Billion Dollar Stranger - Stephanie Brother Page 0,6
hand is big and strong, his fingernails perfectly manicured. He’s a businessman, but not one who’s been softened by the office. His physique would suggest he lifts weights. He probably has a personal trainer. If he approaches exercise like he approaches seduction, he probably has an eight-pack under his shirt. He strokes his thumb over the tender purple of my vein. “Good girl. Now, take your panties off.”
Oh my God. Is he serious? My gasp is audible, and the way his eyes narrow makes me totally aware that he likes it. My instinct is to glance around at the people sitting at the tables nearest us, not to tell him no. I’ve never ever done something this crazy before, and yet there is no resistance – just hesitation.
“Don’t think,” he says. “When you think, all your fears and hang-ups, all your history rears up to hold you back.” He couldn’t be more right, and because he wills it, I do as he asked.
He lets my hand go and smiles as he watches me push the edges of my panties down through the fabric of my skirt. His eyes flash dark and hungry; the wolf eyeing Red Riding Hood when she’s close enough to devour. As I wriggle from side to side, the movement rubs up against my already sensitized flesh. I’m really doing this, I think, but at that moment, I’m not the Nicole I was when I boarded the plane. I’m a new Nicole. A stranger to a man with eyes as mesmerizing as a tiger’s. A stranger who’s shedding a skin with the removal of her pretty panties.
When the lace is finally past the hem of my skirt, I pull my knees together and follow it down with my hand until my underwear is over my shoes and balled in my fist. The wetness in them leaves a cool trail down my legs as shameful evidence of my arousal. Shameful or shameless. I’m not so sure anymore.
I look up at him as he runs his tongue over his bottom lip and then bites down. I imagine that tongue stroking against my skin. Innocent places first, like the soft spot where the collar bone meets the neck, just below my ear lobe and maybe the underside of my wrist that he has caressed with his thumb, then moving on to teasing licks around my nipples and over my clit.
He’d be good at all of it. I’ve never felt more certain of anything and my cheeks feel like they’re on fire.
He puts his hand on the table, palm upturned, and I give the lacy bundle to him, trying to conceal what I’m doing from anyone close enough to notice. He slips them into his jacket pocket. “Something for me to remember you by,” he says with one raised eyebrow, and I realize that each step with this man is a challenge, a little push to see if I want to be on the journey with him and if I’ll play his games.
“What’s your room number?” he asks. There’s another moment of hesitation for me. Playing with a man while in the safe surroundings of a bar is one thing but taking that game into the privacy of a hotel room is another. I look up into his eyes, the thud of my heart so hard in my chest it’s like a drum. My thoughts again flick between agreement and resistance.
Then, in a flash of impulsivity that is so unlike me, I slide my key card across the table. He takes it as though he never doubted that I’d give it to him, and stands, waiting for me to rise too. I put my phone in my bag, all the time thinking oh my God, am I doing this, am I doing this? I feel giddy with the wrongness of it and the rightness. As I slide out of the booth, he has to reach to steady me as I wobble on my heels. Maybe he thinks I’m drunk, or perhaps he already knows that my knees are weak with desire and anticipation. I think it might be a mixture of the two.
My stranger doesn’t hold my hand like a lover, but instead rests his heavy palm against the small of my back to steer me out of the bar and to the elevator. He knew that we’d be doing this. From the moment our eyes met across the bar, he never doubted that he could seduce me. His confidence is