As Sweet: A Den of Sin Vignette Read online

  This woman in his truck, holding an oil-stained paper sack on her lap and staring out her window was grinning, though. She hadn’t shown a lick of disappointment when he pulled up to the best drive-up burger joint in town. She’d squealed and said, “I keep hearing this place is great!”

  Maybe his gut had been right about her. The very first time he saw her—all those years ago on her first day at the hotel—he’d been tending the rose trellis in the hotel garden, and Henri led her around giving the same orientation spiel he gave all the senior staff.

  She was prim and professional, yes, but she couldn’t have hid her eagerness for her job no matter how hard she tried. It made her dark eyes shine and her bronze cheeks rosy. She’d looked around the gardens assessing everything with a critical eye and asking Henri questions even the owner didn’t know the answers to.

  “The trellises are original to the property,” Trevor said as he pulled up to a red light.

  Rosalinda raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  He shook his head, grinning. “The day of your orientation you asked Henri if the trellises in the garden were original. He said he couldn’t remember because his uncle used to handle the landscaping decisions.”

  She raised the other eyebrow, too. “You remembered I asked that? That’s insane.”

  He shrugged and lifted his foot off the brake pedal. “It was something I actually knew the answer to.”

  “You should have spoken up.”

  “I didn’t want to annoy you.”

  “Why would you think I’d find that annoying? I asked because I was genuinely curious.”

  “I know my place, is all.”

  “Your place? What do you mean?”

  He didn’t answer. Although he could feel the prickling intensity of her gaze at the side of his face, he kept his eyes forward and navigated the tight, dark streets toward her neighborhood.

  When her hand landed on his right thigh and squeezed, he sucked in a breath and tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

  “Tell me.” She moved her hand up higher, to where the hem of his shirt met his jeans and toward the gap between his legs.

  He could feel her warmth through the denim, and the sensual tickle of her fingers drumming lightly on the inside of his thigh made his nuts draw up. If she moved that hand any farther, she’d have an extra bit of flesh to massage.

  He swallowed. “Look. We know there’s a sort of dividing line within the staff. There are those of you who wear suits and pantyhose, and then there are us who wear tool belts and comfortable shoes. Guys like me, we’re supposed to work in the background and be invisible—unnoticeable.”

  “You think no one notices you?” She squeezed his leg, and as if she’d hit some switch, it started bobbing.

  She had to know what she was doing, what she was inciting. If not, she’d certainly be scandalized in a moment or two. From the moment he’d turned on the heat and she’d taken off her jacket, he’d been at war with his cock. She had on this filmy, navy blue dress that caressed all her curves in just the right ways, and she kept fiddling with a saint’s medallion that fell into her cleavage. Every time he saw her fondling it in his periphery, he made the stupid mistake of taking his eyes from the road and ogling her sexy profile.

  He cleared his throat. “Well, yeah, I know certain guests see me.” Especially the repeat customers who sought him out. Those were the ones for whom he really wished he were invisible. “It’s just that I don’t expect folks like you to interact with me.”

  “Why not?”

  He sighed. Wasn’t it obvious? “Am I going the right way? Will you let me know if I’ve missed your block?”

  “Just keep driving.” She eased her hand up a bit more, and he straightened in his seat.

  A mere two inches between her fingertips and his cock.

  He generally preferred not to be trapped in a couple of tons of glass and metal when he was having his junk fondled. She was pushing him, and he wasn’t sure if she was tease or a viper. He liked the idea of one more than the other.

  “You think I’m highbrow, Trevor?” She cleared those two inches, skimming her palm over his engorged cock head.

  He hissed as her continuing caress sent jolts of pleasure through his core. Although he wrapped his right fingers around her wrist in warning, she gripped him more firmly, squeezing from head toward the root. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “Turn left at the light,” she said in a sweet voice far out of sync with her hand’s skillful plying.

  He grunted and hit the signal switch.

  “Answer me.” She squeezed again, this time harder.

  His gut drew in and he spared one hand from the steering wheel to nudge her hand away. He didn’t want to be dominant right out the gate. If she wanted to play, he’d let her…at least for now. “Are you some kind of sadist?” he asked.

  “I don’t like being ignored.”

  “Sugar, I couldn’t ignore you if I tried. I’m trying to be a gentleman for you.”

  “Are you saying you’re not one, usually?”

  She danced her fingers up his thigh again, and this time went farther, flitting them under his shirt hem and up to his waistband. She followed it around to the button, which she unfastened with an uncanny deftness.

  He was going to reach for her hand again, but at the last moment, needed both hands on the steering wheel to navigate around some major road construction.

  She slipped her skillful, hot fingers into his boxer briefs and shimmied them down. “Answer me,” she said, and brazenly encircled his shaft. She alternated between squeezing and pulling, and after a few moments of that, the stars he saw in front of him weren’t of the celestial sort.

  If she kept fucking around like that, he was going to nut in his pants. That would make their work relationship a goddamned hoot. He needed to establish some boundaries immediately.

  “I’ll answer you if you quit squeezing.”

  She let up on her torture, but didn’t remove her hand completely. “I’m waiting.”

  He decided to ignore her attention-seeking behavior for the moment. “I try to be a gentleman as often as I can. My momma made sure I was home trained.”

  “What about the other question? You think there’s some sort of upstairs-downstairs divide at The Beaudelaire?”

  “Have you ever heard of any of the office and management staff hooking up with the rest of us?”

  She was silent for a long while, and then made a little feminine grunt of acquiescence. “I haven’t, but I try to stay out of other peoples’ business. You keep your name out of gossip that way.”

  “I guess I was surprised you didn’t throw those roses back at me and tell me to fuck off.”

  “I wouldn’t have done that. I like them. My house is the last one on the right. You can pull into the driveway. It’s private.”

  He thought she was easing her hand out of his pants, but instead, she freed his aching cock from its layers of clothing and exposed it to the air.

  “Fuck, you are going to get yourself into some serious trouble tonight.”

  “Maybe I like trouble.”

  Oh?

  Besides, I was hoping for a happy Valentine’s Day.”

  He stole a glance away from the road and looked down to see her setting her leftover food sack on the floor with her right hand.

  She released her seatbelt, pushed her shiny black hair behind her ear and bent as he turned into her driveway. “I love how these old trucks have wide front seats. No gear knobs in the way.”

  Her warm wet tongue rimmed his cock’s slit, and flicked at it as he killed the headlights and pulled his parking brake.

  His instinct was to pull her back and tell her she didn’t have permission, but he pushed that down, closed his eyes, and sucked in some air while she licked him. “You know, I was going to walk you to your door and give you a kiss on the cheek, but…”

  “Mm-hmm,” she hummed around his cock, and took more of him into her mout
h. She worked her tongue down the side of his shaft and bobbed her head up and down, sucking and licking.

  She gripped his nuts through his jeans and squeezed them, twisted them a bit to increase the torture.

  He grabbed a handful of her hair in his fist and gave it a gentle pull. “I hope you can handle the payback.”

  She chuckled with him in her mouth and grazed her teeth daringly up the sides.

  Pleasure, pain. The lines blurred. All he knew was that he didn’t want her to stop, but God, he wanted her to stop. He wanted to feel the clamp of her pussy on her rod, and not be sucked off in his truck like he was a sixteen-year-old out past curfew. He wanted to see what that bodacious ass of hers looked like naked. He wanted to plant his hands at her waist and pierce her with his waiting shaft again and again until she screamed out her pleasure. But first, he wanted to taste her—to see if she was as sweet as her name.

  He gave her hair a short yank when his cock breached her entrance of her throat.

  “You’re going to make me come,” he said through clenched teeth. He didn’t want it like this. He wanted some control, but with her lips around him, it was easy to forget who’d initiated this tango.

  She turned her face slightly to the left and flicked her gaze up to his. Her dark eyes glistened in the near dark, and he could see the note of challenge in them. “Mm-hmm.”

  “I—” What? Tell her to stop so you can feel like a good Dom? Nope.

  She began that torturous up and down suction again, and got up on her knees to improve her angle.

  He wasn’t a small man by any stretch of the imagination, but she was swallowing him down like air. How she’d gotten so skilled in the oral arts, he didn’t particularly care, but fuck, he wanted to be the last one she pleasured that way.

  He closed his eyes and spread his thighs farther as her palm jiggled his sac and her fingers pressed against his perineum. He found some words in his brain and hoped they came out of his mouth in a sensible order. “I don’t want the night to end like that.”

  “Mm-hmm,” she repeated, but instead of easing off him, she increased her sucking, quickened her pace.

  “Oh, God.” That look she was giving him, it was so devilish and provocative. She was going to do whatever she wanted with him, and he would let her because he wasn’t sure things would ever go further His sexual partners tended to be a bit more docile, but this buttoned-up siren didn’t fit the mold. He liked that she didn’t.

  She released her clutch on his balls and squeezed the base of his cock as he shot into her mouth and down her throat.

  She took it all in, gracefully if such a word could describe what she was doing, and lifted her head from his spent shaft.

  She licked her lips and sat back on her feet, staring at him as he panted.

  That sultry look had him damn near standing at attention and ready to go again.

  “What were you saying about ending the night?”

  “I didn’t expect for you to—”

  “Shh.”

  He furrowed his brow. He sure as shit didn’t like being shushed, but he knew she was pushing him—getting a feel for his temperament and limits. Within reason, he’d endure it if it made her comfortable.

  She tucked his dick into his boxer briefs and fixed his zipper. “Would you like to come in? I’m off tomorrow. We don’t have to end the evening just yet.”

  He nodded and buttoned his jeans.

  The reason he hadn’t wanted the night to end like that was because he didn’t want her to think he was after her just for that. His plan all along was to court her and get to know her, slowly. He hadn’t wanted to unleash all his intensity upfront, but she was weakening his resolve. If he were reading her right, she wanted to exchange power. Fuck, that was just icing on the cake because he’d had no way of knowing before now that she was open to kink.

  They could be a perfect pairing, but there was one other issue to surpass. He was more or less a glorified outdoor janitor, and was happy with his job.

  He had no ambitions to ever wear a crisp shirt and polished shoes to work. He liked having his hands in the dirt and coaxing reluctant plants to not only grow, but also thrive.

  To bloom.

  She was an educated woman who’d moved to a city in shambles to further her career. She loved her job. He just hoped she wasn’t disenchanted by him loving his.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Make yourself comfortable. I’m going to put these in some water.” Rosalinda indicated the roses she cradled and waited for Trevor to nod his response.

  “Nice house,” he said to her back when she turned toward the kitchen.

  “It’s small, but it suits me and didn’t need a whole lot of renovation work like most of the other houses in my price range. Didn’t sustain much damage during Katrina, so I think it’s a lucky place.”

  She dropped her paper food sack on the countertop and stretched onto tiptoes, reaching for the tall glass vase perched on a high pantry shelf. Her fingers just barely skimmed the bottom, and she sighed, wondering where she’d stowed her step stool. As she dropped down onto her heels, the fine hairs on her neck stood on end just before her backside skimmed something hard and unyielding behind her.

  She tipped her head back to find Trevor had joined her in the pantry, and suddenly his proximity unnerved her. She’d gone down on him in his truck and had felt no qualms about it at the time, but now she wondered if she’d given him the wrong idea. She wasn’t that kind of girl, not that she had anything against girls who were that brazen. She’d just wanted to be spontaneous for a change, and didn’t want the night to end with a peck on the cheek and a See ya later.

  He reached up, easily plucked the vase from its shelf, and passed it down to her. He laid a gentle, tentative left hand on her shoulder, and she stood there stunned for a moment, feet rooted to the pantry’s wooden floor and eyes locked on the canister of expired grits directly in front of her.

  He pushed her hair back from her neck and grazed up the side of it with his rough thumb.

  Closing her eyes, she drew in a bolstering breath and tried to ignore the tingles his touch sparked down her spine to her pussy. She tried to ignore the feel of her hardening nipples pressing against her dress fabric. Most of all, she tried to ignore the rigid protrusion pressed against her spine and the sound of his ragged breaths.

  Finding some courage, she turned and looked up into his expressive face. His dilated pupils darkened his silvery eyes, his cheeks bore high coloring, and his succulent lips bore a spot of sheen due to his tongue’s lazy dip across them.

  He swallowed, and took a step backward. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to be a good guy. It’s just…you’re just so pretty. You make it hard for me to think.”

  “Oh.” That’s it? That’s all you have to say in response? She cringed and quickly made her way to the sink. She filled it halfway with water and riffled through her junk drawer in search of utility shears.

  He was apologizing to her, yet she was the one who’d practically thrown herself at him. He probably thought she was desperate and pathetic—but, no. She wasn’t.

  She’d wanted to be clear and upfront. She may have worn high heels and linen blazers to work, but that didn’t mean she was uptight and superior. When she’d invited him in, it had been because she wanted to further disabuse him of that notion.

  She grabbed the shears and turned to the table where he sat watching her. She snipped the twine from the stems and unwrapped the paper. “Would you like a beer?” She couldn’t even meet his gaze.

  He was quiet a moment before he answered. “No, thank you. I have to drive home. One beer shouldn’t bother me, but it’d be just my luck I’ll spill it all over myself and end up getting stopped at a traffic checkpoint. That’d make a hell of a memory, having to do a field sobriety test on Valentine’s Day.”

  She chuckled and turned back to the sink. She turned the water on low and trimmed each stem before arranging them in the vase. “Yeah, that would be funny, but
probably wouldn’t register as so until after the fact.”

  “True. Hey.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Can I ask you a question, sugar?”

  She paused the shears on the last stem and willed the burn in her cheeks to abate before she turned to him. Sugar. Such a petty little endearment shouldn’t have affected her so, but when that word came out in that deep, masculine timbre of his, she couldn’t help but to feel very aware of the workings of nature.

  Hot blooded man, willing and oh-so-eager woman…

  He was rotating her paper food sack ninety degrees at a time while he waited for her acknowledgement.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you just humoring me?”

  Startled, she let her brow furrow. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t want to pretend to be anything I’m not, not even for a moment.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because I believe in being upfront. If today hadn’t been Valentine’s Day, I wouldn’t have thought I’d have enough luck to get very far with you.”

  “You think the magic of a commercial holiday makes a difference?” She bumped the faucet pull with her elbow to turn off the water flow. “You think I would have said no if today had been any other day? Why?”

  He rocked his chair back onto the rear legs and stared at her.

  “Answer me.”

  “Well, what you see is what you get with me. I prefer greasy hamburgers over pâté, and I usually smell bad at the end of a day’s work.”

  “So?” She snipped the last stem and nestled it down into the center of the arrangement. She smiled looking at that dense ball of roses she now knew he’d cut just for her. She wanted to see where they were grown. Did they come in other colors? Were they hard to grow this time of year? She turned on her heel and narrowed her eyes at him. “Are roses even in season?”

  He pushed up one eyebrow and lifted the opposite side of his lips. “No. Pop and I force them in a greenhouse. We make a little extra money this time of year.”

  “Where’s the greenhouse?”