my lips.
He laughed, the sound vibrating along my skin. He lapped me between words, until each draw of his tongue sounded like language and each sound felt his tongue. “Don’t…move…”
I didn’t. I couldn’t. Trapped and yet not. My outside still enough that the inside was all I could feel, the pleasure that wove itself through me with its golden promise of release.
“Please…” I begged. I wasn’t ashamed. I wasn’t caught. I arched my body—not the outside, not my skin and bones, but the desire that rose in me, uncoiled itself into a long thread of pleasure. Asking for more, keeping my stomach perfectly still beneath the length of golden hair, while the rest of me spun and spun and spun.
“My name, Elly,” he said.
“Oh…” I clenched my teeth, trying to keep my movements still. “Please…”
He began to pull his thumb away from me, slowing his circles. Sliding his fingers from me. His retreat left me already empty. I wanted to shove myself over him, then sink his fingers inside me with a fast, hard pierce. But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t.
“Name,” he said softly, flicking his thumbnail along the hardened point of me until my breath caught in my throat.
“M-master,” I called out, my rasped voice rising in the air between us.
He grinned that dangerous grin of his, making me want to take it back, but it was too late. He was tightening his thumb back to my skin, cocking his fingers inside, his tongue curling over and over my skin until I was sure I was melting beneath the soft spin of his touch, turning liquid, turning gold.
The Three Billys
Sommer Marsden
“Philomena Fitzpatrick Troll,” she said. She said it louder than necessary because they stood there with their buckets, tarps and ladders looking like a ragtag bunch if there ever was one. And they had dirt on their boots. Dirt that crumbled into little brown piles on her perfect black-and-white tiles. What had Harry been thinking? They were a wreck. All three of them. And what kind of name was Three Billys Building anyway?
“Nice to meet you, but we just need to get access to the second floor and—”
“I understand,” Philomena interrupted. Rude but necessary. The big one did the talking. He had the beginnings of a goatee, which almost made her laugh because she was thinking of the fairy tale. Instead, she smoothed her brown dress and squared her shoulders. “In the future, please use the service entrance so as not to…” She let the sentence trail off as she raked a disapproving gaze over her now-marred floor.
“Sorry about that. First day and all. We weren’t sure, Philomena.”
“Ms. Troll.”
“How unfortunate,” he thrust.
“How clever,” she parried.
He grinned. This big Billy. Philomena felt a blush start at her cheekbones and burn a blazing trail well south of her cheeks. “This way,” she said. She took off at a smart pace before he could see her face coloring and her breath quicken. The big one was going to be a problem. Staggeringly tall and broad with nearly black hair, and eyes that flashed an emerald-green. Philomena had noticed those eyes right off the bat. A bad sign for her.
Usually, she could focus at work. It took an act of God to pull her from her head librarian duties. More than a few men had come along thinking she would be some fantasy, like in the music videos and movies. They flirted and waited for her to come undone for them and turn into a bookish wet dream. But Philomena kept her focus. When she was at work, she was all about work. And these days, work rated number one with a bullet in her life. Because she didn’t have much more.
Now he pinned her with those haunting green eyes and she had to put more swagger in her walk than she felt. They clomped behind her. Oafish and messy. Oh, she could just picture the debris sifting from their boots and that horrible paint-splattered ladder leaving gouges in her impeccable walls. It did not occur to her until halfway up the staircase that three pairs of male eyes were now pinned to her swaying bottom. The thought almost felled her, nearly brought her down like a dry tree in a February ice storm. She stilled and someone chuckled, a small knowing laugh. Had she been a betting woman, Philomena would have laid easy money on the big Billy. She closed her eyes, wrangled a deep breath and forced her sensible square-toed work heels to continue.
At the second floor, she surveyed the water damage. The rugs had already been torn up by maintenance. A pipe had ruptured in the ceiling, the water raining down from overhead, not from the sprinklers, but from the water pipes that ran under the third floor. She tried to remind herself (yet again) that the situation could have been worse. There could have been damage to the third floor—the archival floor. She blew out a sigh and indicated the mess. “Here we are, gentlemen.”
“The man who hired us,” said the middle one, “where’s he?”
“Harry is off today. He’ll be here tomorrow. As, I trust, will you.” Philomena had nightmares about contractors who showed once and then never came back. She’d heard horror stories.
“Bummer. He’s a nice one.” The small one was a bit shifty. He had a nervous thing he did with his chin. Thrusting it forward like he was chewing cud. She found the tic mesmerizing in a completely inappropriate way.
“Now,” she hurried on, trying to focus, “as you can see, there’s some damage to the wall over here. And down at the checkout counter where you came in.” She walked to the far wall. The floor above the checkout was metal gridwork. Wrought iron and fancy. Meant to let the patron look down to the level below. If she put her head back, she could see the domed ceiling above in the archives.
She turned, and the biggest man was right on her heels. Those gorgeous green eyes took a lazy tour of her chocolate-brown wrap dress and her sensible heels. Damn it all if she didn’t start blushing all over again. He leaned in and then past her, but she felt the soft dark brush of his warm breath across her bare neck. “So the water just ran right over the edge and down the wall. And this all happened after closing time?” He turned his head but kept his body angled, his generous mouth a bare two inches from hers.
In her mind’s eye, Philomena could see those big dusty hands with the ragged nails settle on her hips. She could see the busted knuckles flex as big bad Billy’s powerful palms hauled her in and pulled her flush to his hard angles. She imagined with bizarre clarity what those full pink lips would feel like crushing down on hers and how hot his tongue would be working past her own swollen lips. The raspy sound his calluses would make as he pushed her dress up, dragging his work-abused hands up her stockings until—
“Right?”
“Calluses,” she blurted, and then bit her tongue so hard her eyes blurred. How asinine. “I meant ‘correct.’ That is correct. The mess sat all night long. And it was during a heat wave. The water shorted the air-conditioning unit, creating mold and mess and more water.” Her tongue tripped over the words as if it had never formed such things before.
The towering Billy touched her forearm and the sensation of his skin on hers made her shiver like she was cold. “You okay?”
“I am fine, Mr.…um, Billy…”
“Benjamin.”
“I thought you said your names were all Billy,” Philomena squeaked.
“Billy Benjamin. The little one is Billy Samuels and then there’s Billy Midlin.”
“Ah. Thank you for the introductions. Now, about the floor.”
His breath stroked her skin again as he leaned in to hear. Philomena felt her mouth sag open just a little, her heart did a little flip-flop in her chest and she felt intense moisture between her legs. This was the point where men started doing math in their heads, she thought. What did women do?
“What about it? This seems to be the only part of the floor up here unharmed.”