Tell Me a Desire (The Story Series Book 2) Read online

  Tell Me a Desire

  The Story Series: Episode Two

  Tamara Lush

  Edited by

  Jami Nord, Chimera Editing

  Copy Editor

  Rebecca A. Weston

  Cover

  Hang Le

  Contents

  TELL ME A DESIRE

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  INTO THE HEAT

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  TELL ME A DESIRE

  The Story Series: Episode Two

  By Tamara Lush

  www.tamaralush.com

  Copyright © 2016 by Tamara Lush

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, business establishments or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for third-party websites, blogs or critiques or their content.

  Created with Vellum

  Chapter 1

  “Any plans for the weekend?”

  I was on my back, staring out the half-closed slats of the window blinds at the parking lot six floors below. My eyes focused on a red car and—ow. Damn. I whimpered as the doctor tormented my cervix with a swab. She undid the clamp of the speculum, and I muffled a squeak by throwing the crook of my arm across my mouth.

  “Dinner party,” I mumbled.

  Wincing at the knife-like extraction of the medical device from my core, I whipped my head away from the window and toward Dr. Miller’s face, which was between my legs. Propping myself on my elbows, I allowed my knees to fall against each other as she rolled her chair away from the table.

  “Wonderful. Okay, just like last year, I need to ask a few routine questions. Sexually active?”

  “Um. Yeah. I still have a boyfriend.” Boyfriend seemed an inadequate word to describe Caleb, who was forty-two. But whatever. It would do for this routine conversation.

  “Monogamous?”

  As I sat up, the chill of the air conditioner hit my bare back, exposed by the ill-fitting paper gown. “Yes. We’ve been together for two years.”

  “What are you doing for birth control?”

  “Condoms mostly, because I have a hard time remembering to take pills. I also have a diaphragm.” When I remember. When I plan ahead. When we don’t devour each other spontaneously on the kitchen floor. “We also sometimes use the, um, withdrawal method.”

  An image of kissing a naked and hard Caleb the previous evening popped into my mind. Amused we couldn’t have sex for forty-eight hours before my annual exam, he’d pulled me atop his body, grabbed a fistful of my hair, then made a request that had sounded so desperate and demanding it had made my toes curl with desire.

  I need you, Emma. You’re going to suck my cock. Now. You’re so fucking good at it.

  I bit my lip, trying not to grin salaciously at the memory in the presence of my gynecologist.

  Dr. Miller’s blue latex gloves made a smacking sound as she stripped them off. “Okay. Everything looks normal, and we’ll get your annual results probably within a week.” She paused. “So I need to ask. Are you aiming to get pregnant?”

  My eyes widened at the unexpected question. I cleared my throat, searching for my voice. “Um. Well…I hadn’t really…”

  It was a question without an answer, one I hadn’t much considered until that moment. A mom? Me? Did I even have a maternal gene? I’d joked over the years that I didn’t, but for some reason, having a doctor ask me if I wanted a baby struck an unexpectedly tender nerve. One that had been well-buried until this moment.

  “Okay.” She rolled her stool over to the counter. Peering first at a file, she then looked up. “So in reading your chart, I see you’re…thirty-five? You seem a lot younger.”

  I tilted my head and squinted sourly into her round, wire-rimmed glasses, as if I didn’t quite believe what I was about to say. “Tomorrow. I turn thirty-five tomorrow.”

  I was officially middle-aged and childless. Wait, when did that happen? Suddenly I felt a little floaty, as if I was watching this scene from afar. My ears tuned into the doctor’s chipper, professional voice.

  “Well, I always like to tell women your age this information. You need to make up your mind whether you want a child. Within about a year, I’d say. It sounds a little harsh, but it’s true. You don’t have a lot of time left if you want to try to conceive naturally. If you can still conceive naturally.”

  My jaw dropped.

  “Consider this.” She tapped on my cold, bare ankle. “If you were to get pregnant today, it would be categorized as a geriatric pregnancy. So it’s time to decide, hon.”

  A geriatric pregnancy. Jesus, that sounded awful. I grimaced and took a deep breath. “Oh. Well, okay. I’ll think about it.” I probably sounded indignant, because I was.

  “Yes. Do that. Talk it over with your boyfriend.”

  Nodding, I gave the doctor a weak wave as she left the room. I exhaled and flopped back on the exam table. Well, that was rude of her, telling me I didn’t have much time left to have a baby.

  The paper underneath my head crinkled in my ear as I reached toward the blinds, parting two slats with my fingers so I could get a better glimpse of the outdoors. Palm trees lined the parking lot. A yellow plastic bag floated in between two black SUVs, and I watched while my stomach twisted uncomfortably. It was bright outside—Orlando-summer bright—and I ran my tongue around the roof of my suddenly parched mouth.

  A baby?

  Was I ready to be a mother? I had serious doubts. I’d lived my adult life as an overgrown girl, buried in running my bookstore and writing erotic stories. I’d put a premium on pretty dresses and friends and seeking culture.

  And then, I’d met Caleb.

  Talk it over with your boyfriend.

  How would I do that exactly? I’d always assumed my biological clock had been on permanent pause. Until this moment, the only clocks in my life were the ones that buzzed when it was time for a cocktail or when I felt the urge to write. Now? I wasn’t sure what time it was.

  I heaved myself off the table and paused at the chair where I’d piled my cute, light-pink sheath dress, ivory-hued lingerie, and straw purse. Ignoring the cold air on my bare ass, I rooted around in my bag for a cinnamint, then checked my phone. There was a text from Caleb.

  How’d the doctor visit go, doll?

  I went to tap a response, pulverizing the mint with my molars as I pondered.

  Caleb was the best man I’d ever been with. I hadn’t been searching for love when I met him, but I’d found it. A ridiculous, big love, an all-consuming romance. He’d told me he loved me after we’d been together six months. We’d been visiting a museum in Sarasota, and under a giant tree, he’d confessed those three little words.

  Life had only gotten better since then.

  The best sex, the best conversation, the best everything. He read books—serious books, intelligent books—and encouraged me to write erotica. He cooked, he was attentive at all the right times. Hell, he’d even allowed my cat Higgins
to live with him because I spent so much time at his place and I felt like my kitty deserved to live in a luxury penthouse condo. His only flaw was that he didn’t like to pick up after himself. But what man did? And, anyway, he had staff for that.

  That Caleb was rich was incidental. That he’d saved my bookstore from closing was a blessing.

  Everything’s in working order, I texted back. Results in a week. I’m going to the salon now, then heading home to get ready for the Comic Con event at the bookstore tonight.

  But Caleb hadn’t talked marriage. We’d sailed along at our pace. Our own gilded, champagne-infused, highly sexual pace. One that didn’t seem to involve much adulting, at least on my part. Our relationship was going absurdly well, despite the nagging feeling that Caleb wasn’t giving me his all.

  Like he had with his wife, Tara, who’d died years before from cancer.

  And now it was time for me to decide whether I wanted his baby before it was too late. Stupid ovaries. I groaned out loud. My phone vibrated with another message.

  Are you still planning on wearing the getup that makes you look like a cross between a schoolgirl and a sexy housekeeper?

  God, how I loved him for texting in complete sentences.

  You mean my Cinderella costume? Yes, that’s what I’m wearing tonight.

  Despite all of his obvious charms—or maybe because of them—I hadn’t wanted to pressure him into making a decision about marriage. Didn’t believe in ultimatums. And yet, his lack of wanting a future had stung in recent months. Last month he’d asked me to move in with him, but I’d waffled. Said I needed more time to think it over. It was okay if he and my cat cohabitated, but I didn’t want to live together. That’s the kind of relationship my parents had.

  They’d been unmarried for the first ten years of my life, then finally wed in a half-assed, half-drunk, half-high ceremony on a crowded beach one weekend, surrounded by friends and family and beer cans and, if I recalled correctly, a drum circle.

  I’d been the flower girl. A pale child who scowled a lot and hated the sunshine, who had wanted to escape back into a book inside the motel room.

  If I were a mom, I’d want to do a better job than my parents. And I also wanted to be firmly married beforehand. Maybe that’s why I’d waited. I had wanted to find the perfect man.

  And I’d found him.

  I slipped on my underwear, then my dress.

  But didn’t I also deserve what Tara had had? It wasn’t the material things I craved. I didn’t give a damn about a diamond or a deed to a penthouse.

  No, I wanted a commitment from him. I wanted him to be my husband. I wanted him to love me as much as he’d loved his previous wife. Or more.

  My phone buzzed again.

  I’m working from home. Stop by so I can admire your costume and feel like a distinguished old pervert in your youthful presence. I love you.

  This made me grin. I love you, too, even though you’re a distinguished old pervert.

  I’d always thought I’d have children someday. When I was older. When I was mature and married and stable.

  I wasn’t any of those things, but apparently, that someday was now.

  Chapter 2

  My hair was blue. A deep, electric blue, like something straight out of a comic book. A hairdresser friend had not only slathered the temporary color onto my jet-black curls but had straightened and styled it into elaborate, high pigtails on either side of my head. The exaggerated, pointy ends brushed my neck as I walked into Caleb’s penthouse.

  The distant sound of his voice echoed through the modern, sleek, gray-and-silver décor. Tossing my purse on the low-slung sofa, I tiptoed to his office and paused to watch him, fiddling with the tie of a white fake-fur capulet slung around my shoulders.

  For tonight’s Comic Con costume ball at my bookstore, I’d dressed as an anime Cinderella, with a short, ice-blue-and-white dress and matching blue satin heels. I rocked a smoky eye and a light pink lip—no need to go crazy and overshadow the blue hair. I was a living, breathing, Florida fairytale princess. One who’d grown up in a trailer park, in the shadow of theme parks and fables, one who’d found her own Prince Charming. Who happened to be talking on the phone, his back to me.

  Caleb was standing at the floor-to-ceiling window. His suit jacket was off, and he was in charcoal-gray pants and a dove-gray button down. I’d bought him the shirt recently, rightly anticipating it would show off his broad shoulders.

  He’d pushed his sleeves up, and one arm stretched above his head to rest on the window as he stared at the vast Florida flatland many stories below. He’d gone a bit more silver around the temples since we’d first met, and his buttoned-up conservative style still made my heart race.

  And I was still beautiful to him. It’s what he told me often. I was unconventional to his staid outer self. Wild and creative to his corporate and tame.

  You complete me, he always said. I loved him more than I’d ever loved anything. He gave me sex that pushed me over the brink of sanity and intellectual stimulation that kept me sane.

  And yet…

  The earlier conversation with the doctor had tormented me for hours, refusing to fully vanish from my thoughts while I was supposed to relax at the salon. So if you complete him, why hasn’t he wanted to commit? the critical super-ego in my brain whispered.

  He could leave you.

  He won’t be interested when you tell him you want his baby.

  He doesn’t love you enough to marry you.

  Caleb was on a Bluetooth earpiece, speaking in his low buzz of a voice. I would never, ever tire of listening to him. Especially when he was speaking Portuguese, like he was doing now. He was fluent in four languages, and his voice still sent a thrill down my spine, regardless of the accent.

  Folding my arms, I rested my shoulder against the doorframe, smiling. I suspected he was talking about his company’s new skyscraper in São Paulo. The King Group—one of the largest developers in the US and poised to be the biggest in the Americas—was a few months from being finished with Brazil’s newest, tallest building, and after eons of cost overruns, labor issues, and recession worries, the multibillion-dollar building was finally on track.

  Still talking in measured tones, Caleb turned. His eyes widened and lit up, and he beamed at me.

  The best feeling in the world: making him happy.

  He beckoned with one quick finger. By the time I undid the capulet, deposited it onto a nearby leather sofa, and crossed the room, he’d sat down in the matching black office chair behind the desk and leaned back a little. Opening his arm, he guided me gently onto his lap. Smoothing the tulle-and-satin skirt underneath my hips, I squirmed into place as he embraced me with one arm and stretched the other out to tap a finger on the desk.

  I lightly kissed him on the forehead, careful not to make noise, and paused to inhale his delicious scent. I reveled in his smell, which was at once masculine and woody and also a sliver of delicate.

  He switched to English. “Okay. I’ll take that down. Wait. Let me get a pen.”

  When he rolled the chair toward the desk, I stood up, then leaned over to grab one of the dozen silver pens nestled neatly in a steel cylindrical holder. Although Caleb loved technology, he often asserted his mind remembered things better when he wrote them in ink. And he had a thing for expensive ballpoint pens, which I found endearing.

  But now, I wasn’t trying to be helpful and I wasn’t attracted to his pen. I merely wanted to tease him.

  And it worked. As he spoke again in Portuguese, I reached over my shoulder with the ballpoint and felt his hand on the back of my thigh, at the band of my opaque white stocking where a tiny bow was sewn onto the fabric. Then his hand went further up my leg. He wasted no time in squeezing my ass, which was covered in plain, white cotton underwear. I twisted my head to grin at him over my shoulder, then opened my mouth in mock-surprise when his middle finger pressed against the fabric, right at the entrance to my body where he’d wanted to be’ the previous n
ight.

  With his other hand, he jotted a note in a Moleskine notebook, then closed the black cover.

  “Well, adeus. Tenha um bom dia.” With one hand still on my backside, he tore the Bluetooth away from his ear and set it on a specially made, polished steel hook. I straightened and faced him, leaning against the desk edge as I watched him align the little earpiece hook with the pen cup.

  “Bom dia to you.” He grinned, turning his attention to me. He ran his hands up my legs, which sent familiar ripples of want through me. “Have you come to clean the house, my little Cinderella?”

  Throwing my head back, I chortled. He knew I wasn’t inspired to clean ever. Thank God for the daily housekeeping staff at his condo and the team he sent to scrub my place once a week, despite my protests. I reached to stroke his silvery-black hair.

  “No such luck.”

  He grinned and cocked his head. “No? So why are you here, my love?”

  I hoisted myself up and sat on his desk, my legs tight together. “I wanted you to see my outfit.” My voice was shy. We loved to play games like this with each other.

  He tugged on one of my ponytails. “And what a beautiful outfit it is.”

  “And I wanted to know if you’d be my date to the costume ball at the bookstore tonight.”

  I bit my lip and studied him with big eyes. Caleb loved when I wore costumes, when we roleplayed, when we experimented. Whatever each other’s fantasies were, we tried hard to fulfill them.

  And now my fantasy was for him to be the experienced, older man to my costumed, ingénue character. A little perverse? Probably. Still, I had a couple of hours before I needed to be at my store. Hearing Caleb’s deep voice and watching him move with precision made me crave his body. I didn’t want to think about babies and commitment right then. We hadn’t had sex in more than two days, and now I wanted my boyfriend to fuck me. Creatively.