Immaterial Defense: Once and Forever #4 Read online

  Plus, while the band was doing well, it wasn’t as if Self Defense was a household name or anything. And any money we made had to be split four ways, so the chance of me being able to rent an apartment in Los Angeles with a Kitty-sized yard was slim. We’d only been living in San Francisco for a couple of weeks, and she was already running out of interesting corners to sniff.

  “I wish,” Rebecca said. “I think I’d get a poodle mix like Kitty. I love that she doesn’t shed all over, and whenever Blake is home, he doesn’t complain about his allergies.” She went into her living room to grab Kitty’s newest favorite toy off the ground. “Sadly, he’s a…cat person”—she whispered, smiling—“so I can’t get a dog until after we break up.”

  I grimaced. “Things are that bad?”

  “Things are great…when he’s here.” She tossed the squeaky toy down the hall for Kitty to attack. “I just feel like he’s holding something back, you know?”

  I’d been living here for a couple of weeks and had met Blake once, so I only knew what Rebecca had told me about him. But Rebecca was really great and Blake seemed like an ass, so I nodded.

  “Dang, I think she’s gotta go.” I whistled for Kitty as I walked back to my apartment. “Thanks again, Rebecca. See you later.”

  I should’ve taken her out for a walk, but I was still barefoot, so I let her out on my balcony. A four-foot square of fake grass was nowhere for a self-respecting dog to do their business, but Kitty forgave me. That’s unconditional love for you.

  I went into my bedroom to give her some privacy and sighed when I saw the mess of sheets on my bed. It had been a really great night. I hadn’t had that good of a night in a long, long time. Or ever.

  Fuck, I wished I’d gotten her number.

  I lay back down and took a deep breath, hoping to capture Sara’s scent again. Kind of flowery but not too much. Very womanly, the kind of smell that made a cock go from zero to sixty in three seconds. I breathed it in until Kitty jumped onto the bed and blew dog breath right in my face.

  “Now that is morning breath.”

  She shoved her nose into my cheek and then nudged me until I got up again.

  “Alright, alright. What will it be today, girl? Kibble or kibble?” I followed her wagging tail into the kitchenette of my temporary home. “Think Sara would have stayed if I’d fed her, too?”

  Typically, Sunday was the band’s day of rest and recovery. So, I had no plans with the guys or to spend any time at the basketball court with my best friend pretending the NBA was still a possibility.

  Great, I had all day long to obsess about last night and wonder where I’d gone wrong. It had been a long time since I’d brought a woman home. Who knew what had changed in that time. How many orgasms did they expect nowadays?

  As soon as Kitty dug into her breakfast, I went back into the bedroom, stripped down, and grabbed a towel. With so many memories of last night still fresh on my mind, I did a lot of disappointed sighing. The longest and most regretful sounding one slipped out as soon as I stepped into the shower.

  Four hours ago, I’d been in this exact spot, standing behind her and watching the water rain down over her shoulder onto her breasts…

  3

  Declan

  Four glorious hours ago…

  * * *

  Shit. I really liked this girl. More than should be possible at this point. It was hard to believe I’d only met her a couple of hours ago. But as soon as I’d seen her onstage with her friend, doing a truly regrettable karaoke rendition of Aretha Franklin’s “Respect”, I was smitten. It probably had to do with the way she seemed both confident and embarrassed at the same time. Or her commitment to every wrong note she’d sung. Or maybe it was the way her expression completely shifted when she saw me leaning against the bar and our eyes locked until she seemed to realize she was singing the “Sock it to me” part of the song directly to me and burst out laughing. Whatever the initial reason, things had only gotten better since then.

  “Are you sure it’s okay?” I asked.

  “Mmm…” Sara moaned happily. “There’s no such thing as too hot.”

  Normally, I would’ve agreed — when it came to both women and water. But we’d taken a break from the bedroom to come take a shower that would cool us off. Unfortunately, I already knew there was little I could refuse her. If she didn’t want us to cool off, I’d happily keep things hot.

  I leaned down to kiss her neck, my hands reaching around to cup her breasts.

  Absolutely perfect breasts, by the way. The woman had breasts I wanted to be holding when I took my last breath. Full but not too big, in perfect proportion to the curve of her waist and her round little ass. Nipples that had stiffened with the first light brush of my finger and had stayed that way ever since, as if not a second went by when she wasn’t as turned on as I was.

  I was far from a virgin. In my twenty-four years of life—nine of those having been after losing my virginity—I’d had my fair share of one-night stands. But besides already hoping this would turn into more than that, I’d never experienced anything like this before. Feeling like I understood someone so quickly. It was as if we’d jumped ahead to when two people really knew each other’s bodies without having lost any of the excitement of being with someone new. Knowing someone would take care of you and give you what you needed, but not being able to predict when or how they’d do it.

  The feeling went beyond the physical. When I’d walked into that bar, I hadn’t been looking for someone to bring home. But as soon as I saw her, I knew I was supposed to be there, looking in her direction at exactly that moment. And she was supposed to be looking in mine.

  So far, she seemed as close to perfect as people ever got. Sexually, she was everything I could ask for, plus a little extra that I never would’ve dared request. We hadn’t had hours and hours of conversations, but it didn’t take long to figure out she was smart, honest, funny, and open-minded.

  Yep. Tonight was filled with firsts. For instance, I’d never had to think about physics when I was with a woman before. But since Sara was so much shorter than I was, physics demanded that I pick her up to get inside her. It would’ve been easier if we were facing each other, but then I wouldn’t get to see her ass move every time I thrust. I put one hand on her waist and slid the other down to her thigh, preparing to lift her up.

  “Whoa!” She laughed, stretching her toes out to reach the tile.

  Of course, that’s when I realized the impossibility of doing what I so desperately wanted to do. The temptation alone had me holding the majority of her body weight—not that there was much of it.

  I blew out a breath, knowing I should put her down. Because, unfortunately, I wasn’t smart enough to keep a condom within reach of the shower. Granted, it had never been necessary before, but a guy should be prepared for all of his sexual fantasies to come true at any moment. Lesson learned. I’d never make that mistake again, even if I had to wallpaper the whole place with them.

  Fuck. My cock slipped between her cheeks and slid lower as if it were a heat-seeking missile. Nope. Not going to happen. Because life was unfair.

  “Hello?” Her voice had a tinge of frustration in it, which was pretty much the last thing I wanted her to feel tonight. “You still back there?”

  “Huh? Oh yeah. Sorry.” I was also sorry I had to set her down. I’d been so busy enjoying her curves and her softness pressing up against my very hard cock, I hadn’t heard what she said the first time. “Although, in all honesty, I think you should be apologizing to me.”

  “Oh, do you now?” She turned her head to the side so I could see one half of her smile. “And what should I be apologizing for exactly?”

  “For having such a remarkably distracting ass.” I used both of my hands to squeeze it. You know, just in case she forgot where it was. “Yep, this ass is almost as interesting as the rest of you.”

  “Isn’t interesting usually a bad thing? Like when you have nothing nicer to say?”

  “N
ot for me. In fact, I just came up with a whole list of nice things to say about you. A long list. If you need an ego boost, I can write it down for you.”

  “I’m good, thanks. Are you a list person?”

  “Not normally, but I made an exception for you,” I said, right before I decided my lips would be better used on her neck rather than forming words. Actually, a list of all the different ways I wanted to take her was a great idea. Then I wouldn’t forget any of them and have to cry myself to sleep every night until we got together again.

  “So, what’s this, then?”

  I blinked to regain control of my eyes and keep them open long enough to figure out what she was talking about.

  Damn it. She was pointing up to a small, waterproof slate stuck to the wall with a pencil clipped to it.

  “Um… That thing? It’s…” I reached past her and slammed my hand over the lyrics for a new song I’d written there earlier. “Well…it’s nothing really.”

  To anyone other than me, my random, brain-dumped ideas for new songs would read like the emo scribblings of an angsty teen carving his latest poem into his desk in homeroom. So I really, really didn’t want Sara to read it. Hopefully, I could rub away the pencil marks with my thumb without her noticing.

  “Nothing, huh? Weird. They looked more like words to me, but for all I know, they’re hieroglyphics. I guess being abnormally tall is useful sometimes, huh?”

  “You think six two is abnormally tall?” I grabbed her waist and started tickling her with all ten fingers until she begged me to stop.

  “I surrender,” she said, still giggling. “You win.” She paused.

  “Now you have to take it back.”

  “I just did. It’s not my fault if you’re too abnormally tall to hear me.” She cringed before I’d even touched her. So, I decided to try another tactic, raking my fingers up the nape of her neck and pushing her wet hair out of my way.

  “I do some of my best thinking in the shower.” From then on, every word I said was whispered into the shell of her ear or the warmth of her neck. “Not right now, obviously, but when I’m alone. I use the slate to jot down notes or ideas before I forget them.”

  “You have terrible handwriting,” she said breathlessly. “What does it say?”

  Even as she tilted her head to give me more room, I knew she was only pretending to hand herself over to me. Instead of leaning into my body, she held herself upright, as if she were afraid to give up too much control. So I curled my hand into a fist and used her hair to slowly dip her backwards far enough to take her lips with mine. Eventually, I let go of her so we both could replenish our oxygen levels.

  “By not telling me, you’re making my need to know go ballistic. So, thanks for that.”

  “Fine, I’ll tell you.” Moving my eyes back and forth as if I were actually reading the text, I leaned forward, pushing her up against the wall. “It says, ‘Someday, I want to meet an intelligent, beautiful, sexy-as-fuck woman who enjoys karaoke.’” I grabbed the pencil from its clip and wrote DONE in all caps right across it.

  “For the sake of my pride, I’m going to assume that refers to me.”

  “Your pride is correct.” I hadn’t brought a woman home in a long time, and I’d never had one in this apartment.

  “In that case, enjoy might be too strong a word for how I feel about karaoke. I’ve just always been a sucker for that song.”

  “How does that last part go again?” I hummed the “sock it to me” section until she elbowed me.

  “Shut up! Believe me, it’s a lot harder than it looks. I didn’t see you up there in front of that…medium-sized crowd singing, did I?”

  Little did she know. “You’re right. You couldn’t pay me to have gone up there.” But not for the reason she thought.

  “Good. Then no making fun of me or my taste in music.” She took the pencil away from me and stood on her tiptoes to write something. She could barely reach the bottom of the slate. “Take pity on me, tall man?”

  I lifted her up by the waist and held her so she was high enough to see. She stood on the thin edge of the bathtub and leaned back against my chest to stay up. If my erection weren’t getting in the way, I wouldn’t have needed any help holding her. But while my cock was definitely rock-hard, I couldn’t exactly set her down on it without getting into trouble.

  “Oh shit!” she said melodramatically. “This thing is magical!”

  “Really?” I wasn’t about to admit that, for a second there, I’d thought she was talking about my cock. Luckily, I realized she had actually been talking about the slate before I said anything truly stupid.

  I waited until she slid down and was standing solely on her own before reading aloud. Her handwriting was a lot better than mine. “Someday, a gorgeous, sexy-as-fuck man will take me back to his bed and torture me with his tongue.”

  “See? It’s magical.” She dropped the pencil and turned around to face me. “Whatever’s written on it will come true, right?”

  “I hope not. That one’s mine, and I’m not into men.” I reached behind her to turn off the water, swept her up into my arms, and slid the shower door open with my elbow. “You need to get your own.”

  As we passed the door, she grabbed a towel off the hook, threw it over both of our heads, and tried to get some of the water out of our hair. Luckily, the room was clean enough that I didn’t trip and drop her until we reached the bed. Once I’d set her down, I watched her giggle as I dried myself off a little more.

  “Oh my God,” she said, smoothing her hair back and cupping the end in her hands. “I’m soaking wet!”

  “Damn, woman. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything hotter than that.”

  She tilted her head and smiled. “I was talking about the water in my hair.”

  “No, you weren’t.” I shrugged. “Well, maybe you were, but I’m choosing to believe you meant it in exactly the way I took it, so you might as well just go along with it.”

  “Shut up and give me that towel.” Laughing, she caught the end that I flicked at her and tugged, pulling me up onto the bed at the same time.

  “Damn, you’re strong…and greedy.” I pulled the towel away from her. I started with her toes, then her feet and ankles, rubbing piece by piece before using my lips to make sure each bit of her was dry.

  She propped herself up on her elbows and watched me with wide eyes, occasionally giggling and jerking when I hit a ticklish spot.

  By the time I’d worked my way up to her knees, I’d stopped bothering with the towel. “Tortured by my tongue, huh?”

  She swallowed and nodded almost nervously. When I lowered my head between her thighs and brushed my lips over her center, she moaned and flopped back onto the pillows. Oh yeah. She was definitely soaking wet. My lower lip dragged behind, my mouth opening as I started to explore her with my tongue.

  R-E-S-P-E-C-T

  Nothing like having a great song in your head while you’re doing one of your favorite things.

  I ran my tongue up her slit a few times, silently laughing to myself every time she let out a disappointed sigh as I moved back to where I’d started. When I decided she’d had enough teasing, I used my tongue and a couple fingers to focus on what I could do so that she’d never be disappointed again. With my other hand, I held her down, making sure none of her squirming let her get away from me.

  Any guy who didn’t offer to get a woman off this way was a moron. Oral sex was the best way to really learn what a woman needed to get off.

  And with the right woman, it was the only time a man could ever truly control her.

  She’d been pulling my hair and speaking incoherently for a while before I got her hint and looked up at her.

  “You’re so good at that,” she said breathlessly. “But you need to come up here now.”

  “Why? Am I boring you?”

  She laughed. “Hardly. It feels incredible. But I’m a few orgasms ahead of you, so I think it’s my turn.”

  “Nope.” I kissed
her again before shaking my head. “I’m not done down here yet. You’re not done down here yet either.”

  “But—”

  “I’m going to get back to what I was doing now. If you need me for anything, or if you want me to stop for a better reason than feeling guilty about letting me make you feel good, let me know.”

  Sara said a lot of things about God, cursed like a sailor, and did a hell of a lot of moaning, but she definitely didn’t try to stop me again.

  4

  Sara

  Stop dreaming about the guy you’ll never see again, and get your ass out of bed. If I screwed up this job and couldn't find another, I’d have to live in my stepfather’s house forever. I’d already been here eight months longer than I’d wanted to. I could still feel the sticky humiliation of having to let go of my apartment and crawl back to my mom and Timothy to keep a roof over my head. Still, better they witness my humiliation than my two best and oldest friends.

  Emilia and Andi both had guest rooms they’d have let me use for as long as I needed, but there had to be a limit as to how much of my patheticness they’d put up with. And, even though they’d never said anything, I was fairly sure I’d used up all my allowance already. Not to mention they had actual lives with the men they loved. Basically, they were happy, and that fact alone made them extraordinarily unpleasant to be around sometimes.

  Plus, I already owed them so much. Emilia had been right to demote me from virtual assistant to chick who answers the phone and emails contracts to new clients. Occasionally, she still tossed the overflow work to me, but times were tough and we’d lost a lot of our small business clients. Fewer clients meant less overflow to give me and fewer opportunities I had to make up for what I’d done.

  All hell had broken loose after my ex-client’s wife—who he’d forgotten to mention—called Emilia to scream about the harlot who’d seduced her husband. And, yes, she’d used the word harlot, and yes, she either didn’t know or pretended not to know that this harlot was probably one of a hundred that her poor, too-weak-to-keep-his-dick-in-his-pants husband had seduced.