Show and Tell: A Forbidden Flowers Story Read online

  Meredith raised her coffee mug like she was about take a sip, then stopped. “Edging?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “And . . .?”

  “Oh my God, my toes nearly blew off when he finally made me co—oh, hi, Jenna.”

  Jenna had smiled and given them a little wave before they had hurried off, giggling about how hot Lillian Bangs’s sex life must have been to write such realistic scenes.

  If only they knew. Jenna didn’t have enough free time to date, let alone indulge all her wild sexual fantasies.

  But thinking about the incident still made her smile. Maybe Lillian Bangs wasn’t a household name, but the fact that her coworkers were reading her books made it feel like she was at least halfway up the ladder of success.

  Her teakettle began to whistle, so she stuffed the last bite of Oreo in her mouth and shut off the burner.

  With a fresh cup of tea, she returned to her desk and got back to Delano and Josephine.

  An hour later, Jenna was breathing hard as Delano’s thick cock plunged into Josephine’s tightness as he took her from behind in front of an audience at his sex club.

  In Jenna’s mind, she was Josephine. After all, these were her sexual fantasies. Fantasies she had never been brave enough to explore in the real world beyond pretending her vibrator was her current book hero’s throbbing cock. Delano was only the most recent in a long line of imaginary lovers who had fulfilled Jenna’s every wish and desire, playing the part of the perfect man, if only in her mind. Dark, demanding, dominating, uncompromising. Physically potent, hot as hell, with an unrivaled command over the female anatomy.

  And wealthy.

  Hey, it was a fantasy, so why not make the man of her dreams a multimillionaire?

  Pressing her legs together as Delano shoved Josephine’s legs farther apart, Jenna was on the verge of giving in and retrieving the Pocket Rocket from the trove of sex toys in her nightstand for a quickie when the cell phone she used for work rang.

  She jumped and checked the time. Almost ten thirty. Sometimes her boss called her after work regarding a case, but this late? And on a Friday? That was unusual. Besides, she didn’t recognize the number.

  Still, she couldn’t let it go to voicemail. Maybe her boss had lost her phone again and was calling from a restaurant or from someone else’s phone.

  She answered, leaving the call on speaker. “Hello?”

  An imposing, darkly sensual voice that clearly was not her boss or anyone else she knew said with a subtle air of irritation, “Are you coming?”

  With Delano and Josephine’s sex scene still at the front of her mind, and mildly irritated at being interrupted by what was apparently a wrong number, Jenna replied without missing a beat. “Not yet, but I’m working on it.”

  No lie, because, seriously, when she finished this scene, she was getting naked with her vibrator for at least an hour.

  Stunned silence followed, as if her unknown caller was rapidly backtracking to determine how this call had turned so sexual so fast.

  A moment later, he said, “I, uh . . . I think I might have dialed the wrong number?” His voice lilted inquisitively, like he was asking a question instead of making a statement, and he sounded more than a little intrigued. “Is this . . .” He rattled off a phone number that was one digit off from hers.

  “Sorry, no.”

  He paused as if checking his phone. “Ah, okay. I hit seven instead of one.”

  “Yes, you did.” Being interrupted while she was writing normally would have pissed her off, but she just couldn’t find it in her to be upset with this man with the bourbon-smoked voice.

  “Well, I’m sorry to have disturbed you.” She could hear his mischievous smile. “Sounds like I caught you at a bad time.”

  “Not really.” Leaning back in her chair, she released the clip holding up her hair, letting it spill over her shoulders.

  She could take a break from Delano and Josephine for this guy. Just listening to his voice was like having her inner thigh caressed while being kissed right below her ear. Absolutely exhilarating.

  He chuckled. “So, you’re not working on coming?”

  Ah, he was referring to that?

  “What if I am? Wouldn’t that mean it’s a good time to catch me, not a bad one?”

  “Okay, sure, if you want to look at it that way.” He paused, and she could almost feel his amusement coming through the connection. “Is that why you sounded so breathless when you answered? Because you were working on making yourself come?” He said the word purposefully, with a sense of provocation, heavily accenting the hard K sound of the C.

  “Actually, I’m working.” She glanced at her computer screen.

  “Working.” From the dubious way he said it, Jenna got the impression that he didn’t quite believe her. “At ten thirty on a Friday night?”

  She knew how that sounded, but she was in no rush to correct where his thoughts had obviously taken him. She didn’t know this guy, and he didn’t know her, so what was the harm in engaging in a little flirtatious fun?

  “Exactly what line of work are you in?” he asked, his tone level and nonjudgmental.

  “What line of work do you think I’m in?”

  Most wrong numbers weren’t nearly this fun, ending in seconds with an abrupt click. Fortunately, Mr. Bourbon had stayed on the line.

  “Phone sex operator?” he suggested. “Webcam girl?”

  She laughed.

  “No?” he asked, humored.

  “I’m a writer,” she said.

  “I see.”

  Did he?

  “What do you write?” he asked. “Have I heard of you?”

  “Only if you read erotic romance.”

  “Aahh, so that’s what you meant.” He laughed quietly. “Let me guess, you’re writing a hot sex scene.”

  Her gaze scanned the lines of sexually charged text on her monitor. “Maybe.”

  “That would be a yes.”

  She bit her bottom lip. “Maybe.”

  “And now you’re turned on.”

  She loved how he asked a question without really asking it. As if he were reading her mind and plucking the answers from her thoughts, then confirming out loud what he already knew. Either that or he was subtly insinuating his own thoughts into her head to make her think they were her own.

  It was such a Delano type of move. That was the kind of thing he did to Josephine, cleverly suggesting how she should respond to him. Except Delano used shrewder tactics to help Josephine discover her true self. That was the whole basis of the story, to tear down Josephine’s walls and rebuild her so she could learn who she was at her core.

  But Delano and Josephine were fictional characters. She and Mr. Bourbon lived in the real world where she already knew who she was. She didn’t need him planting thoughts inside her head.

  “Maybe I was just being funny when I answered the phone,” she said flippantly.

  “Perhaps.” Distracted silence stretched for several seconds.

  “So, who were you trying to call when you misdialed me?” It wasn’t that she cared. She just wanted to keep the conversation going.

  “Would you be disappointed if I said I was calling my girlfriend?”

  A tiny shiver of jealousy irrationally flashed up her spine. “Why would I be disappointed? I don’t even know you.” But the longer they talked, the more she wanted to know him.

  He made a noise of introspective contemplation like he knew he’d ruffled her feathers, then said, “I was calling my sister.”

  She shouldn’t have been pleased to hear that it was his sister and not a girlfriend he’d been calling, but she was.

  “You don’t know your own sister’s phone number?” she teased.

  There was that delicious dark-chocolate chuckle again. “I did until she got a new phone number last week.”

  “And you didn’t just update her contact record in your phone?”

  “I’ve been busy.” He sounded as if he enjoyed
the way she was badgering him.

  “So, do you always ask your sister such intimate questions?” She got up from her desk and strolled toward the window as a cool breeze blew back the sheer curtains. “Because ‘Are you coming?’ isn’t exactly how I expect my own brother to start a conversation with me?”

  “I’m waiting for my sister in front of her apartment building. I’m picking her up to take her to the Hamptons.”

  “At ten thirty on a Friday night?” she said, throwing his own words back at him.

  He chuckled, catching her jab. “A family friend is getting married out there tomorrow. I promised to take my sister so she wouldn’t have to drive herself or pay for a Lyft, but I got caught up with a problem at work, so I’m running late, and now she’s running late. At this rate, we may never get there, but—ah! There she is.”

  She heard a woman’s voice in the background. “I’m late, I know. I’m sorry.”

  Her unknown caller’s voice grew muffled as if he’d covered his phone with his hand, but Jenna still heard him say, “It’s okay, let’s just get your bags in the trunk so we can get on the road.” He must have uncovered the phone, because when he spoke again, his voice was clear. “My sister is one of the bridesmaids, so she’s a little frazzled.”

  “If she’s a bridesmaid, shouldn’t she have been there today for the rehearsal dinner?”

  “Yes, which is why she’s frazzled.”

  Jenna laughed. “I see.”

  “She’ll have to get the CliffsNotes in the morning.”

  “Has she ever been a bridesmaid before?”

  “No.”

  As a former bridesmaid for three of her sorority sisters, Jenna considered herself a bit of a professional, so she knew the drill. “It’s not too difficult. You line up, wait for the music to start, then walk down the aisle before the bride does. Then you spend the rest of the day making the bride look like a queen and the star of her own Hallmark movie.”

  He laughed. “Sounds simple enough.”

  “I’m sure your sister will be fine.” She dropped the curtain back over the window and returned to her desk. “So, I guess you’ve got to go then, huh?” She tried not to sound disappointed.

  Writing was lonely work. She enjoyed it, but spending all her spare time living in a make-believe world created a vacuum of human contact that her mysterious caller was filling quite nicely. She didn’t want to hang up.

  “My sister ran back up to her apartment to grab one more thing, but as soon as she returns, we’re heading out.”

  “Well”—her head jerked around as a police siren blared to life on the street below and zoomed past her building—“have a safe trip.”

  “Thanks.” He lowered his voice. “And you have fun making yourself come.”

  Butterflies whirled to life in her belly at the way he said that. “Oh, trust me, I will. I’ve got a couple more hours of writing ahead of me, and then it’s just me and my vibrator.”

  She never would have said something so audacious to someone she knew, but her unknown caller was a complete stranger. And with that bodice-ripper voice made of smoke and velvet, why not have a little fun with him?

  “Mm, that’s too bad,” he said, his voice growing even quieter, as if he didn’t want his sister to hear him in case she returned.

  “Too bad?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because wouldn’t you rather be fucked?”

  She sucked in her breath at his boldness, and a flash of heat exploded between her legs. She hadn’t had sex in over two years. She’d been too busy working on her dream of becoming a full-time author and having fantasy sex with her heroes to bother with the complications of the real thing. But now, all she wanted was her legs wrapped around this man’s hot body.

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “Don’t you have a boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  He made a noise, like “What a travesty,” then said, “If only I wasn’t going out of town, I would offer to stop by and fill the vacancy.”

  The thought excited her. Which was completely crazy.

  “I don’t even know you.”

  “And I don’t know you,” he countered. “Makes it exciting, doesn’t it?”

  She refused to admit that it did. He didn’t need to know how turned on she was right now. And not because of what Delano was doing to Josephine on her computer screen.

  “You don’t even know where I live,” she said, redirecting the conversation.

  “Oh, I have a pretty good idea.”

  Jenna frowned at his self-assured tone. “How’s that?”

  “You know that police car that turned on its siren by your apartment a minute ago?”

  She glanced at her open window again. She wasn’t surprised he’d heard it, as loud as it had been. “What about it?”

  “It was one block over from my sister’s apartment building.”

  The line went dead a moment later, but not before she heard his smooth-as-ebony-silk chuckle one last time.

  Chapter Three

  The next two hours were a torturous back and forth between the heat rising from Delano and Josephine getting it on and the arousing memory of her mystery caller’s alluring voice.

  The way he’d said come like he’d been provoking her. The way he’d asked if she would rather have been fucked than masturbate. The way he’d hung up on her like the game had only just begun.

  Everything about their brief conversation had ensnared her thoughts, making it hard to concentrate. Delano and Josephine were no longer the center of her sexual universe. That voice—that incredibly intoxicating voice—was.

  And he’d been only a block away. In the short time they had talked, she could have walked to his sister’s apartment building for a glimpse of the man who went with that voice.

  What did her unknown caller look like? Was he tall? Did he have big hands? Blond hair? Dark hair? Did he wear a suit to work, or did he wear a uniform? Or was Mr. Bourbon just some frumpy dumpy guy with a paunch who happened to have a voice for sin?

  At a quarter past midnight, with her concentration waning and her arousal at a fever pitch, she called it a day and closed up shop for the night.

  Five minutes later, she was naked on her bed with Zhu’s “Light it Up” playing through her Bluetooth speaker from her “Get it On” playlist.

  Hornier than she’d been in ages, she stretched and arched her back, running her hands all over her body, letting herself revel in the salacious feelings her mystery man had elicited inside her for several long, luxurious minutes before pulling a few of her favorite toys from the top drawer of her nightstand and setting them beside her.

  The curtains were open, but she didn’t care. She had turned off the lamp, but enough light still shone into her bedroom from the nightlight in the hall that if anyone with a telescope wanted to watch her from any of the apartment buildings on the other side of the park, they could. Let them. The idea that someone might have been watching got her even hotter.

  She grabbed the bottle of K-Y Intense Pleasure Gel first and poured a few drops on her clit. This magical potion would not only intensify her orgasm, but also help prolong the fun. It had a sort of numbing, hot and cold effect. Icy hot and tingly, the lotion felt like fire-wrapped snowflakes landing on her flesh, and she moaned as she swirled her middle finger around her engorged nub.

  She needed to be careful. She was already incredibly aroused with the echo of Bourbon’s voice licking her dirty thoughts into even dirtier ones. If she got too carried away too quickly, she would come too soon and end the party prematurely. And that would be a crime when what she really wanted was to savor the memory of his voice for as long as possible.

  And the best way to prolong the fun was with a little kink, so the first toy she reached for was her anal plug. Like the K-Y gel, not only did an anal plug make her come harder, but just that little bit of discomfort was enough to help her hold back on the reins of her climactic reflex. The added bo
nus was that the plug also helped feed the fantasy that she was being taken by two men instead of one. The idea was taboo, naughty, and totally hot.

  After sliding the rounded knob through her body’s natural lubricant, as well as some of the gel, she eased the plug into her anus, feeling wickedly perverse, which only got her more excited.

  Somewhere in the Hamptons was a man with a voice made for fucking. Was he lying in bed right now too? Thinking about their phone conversation like she was? Doing what she was doing?

  She was just about to reach for her vibrator and get serious when the sound cut off on her speaker. A moment later, her phone rang

  Everything stopped, including her heart.

  Could it be . . .?

  She rolled onto her side and checked the screen on her phone.

  Him!

  Answering, she went hands-free, placed the phone back on her nightstand, and rolled onto her back again. “Hello?”

  “Am I too late?” His voice purred lasciviously through her Bluetooth speaker.

  “Too late for what?” But she knew why he had called.

  “To help you come.”

  “Maybe I don’t need your help,” she said coquettishly.

  “Then I’ll just listen.”

  She swirled her finger around her clit, sighing as she closed her eyes and imagined him standing over her.

  “So . . . am I too late?” he asked again.

  She smiled and bit her bottom lip. “Actually, your timing couldn’t have been more perfect.”

  “Mmm, tell me.” His dark, silky voice poured warmth right into the heart of her.

  “Tell you?” She wasn’t sure what he wanted her to tell him, but she would recite the multiplication tables if it kept him talking.

  “Yes.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Everything.”

  “Uh . . .” Blinking, she continued working her fingers over her hypersensitive clit but had no idea where to begin.

  “Have you ever had phone sex before?” His voice was cool and confident, yet quiet.

  “No,” she replied coyly.

  “Mm, a virgin.” She imagined him running his palm appreciatively over his mouth and beard. Did he even have a beard?