Slow Hands

Tuesday would be exactly the same way.
    “Liar,” she murmured, sinking deeper, watching the way the slick water caressed the curves of her breasts, making her skin shimmer and gleam in the candlelight.
    It had been far more than just a business meeting. First off, most of her business meetings did not take place on a bench in the park surrounded by happy Chicagoans. Nor did they usually entail her actually eating anything rather than grabbing a protein bar on her way to the next appointment.
    She’d never have imagined such a thing, but he hadn’t given her a chance to refuse. He’d led her where he wanted her to go, as easily as he’d taken her arm to usher her across the street.
    Maddy wasn’t used to letting any man take the lead. But while she’d never admit it out loud, she had almost enjoyed it.
    “Almost?” she whispered. “When did you become such a liar?”
    Jake could have been a jerk after teasing her into silence about mailing a check rather than attending the auction. But he hadn’t been. He’d made her relax. He’d made her smile. Made all her inhibitions disappear, at least for a little while.
    How?
    She had no answer. She only knew that all these hours later, even after returning to the bank for meetings and endless paperwork, she hadn’t been able to forget the way his hand had felt on her arm, and the solidness of his body against hers as they’d sat on that park bench.
    That’s not the only place you wanted his hand .
    No, it wasn’t. Blowing at a bubble on the puckered tip of her breast, she reached up and lightly brushed it away, acknowledging, at least here in the privacy of her bathroom, how much she wanted the hand on her body to be Jake’s. Her fingers were slender and soft, smooth and easy as they slid down, beneath the water, gliding across her wet skin. His were big and strong and would feel deliciously rough.
    “Especially here ,” she whispered, closing her eyes as she touched herself even more intimately.
    In her mind, though, the touch was all his. And within moments, the possibilities playing in her mind had her thrusting against her own fingers, longing to be filled but taking the only form of pleasure she could manage at the moment. Maddy sighed, gasped, stroked the lips of her sex and the hard nub of flesh at the top of it, wondering how on earth she’d gone for so long without a man’s hands on her.
    “Not just any man’s,” she reminded herself. There was only one pair of hands she wanted. One mouth. One body. One person she visualized as she spiraled toward a climax.
    The tension built like a carefully tended fire before erupting in a soft wave of pleasure that had her shaking and gasping for breath, even as she whispered one word, over and over.
    His name.
    She hadn’t even floated back to earth when she was interrupted by a stark ringing sound. Maddy sat bolt upright, her hand flying instinctively to the receiver.
    She’d thought it incredibly silly to have a phone in the bathroom when she’d bought this condo last year. Looking back, however, she knew it was a good thing. She did enjoy her baths.
    “Hello?”
    “How did it go? Have you done him yet?”
    Tabby. She should have known. She’d lay money her father had pronounced it to the world when she’d left for a lunch date today. Sinking back down in the water, she replied, “It was lunch. Just lunch.”
    “But with him , right?”
    Tabby had already pumped her for all the details of the bachelor auction, calling her late the night it had taken place. Maddy had somehow managed to remain noncommittal, pretending it had gone as planned and she hadn’t been affected by her prize .
    “Maddy? Come on, spill. You did have lunch with that dark-haired, dark-eyed stud from the auction, didn’t you?”
    “How do you know what he looks like?”
    Her sister made a dismissive sound. “You probably described him really well on the phone.”
    Possible, though Maddy remembered trying to be extremely nondescriptive and brief, not wanting to ever think about Jake Wallace again after that night. But she supposed she could have waxed a little poetic about the guy, under Tabby’s relentless prodding.
    But something in her sister’s tone—a note of mischief, of amusement—made her suspect it wasn’t true. “I don’t think I described him that well.”
    Silence.
    And suddenly she figured it out. Gasping, she sat straight up in the tub again, nearly dropping the phone into the mountain of bubbles.