Sex Objects Read online

  She came willingly, indeed spinning so that she fell into his lap with an artful grace. Suddenly, they were nose to nose, her warm gaze inches from his. She smelled of sugar and cinnamon and lemon and a dozen other delectable things. Her lips were plump and moist. Irresistible. He leaned in, but she kissed him first.

  The kiss began slowly, but quickly escalated into a hot, hungry, demanding thing that required full attention from both partners. She looped her arms around his neck and nestled in, while he kept an arm around her waist to steady her. The table next to them shifted, a half-full wineglass rocking dangerously. Someone moaned. She was warm and soft and fit perfectly against him. Her fingers teased his hair. Her lips were sweet. He devoured her mouth, their tongues meeting and teasing.

  Eventually, they broke apart to catch their breath. Her chest heaved, and her smile was utterly, shamelessly, self-satisfied. “I call this menu Desire,” she murmured. “I think it needs a little fine-tuning. You’re supposed to make it another two courses before you lose control.”

  “I guess I was pretty much doomed to failure then,” said Hamilton wryly. “Maybe if the chef hadn’t interfered with the process…”

  She didn’t look abashed in the least. “Maybe I did anticipate things.” She drew a single finger down over his cheek to trace his lips. “But you can’t blame a girl for getting excited.” She wriggled her ass against his lap, where his cock strained against his pants with unyielding desire. “And it looks like you’re not in a position to complain.”

  “Good god, woman,” Hamilton growled. “Are you going to tease me all night?”

  Annabel considered this, before sliding out of his lap and stepping away from the booth. “Maybe. Maybe not.” The play on his blog title and his last name didn’t escape either of them. She slowly undid the rest of the buttons on her coat, letting it gape open. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath; her breasts hung, heavy and full, dark nipples already stiffened. She shrugged out of the coat with a single fluid motion, letting it fall to the floor. “Does this look like I intend to tease you?” she asked. Just as easily, she kicked off the comfortable shoes all smart chefs wore, and stripped out of her pants.

  Hamilton’s jaw about dropped when he realized this woman had indeed worn nothing under her uniform.

  Utterly naked, totally confident and watching him with a burning intensity that had him ready to leap to his feet. “No, don’t get up,” she purred, closing the distance.

  So he stayed where he was. It was clear that Annabel St. Croix was calling the shots. She leaned in for another long kiss. Deft hands undid his belt, unbuttoned his fly, pulled down his zipper. He lifted his hips as she tugged on his pants, pulling them down along with his boxers. “Don’t worry,” she murmured, amusement in her voice, “these seats are clean. No one’s ever fucked on them before.”

  What do you say to something like that? But it was certainly comfy…

  Following Annabel’s lead, Hamilton shifted position so that he was sitting on the edge of the seat, legs stretched out and spread, fully erect cock bobbing with every motion, hard and ready.

  Annabel licked her lips in appreciation, reaching out to wrap strong fingers around it.

  The sensation brought a moan to his lips, which she stole with a kiss.

  After that, things dissolved into a haze of touching and stroking and caressing. Annabel helped him out of the rest of his clothes, as they explored each other’s bodies with swiftly growing urgency. Hamilton wanted time to worship every inch of this wonderful, unpredictable woman, but she kept stroking his cock, breathing hard with desire, rubbing her curves against him. And when she finally nipped his ear and whispered huskily, “I want you to fuck me,” he knew he was lost.

  Who was he kidding? He’d been lost from the beginning, when she’d walked out of the kitchen. From somewhere, she produced a condom, opened it and rolled it down over him. (Was she always this prepared?) He grabbed her hips, helped to steady her as she straddled him. And when she sank down to sheathe his hard cock in her tight, wet pussy, he couldn’t help but groan. “Dear god,” he murmured, voice ragged. She fit around him perfectly.

  Within seconds, they’d set up the perfect rhythm, hips moving and bodies arching in unison. He ran his fingers down over her breasts, teasing her nipples, and she squeezed herself around him.

  The first climax seemed to catch Annabel by surprise; she paused, muscles tensing and body quivering, low moans escaping her. Hamilton silenced her with a kiss as she rode her way through the orgasm, feeling her pussy pulse and release around his cock. She redoubled her efforts, lifting up and slamming back down, taking him farther into herself. He dug his fingers into her sides as his own climax came hard and fast, ripping through him roughly and leaving him gasping for breath. She followed him with a second, if slightly lesser one that had her digging fingernails into his shoulders and screaming his name.

  Satiated for the moment, they clung to each other, skin to skin, joined as intimately as possible. “Oh my,” said Annabel after a long moment. She met his gaze, eyes shining and bright, lips stretched in that satisfied smile. “I knew that if you fucked anything like you wrote about food, you wouldn’t disappoint. And you didn’t.”

  “I don’t know what I love more, your cooking or how you feel in my arms,” Hamilton returned tiredly. “But…all this just to sleep with me?”

  “It’s not for a good review, as I’m sure you’ve figured out,” she said with a laugh. “In fact, I wanted to give you the best meal of your life…that you could never write about. The ultimate selfish pleasure.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when I first started out, I was working at a place right here in Puxhill. You remember Analog?”

  He did. “Frank Garten’s place.” It had only lasted a few years. The food was to die for, but the chef in question had been an egomaniacal control freak who couldn’t play nice long enough to keep his restaurant alive for very long.

  “Your review pretty much changed my life. The way you wrote made me see everything in a whole new light. I rededicated myself to the art and science of cooking after that. I understood what I wanted to do, but you made me believe it.” She laughed, softly. “So I swore that someday, I’d find a way to come back and reward you for it.”

  “You could have just fed me,” Hamilton replied dryly. “Not that I’m complaining about the sex, mind you.”

  “Oh, that? That was for me. Because not only are you a hell of a writer, but I’ve always considered you to be pretty damned sexy. I wanted you, and I took a chance, which paid off and then some.” Annabel reluctantly disentangled herself from his body. “You’ve got a choice, though…”

  “Oh?”

  “You can consider this a one and done event, and feel free to come back when we open for real…” She gave him a sideways glance as she turned to start picking up her clothes. “Or you can stay, help me clean up, and find out what I have planned for breakfast.”

  Like she even had to ask. “For as long as you’ll have me,” he said. They sealed the deal with a kiss.

  From Gour-May, Gour-Maybe Not:

  Puxhill’s newest eating experience is Exquisite. The owner/head chef is the incomparable Annabel St. Croix. While I can’t write an unbiased review of this restaurant, I can assure you that the name captures the food, the establishment and the owner herself perfectly.

  Rushin’ Red

  Megan Mitcham

  Lexie zipped past the other cars on the expressway like a mugger was hot on her crystal-encrusted Louboutins. Her heart thudded inside her chest as though fingers stretched ready to drag her into a dark New York alley. Lexie filled her lungs, then slowly released the breath through Russian Red lips. The MAC cosmetics color typically perked her disposition. Today, it lacked the desired effect.

  She lifted her small hand from the slick wood-grained steering wheel and examined it closely. Her moneymaker hovered in the air as steady as ever. Not a twitch or tremor to see. She huffed, “Of course.�
� Her fingers were that of a pianist’s, long and slender. Milk-white skin, from zero time spent in the sun, stretched over them, revealing the barest hint of squiggly veins over the back of her hand and up her small arm.

  A horn blared from the left. “Shit!” Both her hands flew to the wheel and her gaze shot up in time to save the beloved 1965 red ragtop Mustang from sideswiping a Smart Car. When the open water bottle she’d held noisily glugged its contents into her lap, she screamed, “Double shit!” She huffed, yet again, righted the plastic pisser and tried to set it in a cup holder that didn’t exist. But this time, Lexie held her tongue. She wouldn’t cuss her baby.

  After securing the bottle on the passenger seat between her red Chloé tote and the black seat, Lexie looked up with just enough time to see the airport exit fly past her. “Triple shit! Shit! Shit!”

  Some hectic minutes later, the car jerked to a halt in a reserved parking space on the tarmac a couple hundred yards from the chartered jet. Her crew—a pilot, copilot and single flight attendant—stood at the end of the fold-down steps, surely willing her to hurry the hell up.

  Trying her best to oblige, Lexie scooped up her satchel, portfolio, laptop case and the cursed water bottle with deft swoops of her hands. She juggled the armload while blotting up the remainder of the water from the driver’s seat with two napkins she’d swiped from the hospital cafeteria along with her veggie wrap.

  And then her phone burst into song. “What am I up to now,” she muttered with the stomp of a pricy stiletto, “quadruple shit?”

  Lexie cradled the sopping napkins in her left palm, looped the key ring around her index finger and shoved the bottle under the overburdened limb. She fished her phone from the depths of her bag and slapped it to her ear right before David Draiman could complete the chorus of “Down with the Sickness” a second time.

  “Don’t even say it,” she barked into the phone.

  The no-nonsense voice of her personal assistant, best friend and conductor of her life carried on as though she hadn’t said a word. “You’re late. Are you close to the airport? It’s twelve forty, now. If you get there fast, you’ll only be ten minutes late and you can reconcile the time in-air.”

  “I’m here, Mona, with a wet crotch and frazzled freakin’ nerves.”

  “Oh honey, you could’ve stopped off to tinkle. Some things are worth being late.”

  “I spilled my drink, you goof.”

  “You’re in luck. I packed you one extra skirt in your carry-on. Black. Pencil. You’ll love it.”

  While Mona blatantly ignored her frazzled nerves comment and moved on to more pressing matters, like the conference she was headed to, Lexie put her ample hip against the car door and bucked it shut. At the car’s rear, she sandwiched the cellular between her shoulder and cheek and worked the key ring off her finger. She shoved the key into the slot and turned counterclockwise. Nothing happened. Clock wise? Nothing. Lexie pulled the key out, reinserted it and tried again. Again, nothing happened.

  Her hand went frantic, jostling the thin sliver of metal this way and that. Her voice grew frantic too. “Shit. Shit. Shit! Shit! Shit! Shi—”

  On the other end of the line, Mona clued into the fact Mona wasn’t listening and began a reciprocating rant. However, the harangue didn’t kill the last expletive on her lips—the large hand that gripped hers did.

  Distracted by Mona’s pitching voice, her own tardiness and the inner turmoil wrenching her mind and body, Lexie looked up only high enough to see four gold bars against the black of the pilot’s uniform sleeve before nodding her appreciation and turning away. Eyes closed, Lexie forced her attention back to her friend. She arrested Mona’s tirade with one sad sentence. “I killed a man today.”

  Finally, there was stillness. On the line, Mona was quiet. Behind her, the pilot didn’t move. They passed a hushed minute together.

  Mona broke first, as Lexi had known she would. “Hon, two million, three hundred thousand to one are crappy odds for anyone, even a miracle worker like you. I tried so hard to talk you out of it, not because I didn’t believe in you, but because sometimes things aren’t meant to be.”

  Lexi swatted the tiny tear from her cheek. “I need to get away, Mona.”

  “I know it’s hard. I know you work so hard. I’ll try and schedule something for you around the first of the year. Maybe, February.”

  “Four months,” Mona croaked. “No. Now. I need to get away today. I can’t do this right now. Not any of it.”

  “Alexis Marie, you can’t bail on the American Academy of Neurology.”

  “I have to.”

  “What?” her friend asked, awe making the word airy. “You’ve never shirked on a job. Not a surgery. Not a conference. Not a biannual teeth cleaning. Not that stupid theology paper where we were supposed to choose an ancient civilization’s philosophies and defend it as necessary to present-day society.”

  An unexpected chuckle shook Lexie’s shoulders. “Hedonism should have gotten you booted from the class.”

  Mona sighed. “The professor was six years older than us, not too hard on the eyes, and after a closed-door session he conceded. But all this is beside the point; you’re hosting two dystonia skills workshops, not simply attending the conference. Plus, you’re a keynote speaker.”

  Mona’s lips trembled. “It has been a quintuple shit kind of day, Mona.”

  “Geez, you didn’t even cuss when Sharon Lee stole your prom date, the day before the dance.” A loud huff came through the receiver. “Fine. I’ll clean up the mess. You get four days. Make them count.”

  Lexie’s breath was ragged when she said, “Thank you.”

  After pressing the power button, she stared in amazement at the black screen and the blank schedule before her. Neither had happened since she’d been marked as “the” neurosurgeon of the Northeast. It had been years—eighteen years, she quickly calculated—since she had taken any form of vacation. Literally, half her lifetime ago at age eighteen, Lexie had gone on spring break with her college friends. The memory of tequila burned the back of her throat. Bleary visions of bar-top dancing made her hips sway just a little.

  Lexie stood at the top of the mountain she’d been climbing all her life. There on the tarmac with three crew members, the American Academy of Neurology, and hundreds of colleagues waiting on her, Lexie took a figurative look around. She had money that Mona adored spending for her. She had two homes, both of which she frequented with all her travel between New York Presbyterian University Hospital and Johns Hopkins. She had the respect of her esteemed peer group. Most importantly, she had a job she loved and, on most days, it allowed her to help people.

  A hop away from forty and Lexie had no regrets. What she did have was a sudden hankering to toss back tequila shots, dance for hours in a sea of gyrating bodies and… Yes, she wanted to fuck until she could only name three, maybe four, parts of the body. A thrill, typically reserved for the most challenging surgeries, shot up her spine.

  She turned to thank Silent Pilot Stan for his help with the trunk and tell him about their change of plans. But her portly, gray yet sweet pilot had apparently gotten the vacation memo and already taken his. The man who stood before her was Sexy Pilot Stranger. This time, a thrill ran down her spine and tingled in her already wet crotch.

  This guy towered a foot and, probably, three inches above her. His breadth doubled hers. His thick black coat with its captain’s bars blocked his skin from view, but the strength in his stance and the corded muscles of his neck spoke of the body underneath. However, most disconcerting of all was the devious, youthful smirk that played over his luscious mouth as his crystalline blue eyes sparkled down at her.

  “So,” he said, in a conspiratorial whisper, “Mazatlan?”

  “Excuse me?”

  He smiled and the October day seemed unseasonably hot. “Mazatlan, Mexico. It’s not as pretty as Cabo, but much better for getting lost.”

  “Getting lost?”

  A chuckle rumbled in his chest.
“Look, I won’t say a word. The way I see it, the guy had it comin’, but we might want to ditch the other two,” he said, hiking a thumb toward the waiting flight attendant and copilot. “They gossip like schoolgirls.”

  When words failed her, the gorgeous, funny and young pilot hefted the luggage he’d extricated from the Mustang. He also pulled the bags from her shoulder. As he did, the pads of his warm fingers grazed her clavicle, one of the many body parts she’d like to forget the name of…with him.

  His head inclined toward the jet. “This way, Dr. Rivers. I’ll fly you anywhere you want to go.”

  Dr. Alexis Rivers sat with her legs crossed in a fresh pencil skirt, tequila shot number two in hand, watching the clouds pass under her feet. She’d told the pilot to take her someplace beautiful and fun. Having never given thought to frivolous things like vacations, she hadn’t known exactly where she wanted to go. Now, in the luxurious cabin with smooth leather under her fingers and tequila warming her belly, she knew exactly where she wanted to go.

  She wanted to go down on Sexy Pilot Stranger.

  Not sixty seconds after she’d requested his presence, he ducked through the cabin door and closed it behind him. Lexie motioned toward the plush window chair opposite her. “I hope I’m not keeping you from, well, keeping us all alive.”

  He closed the gap between them in three easy strides. Standing in the cross of her calves, he unfastened three buttons of his jacket. All the while, his brilliant blue eyes pinned her to the seat. His large frame lowered with atypical grace, and he sprawled before her. The black fabric flapped open. A fitted white button-down underneath revealed the bulging contours of his chest. The slender black tie looped around his neck slid down to the area of his navel. It teased Lexie’s dominant side, a side she’d only known to exist in the operating room, until now.