Anyways.
Any reticence was tossed out Natalia’s car window as we whizzed beneath the sunset to the house. I was wearing my bawdiest bra and panty set beneath an otherwise conservative outfit. My legs looked spit-shined and my hair smelled like vanilla and cardamom. I’d taken a razor to places I’d never even seen before with my own two eyes. The shampoo bottles in the shower got a free show.
In a way, it was kind of like what had happened that fateful day at Robby Clancy’s birthday party all those years ago. Except instead of matching bracelets, I was gifting matching lingerie, still hoping the man it was meant for wouldn’t balk at it and give me a playful noogie in return.
At least I knew Frankie wouldn’t be breaking my heart.
That was the deciding force when I slipped into the black lace set I thought I’d only packed as a precaution. The line in the sand with the pilot was drawn, and it made whatever debauched fling we had going on feel safer than starting a relationship on cloud nine and then realizing I didn’t have a parachute.
Their living room still looked as perfect as we’d left it. The candle on the center of the coffee table was lit, and the tree was sparkling in strands of green and gold tinsel. Four perfectly matched stockings hung from the mantle of the fireplace that was mimicking fire and softening the room in a warm dim.
Mateo and Natalia had disappeared, leaving me staring at the ceiling—until I noticed the spread of baking ingredients I’d requested perfectly organized across the island waiting to be made into cookies.
I smiled to myself, running a hand over the unopened bags of flour and chocolate morsels. Chopped walnuts, not whole—he’d gotten it right. Several different brands of condensed milk, coconut flakes, graham cracker crumbs, steel cut oats, baking powder, bright red and green M&M’s. Stacked beside them were way too many mixing bowls, and inside the one on top was a whisk, three wooden spoons, a spatula, and a scraper with the tags still attached. I picked one up and twirled it under the kitchen light.
“Hey.”
A deep voice rang out from across the room and I dropped the new scraper back into the metal bowl with a clatter. Frankie was leaning against the wall, the strands of dark hair around his ears still damp from the shower he must have just been in, and the shirt he had yet to put on bunched in his fists.
He stretched the neckline of the white tee between his fingers and then pulled it over his head, his eyes only leaving mine for a brief second. That tiny disconnect was all that kept me from begging him to drag me down the hall and show me what he would have done to me the night before.
“Hi.”
His gaze swept down my legs and back up again. The frilly cutoff Daisy Dukes I had on obviously doing the job I hired them for as I watched his tongue traverse his bottom lip.
“You got everything, it looks like.” I gestured to the table and tore my eyes away from the man across the room. His blatant appraisal scorched the back of my neck and the tips of my ears. I felt completely naked under it.
“Looks like I did.” Frankie inched into the kitchen behind me, his feet shuffling against the tiles. I didn’t turn to face him; instead, I busied myself with the counter, starting to aimlessly move the ingredients into piles. My nervous energy materialized into obsessive organization.
“So I think we should start with the cookie bars because they take the—” I couldn’t finish the sentence before a warm, hard body settled at my back. Frankie’s impressive, sinewed hands came down right outside my own on the marble, and the tops of his thighs pressed my hips against the cold ledge.
We both heard my breath catch.
“You wore these shorts to torture me,” he whispered against my ear, nudging his nose through my hair. “Because you want me to look at you and forget how to keep my hands to myself.”
His grainy, hushed voice was like a kindling to my core. I should have expected he’d cut directly to it. Why dance around the inevitable? Frankie had never done that, and I didn’t think he intended to start then. Naively, I’d assumed I would have at least a batch of snickerdoodles in the oven before my panties were around my knees—but, then again, I wasn’t exactly complaining. We had all night.
I closed my eyes and rubbed my lips together, basking in every inch of his chest as it flattened against me. I was both fearful and intoxicatingly powerful in that moment, but instead of inching away I returned the pressure, rocking my hips back and forth slightly.
“Don’t start something you don’t intend to finish, O,” he warned me. “If you’re gonna rub your sweet little ass against me like that, I’m gonna do something about it.”
“They could walk in and see us.”
His lips went to my neck, warm and wet, kissing my pulse point. “I don’t give a fuck.”
I wasn’t sure I did either. The last thing on my mind was self-preservation, and at that point I imagined Natalia and Mateo were well occupied beyond closed doors. My hips ground more overtly and Frankie dropped his face into the juncture of my shoulder, groaning.
“I’ve been strung out all day thinking about this,” he confessed. “You’re a devious little thing, leaving me throbbing like that last night.”
“I don’t break my promises.”
Frankie ran his hand up my arm softly and then threaded his fingers around the base of my neck like a collar. My heart boomed rapidly against the heat of his palm.
“Promise me something, then?” He twisted me carefully so that his lips were inches from mine and when he spoke next, I could feel the silhouette of the words against my trembling mouth. “The first time I make you come tonight, you’ll look me right in my eyes and say, ‘Thank you, Frankie.’”
I pressed up onto my toes and closed the gap between us immediately, diving tongue first through his parted lips. Frankie reacted with a smug smile that I could feel as he kissed me back. Our teeth clashed, and his fingers around my throat tightened like a pressure band.
I had kissed plenty of men before, but not one compared to the tender intensity of this one. Frankie claimed without even trying to. We mimicked each other perfectly; when I went high, he went low. I gasped and he swallowed. He licked and I moaned around the taste of his tongue.
Frankie’s hand not holding me flush to his chest dipped down to the apex of my shorts, rubbing languidly against the zipper, toying with the brass button. I could feel him hard and ready, so little material between the satisfaction we both wanted.
“We have to talk,” he murmured.
“Right now?” I asked breathlessly. What the fuck did he want to talk about so badly it couldn’t wait past an orgasm or two?
“Right now.” He nibbled on the lobe of my ear, and a warm current buzzed beneath my skin like lights on a Christmas tree. “Because it’s the difference between what I’m doing to you at the moment and what I’m going to be doing to you next.”
“How about a little incentive?”
Jesus Christ, who am I? My body had apparently been abandoned and occupied by the Ghost of Horny Holidays Past.
A short, amused scoff left his throat. “Why don’t we play teacher, Ms. Brody? Where I pull these shorts down and give you a very extensive lesson in anatomy.” His fingers found their way between my legs.