Brazen Read Online Free PDF Page A

the glass. I feel him lapping up the spoils of our
intimate battle. He makes tiny, hungry, whimpering noises. When he finally
looks up from between my legs, he’s smiling like a wicked boy.
    I shove his
shoulders back with my knees. “Get out of my house.”
    His eyes
widen but he stands.
    I grab his
underwear from the bed behind me and toss them unceremoniously at his chest. He
watches me watching him as he pulls them up his thighs and over his raging
hard-on. He runs his tongue over his swollen lower lip, and his expression is
dark. I move away and slip my plain silk robe from the hook by the door and
thread my arms into the sleeves. It feels like a straitjacket, just as his
presence feels like an invitation to madness.
    “I don’t want
to see you ever again,” I say evenly, and it’s true. If I have to look at him
for one minute longer I’ll want him in my sheets, his body curled around me.
I’ll want him seated across the table from me in the morning, drinking coffee
and reading the paper, and that’s not acceptable.
    His mouth
twitches, but he holds his tongue. His blue, blue eyes stare into mine for a
long moment, and only the desperate motions of his ribs as he struggles for his
breath give him away. He turns and he leaves me, leaves the bedroom door open
behind him.
    I sink down
onto the mattress. Out in the hall, I hear the metallic squeak of a hinge. With
a suddenness that makes me gasp, he snaps all the breakers back on, and my room
and the hall glare bright and artificial. I feel naked and blind, and as I hear
his footsteps fade down the steps and the click of the front door closing, I
feel more alone than I have in five years.

Chapter Three
     
    The
trouble-man stayed away for an eternity. Well, four days. But trust me when I
say it felt like years. I’d almost begun to believe he decided to respect my
demands. I can’t imagine what made me think he’s the sort of man who would.
    Will wanted
an explanation when I announced first thing on Monday that Sean was to be
struck from the roster, even as I could still practically feel his tongue
sliding in and out of my pussy.
    “I never want
that man allowed here again,” I said, buttering my toast. “The
one with the short brown hair and the annoyingly blue eyes.”
    “ That one?” Will sounded
as if he were taking the news personally. “Are you serious? I was so excited to
get him! He’s perfect! He looks like Paul Newman, circa Exodus .” Will shares my love of old movies, as well as eager young men.
    “I should be
so lucky,” I said flippantly and sipped my coffee. Paul Newman should be so
lucky.
    “What did he do? Or not do?”
    “He isn’t
housetrained,” I said, and Will dropped the matter with a bitchy shrug and a
sigh.
    This evening,
when Sean finally returns, he doesn’t darken my door. He scales my fire escape,
instead, and when he appears in my bedroom window I’m so startled I scream like
a film star confronted by a mummy.
    I recover
quickly and glare at my would-be burglar. I stand before the tall window with
my arms crossed sternly over my chest, and I can’t decide right away if I
should let him in. I’m dressed in my robe again, fresh from the shower. The
scheduled boys aren’t due to arrive for another hour.
    I’ve come to
equate Sean with the rain. In the past week I haven’t had one without the
other, and now that I think about it, they’re both designed to make things
thoroughly damp. He’s framed in the window, face shining with drizzle, white
dress shirt wet and clinging. It’s dark out but he’s lit by my bedroom lights.
Very, very slowly, he smiles his lopsided smile.
    I flip the
latch and push the bottom pane up.
    “Don’t you
dare get mud on my carpet,” I say, and I turn my back on him and go to my
vanity to finish brushing my hair out.
    I hear the
clang of his shoes as they drop onto the fire escape, and I feel his energy as
he enters and approaches. He snatches the brush from my hand and takes over.