‘Leah, don’t you want to help me use this belt?’
She’d given him that belt, supple black leather with a plain silver buckle, just over a week ago. She’d given it before Christmas because they’d be spending the actual day with his family, and how, exactly, do you gift your lover with a belt you intend to tie him up with and have him open it in front of his parents?
She should’ve waited, she thought as his tongue swiped across his lips and all she could do was imagine it buried between her legs. Above their heads, Leah heard the skitter of claws on linoleum. That would be Scamp, the Longs’ appropriately adorable mutt. That, along with the squeak of the back door opening, was also a reminder that, although the house was dark and mostly quiet, they weren’t alone.
With the belt still dangling like sin from his fist, Brandon reached over his shoulder with his free hand to grab at the neck of his white T-shirt and pull it off over his head. It snagged on the belt and he tugged it free to toss the shirt onto the faded and spring-busted recliner in front of the battered television. Most of the white-painted basement had been decorated with cheery bright furniture and posters on the walls, a billiard table and Brandon’s dad’s prized possession, a vintage KISS pinball machine. But this guest space contained, in addition to the lumpy pull-out sofa, the cast-offs from when the Longs had redecorated. The fact Brandon had told her he’d received his very first blow job on that chair might have offended her except the thought of it had turned her on so much she couldn’t look at the chair without wanting to make him forget any other woman had ever touched him.
‘Brandon,’ Leah said warningly and watched his pupils dilate. Fuck. She was only going to turn him on more, at this rate. Herself, too.
This could be a problem.
Bare-chested, he stood straight. It was just an illusion that the top of his dark head brushed the ceiling beams. At least she thought it was. He was seventy-thousand feet tall, after all, and she knew every single inch of him.
‘Your parents,’ she managed to say with another glance upwards as the door squeaked open and shut and Scamp clattered across the floor again.
‘That’s my dad letting the dog in. Mom’s in bed. He’s going to bed, too.’
But she couldn’t fuck him in his parents’ house, she just couldn’t. It was bad enough his mom had greeted them with a cheery grin so much like Brandon’s it had been startling, had given them this basement guest space instead of, as Leah had assumed, assigning them separate rooms. Brandon had seemed to take it as a matter of course, not noticing as he slung their bags onto the couch and showed her the tiny but functional bathroom that Leah had been shocked into silence by his parents’ seemingly easy acceptance of their son’s relationship with an older woman.
They’d been there for four days. Arrived on Christmas Eve and planned to stay until New Year’s Day. It had been four days of whirlwind activity from morning until night, with present opening, visiting relatives, taking tours of Brandon’s hometown and viewing the hot spots – his elementary school, high school, the grocery store where he’d had his first job.
The chair where he’d had his first blow job.
Her eyes flicked towards it against her will, and he didn’t miss the look. Brandon hooked a finger in the button of his jeans and tugged it open. Then the zipper, notch by notch. When he pushed the denim over his hips and stepped out of it, still without letting go of that damned belt, Leah’s heart set up a steady thumping that sounded so loud she was sure he could hear it. He had to see the way her mouth parted and her breath hissed in over her tongue. He never missed anything like that.
Down went the jeans and he stood there in his soft cotton boxer briefs, already bulging in the front. Lord have mercy, he was a knee-trembler. Her grip tightened on the desk chair, which swivelled a little.
‘Brandon.’ Leah tried to sound stern. ‘This is not the place.’
He grinned again, damn him. ‘Why not?’
Because your mother wears sweatshirts with pictures of kittens on the front, and I can’t deflower her son in her house without feeling like a fucking slut. Because your dad looks just like you will in another twenty years and is only a couple years older than my last lover. Because I’d prepared myself for them to hate me, and instead they’ve welcomed me into your family like a daughter, and I don’t know how to handle that.
She didn’t say any of those things, because Brandon had moved step-by-step closer, and she could smell him. Soap and water. A hint of cold fresh air. They’d been out visiting his grandparents and aunts and uncles, had taken a walk around the neighbourhood. His hand had kept hers warm.
He was so tall and stood so close she had to tip her head back to look at his face, but she was helpless not to. With the desk just behind her ass, Leah let herself sit on the edge so she could lean back far enough to keep her neck from cricking. That was more of a mistake than giving him that damned belt had been, because all she could think about was the first time he’d gone down on her, in that Harrisburg hotel room. She’d told him to eat her pussy and he’d gone to his knees like a pro. How long had it been since she’d had his mouth on her cunt? The five days she’d had her period before they left Pennsylvania for Iowa, and four days here, but who was counting?
Leah was not a woman who gave up control. When
