Diamonds and Toads: A Modern Fairy Tale (16 page)

“You’re even more beautiful than you were at
nineteen, Izzy.”

He heard the harsh rasp of her breathing as a
shudder went through her.

“I’m going to kiss you now.” He took her chin
in his hand and turned her toward him. “Close your eyes,” he said
and then he tasted her bottom lip with the tip of his tongue. “Just
float.”

* * *

Isadora leaned her hip against the edge of
the kitchen table and took a sip of wine. Thank the dear lord, Sam
had finally caught a clue and bought a bottle. He was preparing
steaks for their dinner, and she watched him with newfound
curiosity now that she’d had some experience in such endeavors.

He washed and dried his hands, then walked
the two steps over to the stove and put a big dollop of butter into
a pan. It sizzled and popped and sent the most heavenly scent into
the air.

Isadora closed her eyes and filled her lungs
with the nutty aroma, then sighed and took another sip of her wine.
It was surprisingly good, considering the price, which was still
stickered on the neck: $10.99. Her mother would shudder out of her
Botox and collagen injected skin if she was ever offered such mean
fare.

It gave Isadora a guilty thrill to know she
was doing something so off-goal, so outside the inner circle, so
vulgar
, though for the life of her, she couldn’t figure why
she should feel that way. She’d been disowned and banished, after
all. Her life and her actions were now utterly her own. She blinked
and sat straight up.
Utterly my own….
Hmm.

* * *

After dinner, Sam led Isadora into the living
room and turned on his stereo. In a moment, the sound of smooth
jazz notes rose and quivered around her. Sam walked over to her and
took the glass from her hand, then set it on the end table behind
her. When he met her gaze, Isadora’s heart leapt into her throat.
Oh Lord.
He had that same gleam in his eye he’d had in the
Jacuzzi just before he’d kissed the dickens out of her.

He took hold of her hand and pressed his
mouth to her palm then placed it on his shoulder. “Dance with me,”
he said. As they moved as one in the small square of space his
living room afforded, her body grew ever more aware of his.
Now?
Were they finally going to do it?
She’d never been the
aggressor in the game—she’d never had to be—but she was beginning
to wonder if that’s what he was waiting for: Her to jump his bones.
She had to admit, with Sam, the idea had merit.

So when he dipped his head and touched his
cheek to hers, she answered the gesture with a kiss on his lips. A
bit timid, but it was her first time out. She’d get better with
practice.

He didn’t take the bait.

Instead, he lifted his head and laughed as he
twirled her into a deep dip. “Remember how much fun we had dancing
at all those weekend parties? ‘Course, you were a much better
dancer than I was.” He brought her back up. “Still are.”

Isadora could have sworn the palm glide over
the side of her breast just then had been premeditated. Her eyes
narrowed. He was definitely up to something.

She lifted a brow and gave a mental shrug.
Who cares? Maybe it’d be more fun to wait and watch the pro in
action. See what he would do next—just go with the flow. After all,
no matter what, he was going to give her an orgasm. He had to. He’d
given her a sworn promise. Besides, after almost eight years of
waiting, she figured she could take a few more hours. Especially if
that ‘O’ he’d promised her really was going to go off the Richter
scale.

A slow love song began to play. He held her
hand to his chest and rested his forehead against hers as they
swayed back and forth to the time of the music. “You have gorgeous
breasts.”

Isadora nearly swallowed her tongue. She
gaped up at him.

He nuzzled her neck and then nibbled her
earlobe. “I haven’t been able to think of much else since you
shimmied out of that oversized work shirt of mine earlier.”

A shivery shot of lightning zipped through
her. Isadora swallowed hard. Then she shrugged.

She felt him smile against the tingling skin
on her neck where his moist breath and tender lips caressed
her.

“I’m going to play with them awhile now,
alright?”

Hell, yes!
She nodded.

He led her by the hand over to the sofa and
lifted her sports bra over her head. Isadora watched the rise and
fall of Sam’s chest. His breathing grew more fractured as he
settled his hands on her shoulders and traced them down her arms
then up again. He bent his head and kissed her. Not deeply, but
with reverence.

Isadora’s own breaths came in short, ragged
spurts. Before she realized what she was doing, she’d lifted her
hands to his chest and fisted them in his shirt.

He pulled her against him and thrust his
tongue between her teeth. Then, as if he couldn’t get a thorough
enough taste of her, he gripped the back of her head and plowed her
mouth with even more greed.

Isadora was tumbling. Tumbling at full-tilt
down a deep well of fire and need.

He plunged her backwards onto the sofa and
lay on top of her, cradled between her thighs. Pelvis to pelvis.
And there was no doubt, none at all, that he had fallen into that
exact same well.

With her cheeks held firmly in his warm,
strong hands, he ran open-mouthed kisses over her brow, her cheeks,
her jaw, before returning to her mouth. She felt her pulse pounding
in her vaginal walls and an unfamiliar craving to have him fill her
up grew there as well. She rotated her pelvis so that his erection
pressed more firmly against her center. She heard herself moan.

He sprang up and straddled her hips, resting
his weight on his knees. Breath hissed from his lungs as if from a
bellows. “Enough of that,” he said, then he grinned. “At least for
now.” Then he trailed his fingers over her collarbone and down her
chest to her breasts. He cupped them in his hands, as if weighing
them, and then used the pad of his thumbs to tease the taut nipples
into tighter and tighter nubs. He did this to the point that they
began to sting and then—
did he know?—
he soothed them with
his tongue and finally with his mouth, in the most delicious, soft
suction Isadora had ever experienced.

With unsteady hands she went for the button
of Sam’s pants.

* * *

Sam came real close to letting Isadora have
her way with him.
Real close.
But firm purpose of mind
prevailed. He removed her hands and lifted them above her head.
Then he leaned down and gave her a quick, last kiss on the lips
before he let her go and dragged himself to his feet.

“Not on the couch. And not now.” Did his
voice sound as strained to her ears as it did to his? Then, because
he couldn’t fight the urge, he bent over her and kissed that
gorgeous gaping mouth another time.

“Want some ice cream?” he asked her a second
later. He didn’t wait for her answering shrug. But he did toss her
top in her direction as he sidled around the couch on his way to
the kitchen.

* * *

Okay, this wasn’t fun anymore. Isadora
dragged her top on and sent a venomous look in the direction Sam
had just gone.
I want sex!

Beginning to feel like a toy mouse batted
about by a playful kitten, she hopped up and fisted her hands on
her hips.
Well, no more.
He was going to have sex with
her and he was going to do it RIGHT NOW!

She ripped her top back off and shimmied out
of her shorts. The thong, she left on for the time being. Then she
stormed into the kitchen, the fire of newfound determination
flowing through her veins.

* * *

She found Sam at the kitchen counter,
scooping out vanilla ice cream into two banana split bowls. The
thought that she was going to gain fifty pounds before she figured
out how to get this curse lifted flitted through her mind as she
came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. She
melded herself to him and splayed her hands on his chest.
 

He lifted his head, but didn’t turn to look
at her. “Izzy. It’ll be much better for you if you’ll let me do
things my way.”

But his chest was already rising and falling
at a faster meter. And his skin was growing hotter with every
second she remained plastered against him. The trick was to get him
out of his clothes. If she could get him naked, he’d be too
vulnerable to keep this game up.

Her eye dropped to the counter, and so did
her hand—directly into the last rounded scoop of ice cream he’d
placed in the bowl. She didn’t think, she just acted, cramming it
inside his shirt and squishing the sticky, cold stuff all over his
chest.

“
AhhHH!”
Sam swung around and pushed
her away. “What the hell—? What the hell’dyou do that for?”

Isadora shrugged. Then she snorted a little
when she tried to hold back a laugh.

Sam laughed a little then, too, even though
she could tell he was still pretty torqued at her. “You little
demon,” he said and lifted the sticky shirt away from his chest.
“So that’s how it’s going to be, is it?” He looked up then, and his
breathing stopped. She knew, because when his eyes scanned her
mostly-naked body, his chest stopped moving. Then his cheeks
flushed.

Then, in the most powerful moment of
inspiration she’d ever had, she reached over and took a glob of
dripping ice cream off his chest with her index finger and painted
both her nipples with it. She shivered. And truth be told, she
didn’t know for sure if it was the chill from the cream or the heat
in his eyes that had done it to her.

The buttons on Sam’s shirt
ping
ed in
every direction when he ripped it off. “Okay,” he said as he took a
step toward her. “You win.”

* * *

Sam got a satisfying squeal out of Izzy when
he hoisted her up so her breasts were at his mouth level. He gorged
on the ice cream—gorged on her—in strong, sucking swallows until
she was a hot, trembling mass of luscious female flesh in his
hands.

“Wrap your legs around me.”

When she did, he reached for one of the bowls
and then laid her out on top of the kitchen table.

She went for the button of his jeans again,
but he stayed her hand. “Nuh-uh. First you.” She pouted a little—so
cute—and then shuddered when he balanced the cold bowl on her
abdomen, but she didn’t protest. Nor did she when he rolled the
thong off her and tossed it over his shoulder.

He hooked a foot around the leg of a kitchen
chair, dragged it in place and sat down. Then he lifted her
dangling calves just under the knees and spread her thighs
wide.

“God how I love pussy.” He looked up, met her
hot gaze. “Seriously. Never get tired of looking at ‘em.” He leaned
forward, his mouth just inches from her lush, pink sex. “Or tasting
‘em.” He took in a deep breath and the scent of her jetted a
firebolt of pure desire, painful, straight to his dick. He gritted
his teeth and bit back a groan.

After a moment, he was able to breathe again
and he leaned back. “Here’s what I want you to do for me, Izzy: See
where my hands are? On your knees? I want you to put your own there
and, no matter what,”—the black centers of her eyes dilated—“keep
them there. Keep your thighs just this open for me. Think you can
do that?”

The nod she gave him was a bit jerky.

“Good,” Sam said.
This could work—better
even than his original plan.
He scooped out some ice cream with
two fingers and painted a trail of it from her belly button down to
the top of the shaved red stripe of hair on the rise of her pubic
bone. Her flesh quivered. Goosebumps formed on her limbs and
breasts, tightening their aureoles by another fraction.

Sam’s hand shook.
God. Could he do
this?
He’d never felt this intense of a craving to fuck someone
before. He could actually imagine himself standing up, ripping down
his zipper and ramming himself into her up to the hilt without any
further preparation—or notice of intent.
Get hold of yourself,
man, before you ruin everything.

He took a deep, steadying breath and manfully
dipped his finger into the cream again. This time, he slid it from
the side of each labia lip over to where each of her hands gripped
the inside of her knees.

He looked into her eyes. “Now, I kiss it off
you.”

A puff of breath bounded from between her
lips, then she wetted them with her tongue.

The heat of her flesh was warming the ice
cream, he noticed, dripping down in sweet-milk rivulets. Sam opened
his mouth over first her abdomen and then her thighs, polishing
clean all but the tender area next to her labia with his tongue and
lips. He turned his attention then to those delectable junctures
and, as he did so, he lightly ran the pad of his finger over the
scalloped edge of her inner lips.

Her belly, already drawn tight, began to
tremble. He lifted his head. “Try not to spill it, Iz.”

He dipped his head and suckled the last of
the ice cream off her. As he did so, he slid his middle finger up
into her. She arched and gasped. He barely saved the bowl before it
could clatter onto the table and spill. He didn’t return it to its
prior position.

“You’re really wet, Iz,” he said and then
caressed her inner walls until her body tensed and her vagina
thrummed. It was a revelation watching her. She gripped her knees
and thrashed her head. Seriously sexy short, staccato gasps burst
from her every time he pumped his finger into her. So he did it
several more times.

But it wasn’t until he brought her to the
very edge—her muscles stretching so taut that their contours came
into harsh relief and her eyes flying open in a look he could only
call surprise—that he realized she’d never reached heaven
before.