N. Walters - Craving Candy

He tore his mouth from hers. He was out of time. If he didn’t take her now, he was going to come. “I want you, Candy,” he gritted out between clenched teeth. He had no more control left. “I want to fuck you until we’re both blind with pleasure.”

She whimpered with need and he felt the slight nod of her head, but he wasn’t leaving this to chance. He framed her face with his hands, tilting it upward so she was looking right at him. Her eyes were glazed with desire and her lips were swollen from his kisses. He almost said the hell with it and took her then and there, but he knew he’d regret it if he did. She might regret it too, and that was something he definitely didn’t want.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” He couldn’t believe he was giving her an out. Like a man strung on the rack, he waited for two long seconds which seemed to last an eternity.

“Yes.”

That one word was all he needed. Reaching into the back pocket of his jeans, he fumbled for his wallet. Yanking out a condom, he tore open the package. He could sense her growing nervousness and tried to hurry.

“Everything will be all right, sugar,” he hastened to reassure her as he sheathed his cock in latex. That done, he lifted her easily, his cock poised at her moist entrance.

The pounding on the door startled them both. Candy jerked backward, her eyes large and shocked as she slapped her hand over her mouth.

“Hey, are you in there?”

In that moment, he could cheerfully have throttled Katie. He closed his eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath, desperately trying to center himself and dispel his anger.

The pounding came again and this time the door handle jiggled. Candy’s appalled gaze met his as Katie tried to shove open the door. Lucas lunged forward and leaned against it. “What do you want?”

There was a slight pause on the other side of the door. This time there was amusement in her voice. “Some of the guests are leaving and want to speak with you.”

Candy scrambled to her feet, yanking down her skirt and grabbing her blouse. She kept glancing at the door as she hauled on her blouse and buttoned it. Not bothering with her bra, she stuffed it in her purse. Yanking on her jacket, she securely fastened the two buttons.

“Fuck!” Lucas scraped his hand through his hair. Obviously, the mood was shot to hell. “I’ll be right there,” he growled.

Not bothering to remove the condom, he carefully zipped and buttoned his jeans. He figured the condom would keep the front of his jeans from staining. Candy was standing quietly behind the door with her purse clasped tight to her chest. Frustration filled him as he grabbed his T-shirt off the floor, shook it out and slipped it over his head. He contemplated what to say as he tucked it into his jeans.

Sighing, he walked over to her and pulled her into his arms. At first she was stiff and unyielding, but gradually she softened toward him. “I’m sorry about that, Candy. I’ll go and deal with this and then we can go to my place.”

He knew he wasn’t going to like what she had to say when she stepped out of his embrace. “I think it might be best if I just go.” She licked her lips nervously as she ran her hand through her hair, trying to tame her wild curls.

“I’d like you to stay.” Before she could say no again, he hurried to add, “Just think about it. Let’s go and enjoy some food and just talk for a while.”

She rewarded him with a hesitant smile. “Just talk.”

“Yeah. I’ll take what I can get.” His wry grin made her smile widen just a tad. “Come on and I’ll introduce you.”

Hauling open the door, Lucas stepped out into the kitchen. The light momentarily blinded him and he blinked. It took him a second to realize that Candy wasn’t paying any attention to him. In fact, the two women seemed to be staring at each other.

“Candace?” Katie seemed shocked to see the other woman.

“Katie?”

Lucas had a bad feeling about this. But like an impending car crash, there was nothing to do but hang on and hope for the best. Then what Katie had said finally sunk in. “I thought you said your name was Candy?”

She cleared her throat nervously. “It is, but I’ve been trying to go by Candace. For professional reasons,” she added with a nod, turning back to Katie. “People don’t always take a woman called Candy seriously.”

“I can understand that.” Katie glanced at him questioningly before turning her attention back to Candy. “But I hadn’t realized that you’d finally met Lucas.”

Candy froze, becoming a statue as all the pieces finally clicked into place for him. He groaned and fought the urge to go back into the storage closet and close the door behind him. Fate wouldn’t be so cruel. But Lucas knew that not only could Fate be that cruel, she usually was.

“Lucas?” The ice thawed from her, quickly turning to fire as she glared at him. “You’re Lucas Squires?”

Lucas nodded curtly. “And you must be Candace, or rather, Candy Logan.” He couldn’t believe the woman of his dreams was the same woman he’d been avoiding for weeks now. The woman whose number was continually on his call display, who’d been hounding him with emails begging, bribing, cajoling and all but demanding he do promotional work for that damned cookbook that Katie had talked him into doing. “We need to talk,” he added gruffly.

The look she gave him would have daunted a weaker man, it was so filled with anger and disdain. He might have been more understanding, but his cock was still throbbing and his balls still ached. At this moment, it didn’t matter who she was— he still wanted her with a need that bordered on acute pain.

“I think we’ve said all that needs to be said.” Drawing herself up with the dignity befitting a queen, she turned away from him. The smile she gave Katie was strained. “I’m sorry for any discomfort this situation might have caused you. I hope it won’t affect our friendship.”

“Of course not,” Katie hastened to assure her.

Candy nodded and headed for the kitchen door. Lucas realized that she was going to just walk away without another word to him. “We’re not done yet.” His blunt words made her stumble slightly, but she quickly regained her balance, hitched her purse higher on her shoulder and kept walking.

The door swung closed behind her and Katie walked over to him and placed her hand on his arm. “Lucas, what’s going on?”

He shook her off as he headed to the still swinging door. “Not now, Katie.”

Opening the door, he just caught one final glimpse of Candy as she disappeared through the front door with her coat flung over her arm. He hurried across the room, ignoring people as they attempted to speak to him. He could sense Katie hard on his heels. Yanking open the door, he sighed with relief when he saw her climbing into a taxi. He didn’t want her driving when she was so obviously upset.

When the taxi disappeared around the corner, he closed the door and turned around to face Katie. “Tell me everything you know about Candy.”

Candy stormed into her apartment and slammed the door shut behind her. She thought about opening it again, just so she could have the satisfaction of slamming it shut a second time, but she resisted the childish urge. Barely. She was desperately trying to hold on to her feelings of anger because, if she didn’t, she feared she would break down and cry and that just wouldn’t do.

Tossing her purse onto the table just inside the door, she bent over to unzip her boots. “Stupid things.” She glared at the offending footwear as she hauled them off and tossed them aside. That’s what she got for buying something on sale. The reason they’d probably been marked down was because they were so darned uncomfortable. The problem was they looked fantastic and made her legs look really good. She was vain enough to admit that she liked that about them, plus the extra four inches in height didn’t hurt either. She just wished they didn’t make her feet ache so much. At five-foot-four, she felt she needed the extra height advantage. People didn’t always take a smaller woman seriously, especially with a name like hers.

Limping slightly, she made her way to the closet and hung up her coat. When that was done, she leaned back against the closet door and closed her eyes. She thumped her head repeatedly against the door. What had she done? Not only had she almost had sex with a stranger, that stranger had turned out to be the elusive client she’d been chasing for weeks now. “Way to make a professional impression, Candy,” she muttered. “What were you thinking anyway? Okay, so actual thinking had very little to do with it. It’s all Missy’s fault anyway for putting the idea that I needed to get laid into my brain.” Sighing, she realized there was no one to blame for this debacle but herself. Nobody had made her do anything and she was responsible for her own actions.

Finished berating herself for the moment, she opened her eyes, pushed away from the door and headed to the kitchen. After the day she’d put in, she deserved a glass of wine and a long, hot bath. She turned up the heater as she passed through the living room, rubbing her hands over her arms. It was cold, but she was always trying to save money, and that meant lowering the heat when she wasn’t home. Still, she hated times like this when she felt so cold. Well, a hot bath and her flannel nightgown would warm her up in no time.

Opening the refrigerator door, she pulled out a bottle of white wine she’d opened last weekend when Missy had joined her for a girls’ night of pizza and “chick flicks”. There was just enough left in the bottle for her to have a glass. Perfect. Yanking open the cabinet door, she pulled down a wineglass, uncorked the wine and poured it all into the glass. Thumping the bottle onto the counter, she started to reach for the glass and then stopped.

“How dare he?” Practically quivering with anger, her hands fisted at her sides, she began to pace the tiny kitchen. Five steps one way, turn and five back in the other direction. Every step she took emphasized the fact that she wasn’t wearing any underwear at all. He had her panties and her bra was in her purse. She could feel the sticky wetness between her thighs and her breasts still ached.

How dare he give her the best sexual experience of her life and then turn out to be her nemesis! Coming to a dead stop in the center of the room, she realized that was the crux of the problem.

For once in her life, she’d done something wild and crazy and it had come back to kick her in the teeth. How was she ever going to face the man again? How was she ever going to face her new friend, Katie? Candy bit her lip as she mulled over those questions, but right now she couldn’t come up with any answers.

“I told Missy I was no good at this kind of thing,” she muttered. As if in answer, the phone began to ring. Snagging her wineglass off the counter, she padded back into the living room and slumped down on the sofa, grabbing the phone. “Hello.”

“Hey, little sugarplum.”

The glass of wine slipped out of her nerveless fingers. It hit the edge of the coffee table on the way down, shattering and sending wine and shards of glass showering to the carpet. It was a voice she’d never thought she’d hear again. One she’d hoped she’d never hear again.

“You there, Sis?” The voice, low and deep, now held a hint of concern.

Candy swallowed hard. “Justin?” She hadn’t heard her brother’s voice in more than a decade. Two years her senior, he’d spent his younger years in and out of trouble, having minor brushes with the law and spending time in juvenile detention before finally disappearing just before his seventeenth birthday.

“Yeah, Candy. It’s me.” He paused. “I know it’s been a long time.”

“A long time?” she practically yelled into the receiver. “It’s been years.”

“Fifteen. It’s been fifteen years,” he quietly replied.

She thought she detected sadness in his voice, but she couldn’t be sure. Nor was she willing to fall into the same pattern her mother had lived by for years. Candy’s father had been a petty criminal, in and out of jail his entire life until he’d finally died there, caught in a prison riot and stabbed to death. Her mother had always taken her father back the moment he was released from prison, always believing his empty promises that “this time will be different”. Candy was afraid that Justin had followed in their father’s footsteps. “So where have you been? Prison?”

The silence on the other end was almost deafening. Then came a sharp bark of laughter. “I guess I deserve that.”