Body Heat Read online

  “Nice to see you, Zoe,” he said with a knowing wink. He nodded at Carla and Andrew. “Carla, Andrew.”

  They wrinkled their noses at him and said his name as if it left a bad taste in their mouths. In unison, they said, “Graham.”

  “Andrew and Carla, it was nice seeing both of you,” I said, backing away. “But I have to call it a night.” I glanced at my watch as if it were a countdown to midnight clock. “Graham, we should meet for drinks or dinner before I leave.”

  “Yes,” he nodded. “I’d love that.”

  “Well, you all have a good night and I’ll see you all later.”

  I waved from over my shoulder as I bolted toward the exit, keeping my head down to avoid eye contact with anyone else.

  I burst out the door, sucking in the crisp night air as I asked the doorman to please hail a cab for me. I stood off to the side, waiting, trying to go unnoticed. I didn’t want to talk to anyone else.

  I just wanted to get away from all these horrible people and the memory of Mark in the bathroom. And with any luck, the memory of Mark himself.

  * * *

  I don’t even recall the ride home. It was a blur. A complete blur. I felt awkward and confused. I wanted to talk to Mark but at the same time, I never wanted to see him again. He had no right to be in that bathroom, whether I was his mistress or not. There were boundaries in any relationship, though Mark would never let such things stop him from getting his way. Still, the sex had been amazing. I had actually orgasmed, something I rarely did with Mark.

  Typically, with Mark, it was, “wham bam thank you, ma’am” and then he was gone before I could catch my breath. I was always left to finish myself off. I could still feel the orgasm from tonight shaking through my knees. I’d only been manhandled like that by one other man in my life: Chad Walters, my college boyfriend who I hadn’t seen in years.

  Chad was a control freak, but in a good way. It was always his way or the highway. The sexual positions were always of his choosing and rarely, if ever, did he give me any form of control. He liked it rough and so did I. He liked to play and explore and he let me know over and over how he was in control. Sometimes his nature got on my nerves, but ultimately the sex was so fucking great I didn’t care who was in control. I would have left him sooner if I hadn’t been so addicted to his cock.

  After a while, though, I began to feel used by Chad and that was how I was feeling now with Mark. I felt I had no choice but to leave. A few months in Costa Rica would do me a world of good.

  After college, I took a job a few states away on purpose and cried the entire drive there. I felt horrible for breaking things off with Chad. I felt horrible for leaving him the way I did. I loved him. I really did. And he loved me and there I was running away.

  Chad called and begged me to return several times, which was so unlike him. It almost made me think the whole control thing was just an act and that he really cared for me. Gradually, however, time and distance took their toll and we slipped away from each other. The last time he called, I didn’t even answer the phone and he didn’t bother to leave a message.

  Even though he was gone, Chad had never strayed far from my mind. It still hurt to hear his name and every relationship I’d had since, didn’t compare to what we shared. We shared some intimate moments that were better kept secret. But sometimes secrets knife you until they bleed free. And that’s what happened to me.

  All the secrets Chad and I shared, things that were meant to remain just between us, ended up in my diary. Then, the heart-spilling, jaw-dropping, erotic moments ended up in a book, then on the shelf of every bookstore in the world. I changed the names of the characters, of course, but now my entire relationship with Chad had been read by tens of thousands of lusty readers. Yes, another bestseller. Fiction to everyone, sweet memories to me.

  Somehow getting it all out was like therapy. It took me years to write that story and tell it just as it happened. Every detail, every date, every sexual moment, that I could recall. Along with some secrets I never even told him.

  Writing that first book helped me close a chapter in my life that needed to be closed. Somehow, even though it was closed, it never seemed to go away. It didn’t seem to ease the feelings. It seemed to create more urges than I had to learn how to live with— urges I knew could never be fulfilled because he was no longer in my life. I had to learn how to live with the void of knowing there was nothing that could ever completely erase or ease the feeling of loss I felt when it came to losing Chad.

  Mark surely didn’t fill that void. If he wasn’t married, who knows what would have become of us. But he was married and I was just the mistress who sat by the phone waiting for him to call.

  We couldn’t make plans because his family always came first, which I completely understood and was okay with, at least at first. I knew he’d never leave his wife. I’d never asked him to leave her. Not once. I figured if he was going to leave her, he was going to do it on his own, not because of me.

  I wasn’t there to make such decisions for him. Just like he wasn’t going to be making decisions for me. Meaning, I really had no obligation to tell Mark anything that was going on in my life. It wasn’t like we were that close. It was mostly about the sex. Or the thrill of the sex. The feeling of doing something dirty we really shouldn’t be doing in places where we shouldn’t be doing in.

  And it was also about having someone to talk to who understood my crazy life. Mark spent his days as an attorney at a big firm uptown, but he was a successful author in the moonlight—spies and assassins and all that— and he could commiserate with the daily ups and downs of the author life. We talked every day. The conversation was usually more satisfying than the sex. It was just nice to have someone to connect with.

  My writing kept me busy and I never had much of a social life. I didn’t count the tours and book signings as social events. They were more like forced labor. I’d fly into town in time to show up at some bookstore that Amazon had yet to kill, welcome the crowd, read a steamy passage from my book, shake hands, pass out hugs to people I didn’t want to touch, sign books, smile for the camera…

  It was torture for someone like me, who could barely stand to be in crowds, much less crowds where everyone was facing me, wanting something from me, reaching out like a zombie horde with my book in their decaying hands.

  Sadly, that was the only time I ventured out to really interact with people. Aside from those trips, I was pretty much a hermit, living in my little Manhattan cave with my fingers tapping on the keys to my laptop, creating sex scenes for thousands of horny, lonely women—like me— to enjoy.

  I typically wrote all night until sun-up, then slept the mornings away and forced myself to get up around one or two in the afternoon.

  The life of a writer did not mesh well with the daily 9-5 grind. In fact, we were a completely different kind of animal, mostly nocturnal, mostly introverted, mostly happy to just be alone with our thoughts and the blank page.

  That was why my social groups were not of the norm. People assumed famous writers lived these fabulous lives of glitzy social events, celebrity dinners, and traveling to Cannes every summer to see your latest book on film. To the contrary, being an author, at least in my case, made for a very lonely existence, which sometimes made me wonder why I loved it so.

  * * *

  I slid into bed and lay there for a while listening to the faint city noise far below my penthouse window, thinking about the events of the evening and where I’d left things with Mark.

  Mark and I had always been covert with our affair, or at least tried to be, which made the fact that he came into the ladies’ room in the middle of a big publishing event even more out of character for him. I wasn’t sure what the heck he was thinking, unless he just couldn’t wait to fuck me and break the news that he knew about the Costa Rica trip.

  We had used Graham as our go-between because we wrote for the same publisher. Graham was never judgmental, though I knew he didn’t care much for Mark
and worried incessantly about me. He thought Mark was arrogant and smug, with far less talent than other writers who never made it big. Graham did it for me, not for Mark. I knew he was thrilled that I was leaving town to research the new book series in Costa Rica. In fact, Graham was the one who made that happen, in part, I believe, to get me away from Mark.

  Mark treated our affair like the plot of one of his spy novels. We communicated through Graham or by “burner phones” that he purchased at Wal-Mart. I didn’t even have the number to his regular cellphone. And I never called him without texting first to make sure the coast was clear to call. It was all very cloak and dagger, which was fun at first. Then it got old because he would not respond to my texts until the middle of the day and then want to come over for a quickie.

  Meeting up usually meant at my apartment or someplace out of the public eye like a “no tell motel” or Graham’s apartment on those rare occasions that he would agree to let us in. Once we met by chance, as I was running through Central Park, and snuck off for a quickie in the bushes. Like I said, Mark was all about the quick fuck. He was like a breeder rabbit. He’d hop on my back, hump till he came, then quickly move along. I’d miss good old Mark, but probably not as much as he’d miss me.

  CHAPTER TWO: Chad Walters

  I squeezed Bree’s tits as she rode me like a bucking bronco at a Texas rodeo. Man, there was nothing more stimulating than a perfect set of double D’s bouncing in your face. I had always been a breast man, which was why most of the women I had fucked in my life had a nice rack to catch my eye. Bree was no exception. The first time I saw her was from the tits up. I know, I’m a pig. Sue me.

  I held on tight to Bree’s waist and let her ride my cock as I closed my eyes and let my mind wander. As usually happened when I had my hands full of tits and a tight pussy around my cock, Zoe’s face flashed through my mind.

  Zoe Maxwell, my college sweetheart… actually, that sounded too juvenile to describe what we had. We were lovers, not sweethearts, though when she left town she took a big chunk of my heart with her. Of course, I would never have told her that. I was too macho, too full of myself, too much of a control freak. And that’s what drove her away.

  Sometimes, I wondered what she was up to now. Probably married with kids, some poor schlep of a husband, little house with a nice lawn and picket fence in the ‘burbs… Whatever.

  But talk about tits. Zoe had these perfect, natural, beautiful size C’s that defied gravity, with large nipples that looked like raspberry gumdrops. All the fake tits in the world couldn’t hold a candle to Zoe’s beautiful bouncing boobs.

  They were absolute perfection.

  Everything about her was perfect.

  Her skin was sun-kissed bronze and smooth.

  Her body was toned and tight as a drum.

  Long legs, high and tight ass, long blonde hair, the most kissable lips, little turned up nose, and those eyes, those sapphire eyes… they were hypnotic… mesmerizing… I could stare into them for hours.

  I’ll never forget the first time I saw her. I was waiting in the checkout line at the 7/11 with a case of beer and five bags of chips for a frat party. I turned around to find her standing behind me, her big tits in a tight t-shirt, her long tanned legs sticking out of a pair of cut-off jeans. She was barefoot, no makeup, her hair pulled back into a ponytail. And she was buying tampons, of all things. I pretended I didn’t see the light blue box, but I envied those tampons for where they were destined to go.

  I struck up a conversation about the weather or some random shit just to talk to her. I smiled. She smiled. Our eyes met. We shook hands. Sparks fucking flew. And that was it. I pretty much knew I’d be fucking her by the next day. And I was. Because I had no choice. If I didn’t fuck her, I’d just die.

  I turned on the charm and went full-court press on her ass. At first, it was just a game to me, as all women were. I would woo her with my ways, wear down her resistance, fuck the shit out of her and move on, like I always did.

  Then, the more I got to know her, the more I wanted to be with her, and only her. She drove me fucking wild, man. A typical woman would get jealous as fuck if their man was flirting or getting hit on by other women. Not Zoe. She was not the jealous type. In fact, many times she’d joke about going home with other dudes, or bringing another man into the bedroom with us. I was like WHAT??? No fucking way! Homey don’t play that shit!

  She was doing it just to fuck with me, but sometimes I thought she was serious. Maybe she was. Maybe she wasn’t. I just didn’t want to find out. I’d go fucking crazy just to think of another man fucking my Zoe.

  So, I calmed down with the macho-male bullshit and made sure she knew I just wanted her. And things went great for a while, then slowly started to go to shit. She said I was too controlling (which I was), too demanding (guilty), too much of an asshole (uh yeah), and that I didn’t appreciate her. That one hurt because it wasn’t true. Granted, I had a hard time showing my feelings (I’m a guy, duh), but I appreciated the fuck out of her. Hell, I probably even loved her.

  Then one day she just breezes in and tells me she’s moving to fucking New York after graduation to work in some publishing house as a copy editor. I was like, why the fuck do you want to do that?

  She just shook her head and walked out the door. That was seven years ago. We talked a few times over the phone after she moved away, but finally I just let it go. Was I pissed? You bet your ass I was pissed. She just up and left, ripped my fucking heart out like it was a fucking Band-Aid on a scraped knee. The sad part about our time together and her leaving was the residual effect it had on my love life. Call it carrying a torch or whatever, but I haven’t been able to feel complete with another woman since Zoe walked out of my life. I keep finding myself comparing them to her. And no woman has ever come close to curling my toes—or breaking my heart—like Zoe Maxwell.

  * * *

  “Oh, Chad …” Bree’s moans jarred me back to reality. “I’m cumming…god… your cock... cum with me… cum…”

  “Cum for me, baby,” I said, digging my fingers into her hips and arching my back to fuck her deeper and harder, as if I could push the memory of Zoe out of my body by shooting a hot load inside Bree. But it seemed the harder I fucked Bree, the more I thought about Zoe. It was a never-ending battle between my heart and my mind and my cock. It was a painful battle.

  It was a pain that I wanted to heal, but wanted to keep as a reminder of a time in my life when everything felt simply perfect.

  It was a time I never wanted to forget, couldn’t if I tried.

  Maybe I was afraid that someday I’d wake up and no longer think of Zoe. I didn’t want that day to ever come. Even though she had moved on and was living her life without so much as a thought of me, I was not ready to let go of what we had, even after all these years.

  The pain was all I had left of Zoe.

  I would never let it go.

  Never.

  I’d never tell a soul because it was a very unmacho thing to say, but I missed Zoe every fucking day and every fucking night, even after all these years. Zoe Maxwell was mine for just a short time and I let her slip away. Fuck, who am I kidding… I pushed her way. She left because I was a controlling asshole with too much pride to swallow. If I had it to do over again, I would have dropped to my knees and begged her to say.

  Right then, at that moment, with Bree moaning and groaning on top of me, I would have given anything to go back to that time with Zoe.

  Even if it was just for an hour, just to feel the old feelings again. Maybe I just needed to say goodbye to her once and for all; have one last conversation that would help me close the Zoe chapter of my life.

  Maybe then my heart wouldn’t feel so numb.

  Maybe that was exactly what I needed to forget Zoe Maxwell once and for all.

  I curled my toes and filled Bree with the hot load that erupted from my cock and balls with the force of a firehose. I closed my eyes tight and tried not to scream Zoe’s name.

&
nbsp; * * *

  I rolled Bree off my cock and rolled myself off the bed, going into the bathroom without saying a word. I took a good long piss, then washed off my cock with a warm rag at the sink, then went back to the bedroom door and tossed the towel at Bree.

  “What the fuck Chad!” Bree said with a disgusted look on her face. She plucked the rag out of the air and shoved it to her cooch to stop the flow of my cum and her juices. “Where the fuck are you going?”

  “I have something I forgot to do,” I said, jabbing a thumb over my shoulder toward the shower behind me. “Gotta grab a quick shower and run. Let yourself out. I’ll call you later.”

  “Seriously?” Her mouth hung open and her eyes went wide. Her big tits bounced on her chest. “You just remembered right now in the middle of having sex with me that you had something you forgot to do?”

  “I know, my brain turns to mush when you’re around, baby. Okay. Later.” I closed and locked the bathroom door, ignoring her protests that she needed to pee and shower, too.

  After a minute, I heard her yell, “FUCK YOU!” and then the bedroom door slammed and then, thankfully, silence.

  I hated to be rude, seriously, but I knew that if I didn’t give Bree the bum’s rush she would have hung around all day long. Bree was a great fuck, but she’d never win a contest at being a conversationalist. She was too young for me. I could never see myself getting serious with her even though she was drop dead gorgeous.

  Tall, brunette, the aforementioned big tits, and an ass that would make the Kardashians jealous. But that’s where it ended. I’d known Bree for a few months now, and had yet to hold a serious conversation with her about anything. Just having a casual conversation was like trying to explain quantum physics to a first grader.

  I was reaching for the shower faucet when I heard my cellphone ringing in the bedroom. I cracked open the door just to make sure Bree was gone, then found my phone on the nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed to answer it.

  “Go for Chad,” I said.