Speak Low (Speak Easy 2)

“I’ll find a way.”

But the truth was, I had no idea how I’d support myself. Bridget certainly couldn’t pay me enough at the grocery store. It kept Bridget’s family fed and clothed, but it was just a little neighborhood place. I’d have to apply for a job downtown, and even if I got one right away it would be a while before I’d have enough saved to move out. I was still stuck here for the time being.

Goddamn it. Maybe I shouldn’t have said no to Joey so quickly.

#

“Come with me.”

Joey’s words floated toward me through the dark, whispered in a low voice, raw with need. Masculine scents of smoke and whiskey and aftershave filled my head, and I breathed deeply before a sigh escaped my lips. Then his mouth was on mine, hot and hard and heavy. Too heavy.

Joey, I won’t fight you. Take me away.

I tried to murmur words against his lips, but the pressure on my mouth wouldn’t let up. I’m dreaming, I thought in a haze of confused arousal.

But when I opened my eyes, the man in my room was real.

And it wasn’t Joey.

“Shhhh,” Enzo whispered, his hand over my mouth. “Come with me. Now.”

My pulse, already racing, kicked up even higher at his invitation, at his touch on my lips, at the promise of sneaking somewhere alone with him in the dark. Clothed in only my light summer nightgown, I followed him past my father’s closed bedroom door, carefully moving down the stairs in my bare feet. It didn’t surprise me at all that Enzo had come right in the front door—he had a way with locks I’d learned not to question.

Outside, I hurried toward a gorgeous cream-colored Packard sedan parked at the curb. Enzo opened the passenger door for me and I slid in, tucking my hands underneath my legs. As I watched his lean, muscular frame move around the front of the car and open the driver’s side door, my insides tightened with desire. He wore no coat, no vest, and no collar on his white shirt. The top few buttons were undone, and my fingers itched to pull the shirt from his trousers and undo the rest of them so I could work off some of the tension inside me. I dug my fingernails into my thighs.

As soon as the motor was running Enzo hit the accelerator, speeding down the street and turning onto Jefferson so quickly I had to brace myself against the door. My heart thrummed hard in my chest. Neither of us spoke, but when his right hand slid across the seat and under the hem of my short nightgown, I moved closer to him.

His expression remained impassive and his eyes on the road, although I saw the slightest twitch in his jaw. I held my breath when his hand settled on the inside of my thigh and slowly crept higher. When his fingers brushed against the soft folds between my legs and he realized I wasn’t wearing underwear, he glanced sharply at me.

My eyes pleaded with him to continue. I wanted to lose control, lose my mind, lose myself. I wanted the heart-pounding abandon that overwhelmed us when we let ourselves forget who we were and why every moment between us was stolen. Ten days ago I hadn’t even known his name, but he’d awakened something in me, something instinctual and insatiable that would not be ignored.

And I didn’t want to ignore it. I wanted to indulge it—now.

With my eyes locked on the exquisite lines of his profile, I put my left hand between his legs. His cock was already hard, but as I rubbed him up and down, it swelled further and strained tighter against his trousers. He slipped a fingertip inside me, sliding it up the slick seam at my center, keeping it torturously shallow, before moving it gently back and forth over the tiny spot that electrified my entire body.

With one hand I slipped the buttons of his trousers through the holes and slid my palm down his hot, tight abdomen. When I wrapped my hand around his solid flesh, he grabbed the steering wheel with both hands.

I said nothing, just moved my hand up and down the hot, thick column, squeezing tight and keeping the rhythm steady, the way I knew he liked it. My lips curved into a smile. The thrill of touching Enzo this way filled me with a sense of power and freedom so intoxicating I often felt dr

unk when we were together, even when no alcohol had been consumed. The forward motion of the car, the rush of night flying past the windows, the hum of the tires on the road—all of it added to the maelstrom building inside me.

Suddenly the Packard swerved. At first I thought it was accidental, but then I saw that Enzo had turned down a silent residential street with large homes set back from the road. He turned off the engine, looked at me with glittering black eyes, and uttered just one word: “Now.”

The keys barely hit the floor before he hauled me onto his lap.

I straddled him, one knee on either side of his hips, and he took my head in his hands, crushing his mouth to mine. We weren’t in love, about that I had no illusions, but our desire for each other was volatile and fierce, and we kissed as if we were starved, as if our hunger could never be satisfied. Enzo slipped his arms from his braces and I shoved at the sides of his trousers. Without taking his mouth off me, he lifted his hips and managed to shimmy them down just enough. I grasped his swollen cock in my hand again, anxious to feel it inside me.

But we’d already been careless once the night before. “Wait,” I breathed. Do you have…you know…”

Without answering, he tilted sideways and reached under the front seat. When he righted himself, he held a small condom tin, and with one hand, he opened it, slipped one from its paper wrapper, and slid it on.

I lowered myself onto him, intending to go slow since I was still tender from the night before. But Enzo had other ideas. He grabbed my hips and yanked me down hard, both of us gasping at the shock of it. Bracing my hands on the top of the seat behind him, I turned my face away from his and kept still, allowing my body to push past the sharp twinge of pain.

His mouth, hot and wet, traveled down the exposed side of my neck as the ache inside me eased. He swirled his tongue in an intricate pattern along my throat and down to my shoulder. Instinctively, the muscles surrounding him contracted, and I gasped when I felt his teeth sink into my skin. Then he brushed his lips over the spot, soft as a feather.

Aroused by the whisper of his lips on my neck after the sting of the bite, I began to move, slowly rocking my hips forward and back, and clenching him tight inside me. He picked up his head and our eyes met, our mouths open and breathing hotly against one another.

Then he took control of the rhythm between us, using his hands on my hips, pulling and pushing my body against his, increasingly harder and faster. He cursed and closed his eyes while I smiled and reached up, flattening my palms on the car’s ceiling. I let him move me the way he wanted, but I arched my back a little to feel the base of his cock just where I wanted it. A sheen of sweat broke out on his forehead, glistening in the dark, and my back prickled with trapped heat under my nightgown.