in a meet-the-dad situation in years. It just didn’t come up that much with women my own age. Constance must have seen how surprised I was, because she reached over, took my hand, and pulled it into her lap.