Anything But Vanilla

‘You betcha.’ She was going to go stark raving crazy if she didn’t get him inside her soon. Jack – Jack who was showing the first traces of a shadow around his jaw and who was going to feel fucking amazing inside her.

Jack sagged against her shoulder as she split the wrapper. The curve of his lips clove to the pulse point in her neck. He nibbled, began to suck. Damn! Kara bit her lip. It was difficult to concentrate when he was distracting her like that. Still, she took her time dressing him. She liked that he didn’t rush her, which meant she got to explore his whole length as she rolled the sheath into place. His cock curved sabre-like towards his body. He was uncut, the skin drawn back like a collar around the silky-smooth tip. A small tattoo of a pentacle occupied the space just below his right hip, the ink dark against the white of his skin. If there was time and somewhere comfortable – if, if, if. She wanted to explore him more thoroughly, get him properly naked. Suddenly it was important to see if the brown thatch of hair around his groin extended upwards. She followed the silky trail to his navel, shoved his ribbed T-shirt out of the way to see the rest. Golden-brown hairs circled his nipples and filled all the space between. Beneath that sign of masculinity he was tautly muscled and every bit as sleek as his outfit suggested. Part of her actually longed to step back and admire him. If she commanded him to stay would he do it? Would he stand exposed against the iron railings, with the dark, mirrored surface of the canal behind him, and let her gorge herself on the visual feast of him? Hairy men turned her on. It didn’t matter if was an unruly mass of curls upon a man’s head or just thick tawny hairs upon his arms. There was something exciting about a man with some body hair, particularly a good-looking one. So many of them shaved or waxed.

She was so done with Mr Metrosexual.

Jack, perhaps sensing a growing distance between them, shimmied right up close to her, and bent his head so they were looking into one another’s eyes on a level. ‘Ready?’

Like hell they were, she had no idea how they were going to accomplish anything in this position.

‘Hold yourself on the railings.’

Kara grasped the blue-painted metal. She gave a screech and a giggle as Jack hoisted her off her feet and dealt with her knickers. She guessed she was going home bare as they floated away on the canal. She wrapped her legs around him as he lined them up. They were in a public place, but there was nothing coy about his actions. No hesitation and definitely no embarrassment as his cock bucked eagerly at her entrance. That lack made her cheeks colour a little for both of them.

‘Tell me.’ He held them mere millimetres apart. ‘Tell me exactly how you want it.’

Was he a talker, or just making sure he stayed out of trouble? She could hardly cry coercion if she’d begged him for it.

Kara squeezed around his hips with her thighs, dragging them a fraction closer together. ‘I want you to fuck me.’

‘No – I never would have guessed that.’

Sarky bugger. Shit! He’d probably drop her over the railings into the canal if she admitted any of the stuff in her head, like visions of nipple clamps and chaining him to the railings. Surely the only things that mattered here were that he turned her on and she needed him. The whys and wherefores were irrelevant; the bounty of her inner life more so.

‘Nothing more than that to say?’ he queried, lifting one of his wing-like brows again. ‘You just want me to slide up and fill your cunt.’ The way he said cunt made her literally ache with need. ‘You’re not after anything flashy, just a straight hard fuck.’ He delivered as he punctuated the last word, filling her up so completely it took her body a moment to respond to the shock. Heavenly didn’t come close to describing it. It just felt right – so goddamned incredibly right. She clamped tight to his body as he drew back to give her what she’d apparently asked for. ‘You know, I’m kind of surprised. I never took you to be such a vanilla kind of girl.’

He was right. She so wasn’t. What sort of strait-laced girl fucked a stranger up against the backdrop of the murky canal? Why had it taken her so long to admit that to herself, instead of constantly trying to be good?

‘So why don’t you tell me what really gets you off? Shall I pretend I’m a vampire and sink my teeth in? Do you like a fingertip in your arse?’

‘Hold me tighter.’ Their position meant they were already pretty much jammed together with no space between. Kara bent her head to his ear. She mouthed around the lobe before breathing the words. ‘Come and then I want to lick you clean.’

The muscles in his face tightened into a grin, and then he picked up her and the pace again, pounding into her like it was a race they had to win.

Kara continued to mouth the side of his neck where the skin was thinnest and his pulse raced just below the surface. He was slippery and hard between her thighs. Her clit, already prepped by his earlier teasing, shot out darts of pleasure each time he made a forward thrust. Why wasn’t it always this good? Why could she only get this sort of relief with a stranger in a seedy venue? Why hadn’t her life worked out, and did that matter when she could get sex this good?

‘Ooohh!’ The buzz built and suddenly burst. She screamed, panted, scored a few lines across his back. He continued to fill her up the whole while, until the moment passed and she realised he was still hard and hadn’t come.

Kara shook herself free of his arms. She knelt down on the quayside. Took a little risk – what the heck – and closed her mouth over the length of him. She’d said she was going to lick him clean. Well, instead she was going to suck him off.

The plan met with no resistance from Jack. Nah, his knees buckled a bit, but he had some handy railings to cling to, which was good, because she wasn’t letting him go. He tasted too nice: part her, part him, the whole ridiculously sexy.

Kara steadied herself, with one palm flat against his inner thigh, the other wrapped around the base of his cock. She liked that he wasn’t too long. He was nicely proportioned and she got one hell of a kick out of roving her tongue over the flare of the head and tickling the sweet spot just below the eye. When he started trying to claw at her hair in order to drag her closer, she worked with the roll of his hips.

‘You’re good at this. Oh, sweetheart.’ His knuckles were white against the vivid blue railing.

‘Are you going to come?’ she asked, grinning up at him in a facetious manner.

‘So close.’

They were back to the depth of discourse they’d shared inside the club. ‘I want to watch.’ Actually, not just watch. She wanted to watch and do. Kara rose and stood beside him with her back to the railing. She cupped his length with one hand and shoved her other hand inside her skirt so that she could rub herself in time with the thrust of his cock through the ring of her fingers. The low-level spark of her previous orgasm rekindled immediately. They almost raced. Who could cross the finish line first? Who could ejaculate the furthest? OK, he won hands down on that one. He was beautiful as he came, his face kind of screwed up and tortured looking, eyes closed, teeth gritted, as if he was doing something painful or hideous. Yet in those few moments he belonged to her totally.

Jack opened his eyes and stared at her. ‘You’re a dirty minx,’ he scoffed as he watched her give in to a minor explosion. The second big O of the day just never lived up to the first. Then he hitched up his jeans and tucked his cock out of sight. ‘Got somewhere to go?’ he asked. By which he meant: let’s continue this somewhere more comfortable.

‘Yeah – yeah, I have. I’m good.’ She dropped a kiss upon the tip of his nose, backed off, then returned to press another to those delicious lips of his. Then Kara was off, trotting across the tarmac back towards the club. She couldn’t face an awkward parting in the morning; better that they went separate ways now. And she definitely wasn’t looking for a relationship. No way. Not for a good long time.

‘Hey, where are you going?’ He moved forward as if he were about to jog after her.

Kara laughed and waved. ‘Back to my wedding party.’ She hoped he got the emphasis on my. The girls were probably scouring the dance floor for her by now. Being tipsy and high on the aftermath of awesome sex meant she could just about tolerate the thought of being found. As far as celebrations went, this one sucked, and sucked in a truly pointless, ridiculous way. It wasn’t a hen night, a point on which she’d had to correct several people. It was the fill-in party for what ought to have been her wedding night and an orgy load of sex in a hotel room before jetting off to Hawaii. Only Gavin David ‘Tosspot’ Covey had gone and ruined that by being a clingy control freak who insisted on knowing her whereabouts 24/7. More importantly, instead of apologising when she’d called the wedding off, he’d gawped at her in horror over the deposits they’d lose. No way was she signing up for a lifetime with him. She hoped the plane carrying him and Gemma – you are so not my best friend considering how fast you jumped in to console him – over the Atlantic was hit by lightning and dropped out of the sky. It seemed appropriate punishment somehow, except that she didn’t want to hurt anyone else on board so maybe they’d have to accidentally fall out of an open door or something.

Damn! And now her good mood was gone. Time to reinstate it with alcohol. A lone tear trickled down her face as she slipped back into the nightclub via the fire exit. At least she’d just had the most glorious sex she’d had in months, far better than that painting-by-numbers crap she’d been enduring with Gavin.

‘Hey, Kara, there you are.’ Her sister clamped a hand tight around her arm. ‘You’ve about thirty drinks lined up.’

She hoped that was Karen’s usual exaggeration.

‘Come and play catch up.’

* * *

Kara woke disoriented in an unfamiliar room. Sunlight so bright she could barely open her eyes flooded in through sheet-glass walls that surrounded her on three sides. Where the hell? For a horrible moment she feared she’d taken up some fool on his offer and ended up in his bed. Only there didn’t appear to be anyone beside her. Kara shook her head to try and dislodge the grogginess. Slowly her vision corrected. Karen’s place – she was in her sister’s conservatory, huddled beneath a throw on the garden swing they’d brought inside for the winter. No wonder nausea bubbled in her stomach like she’d swallowed poison. She’d been swinging in a hammock all night, and she was always travel sick.

The wail of her phone that had woken her compounded the ache in her head. Kara flailed around and eventually wrestled it out from the pile of discarded clothes she must have torn off in the dark. Not Gavin, she prayed, as she unlocked the phone screen. She never wanted to speak to him again. She’d already deleted his number but that was no guarantee that he’d done the same.

Christopher, the caller ID flashed up. ‘What do you want, baby brother?’ she croaked. Her throat was drier than a carton of crispy fried squid.

‘Oh good, you are still alive.’

Kara resisted the urge to tell him to fuck the hell off and opted instead to swallow the water she’d had foresight enough to bring to bed with her last night, but not wits enough left at the time to drink. Didn’t he realise she was off limits today, pre-booked for wallowing in a post-my-wedding-didn’t-happen party haze?

‘I heard a rumour that you and Karen crawled in around dawn.’

Fell, was more accurate. They’d only crawled after they tripped over the doormat. Thinking of which, boy, did her knees ache. Karen really needed to get a rug to put over those tiles. ‘What did you want?’ While it was entirely possible he’d called merely to be vindictive, even that couldn’t explain the hint of excitement in her brother’s voice.

‘I got the job.’ He gave a pause so she could make appropriate noises. ‘I’m off to New Zealand for twenty-six weeks to work on that sci-fi flick I’ve been talking about. Plus, I’m focus puller not clapper loader.’

Kara pulled a cushion over her head and settled down again. The pillow smelled faintly musty, like a caravan that had been locked up for too long. However, it did allow her to open her eyes without being dazzled. The conservatory had already reached temperate and was headed for blistering within another forty minutes or so. ‘Does that mean you get to operate the camera rather than just load the film?’ she asked. Chris had explained the various camera-related roles dozens of times, but she’d never yet assimilated the facts beyond something to do with angles, trajectories and making the images crisper. ‘That’s wonderful! Great news.’ Faking exuberance only compounded her headache. ‘Couldn’t you have waited until this evening to tell me?’

‘Oh, are you hung over?’ he crowed. ‘And no, it couldn’t wait.’ The line crackled and she guessed he was in the car on loudspeaker. ‘I’ve a flight to catch. I’m on my way to the airport now, and you haven’t heard the best bit yet.’

An enormous yawn stretched Kara’s jaw as she closed her eyes and tried to relax her brain while she waited to make appropriate ‘wow’ noises over whichever major star he was going to be working with. Unless he was about to offer her a job as chief pamperer to Johnny Depp and throw in a ticket to New Zealand, this absolutely could have waited.

‘You know that place I was looking at,’ Christopher said instead, which surprised her into jolting upright, and caused the swing to start rocking. Kara bounced against the cushions and dry heaved.

‘I didn’t get it, but it’s OK, because I found somewhere else that’s twice as good.’

‘That’s great,’ she said. Somehow she managed to disentangle one foot from the throw and place it on the floor, thus bringing the swing to a tremulous halt. ‘So, you’ve bought a house but you’re flying to New Zealand.’ Hopeless timing was obviously a genetically wired family trait.

‘It’s a barn rather than a house, and it’s on an island.’