Promises

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Promises - book excerpt

Chapter 1

Ivy Chandler leaned on the railing of the resort hotel’s balcony, staring out at the expansive desert cast in shades of red and gold in the setting sun. A warm, damp breeze ruffled her hair, and lightning flashed jagged in the darkening sky.

Ivy had grown up in the Midwest where humidity levels in August reached into the upper ninety-percent range, and she rolled her eyes every time she heard the Arizona locals whine about twenty-five percent. If luck held, the lightening meant a cooling summer storm.

Her hair lifted from her neck, and she felt his hot breath on her shoulder as he nuzzled her. Carl’s body, damp and cool from the shower, rubbed against hers as he snaked his arms around and into her loose robe to find her breasts. He pinched her nipples, and she moaned as they firmed into throbbing buttons between his fingers. Ivy leaned back into his sturdy body.

“You’re a devil,” she sighed, enjoying the way her body reacted to his touch. Carl pinched harder, and her clit began to throb along with her nipples. Ivy reached behind her and stroked Carl’s erection as it oozed a bit onto the back of her thigh. She shivered with every pinch and twist he gave her.

“Come on, baby.” He pulled Ivy closer, and his erection nudged her behind. “Let’s go to bed. Close those patio doors on your way in, or the room will be full of sand.” Carl Anderson tugged her silky robe from her shoulders and let it slide to the floor of the concrete patio.

Ivy turned and watched him drag it into the plush room. He pulled back the ornate spread to reveal white cotton sheets. “Come on, baby.” Carl sprawled across the bed and stroked his erection for her to see. “He needs you, baby. He needs you bad.”

Ivy followed Carl in and shut the multi-paned French doors. She made her way to the bed and joined him. Ivy bent and lowered her mouth onto his waiting erection.

Carl’s body tensed with the touch of her soft lips. She used her tongue to remove the pre-cum from the head and gave it a little tickle on that spot where the head met the shaft. Ivy felt him shiver with pleasure as she tightened her mouth around his stiff cock. Carl moaned with pleasure and threaded his fingers through her hair, pushing her head further down on his erection. Ivy stroked his cock with her mouth for a few minutes before pulling back.

“Don’t stop now, baby,” he pleaded. “I need it. I need it now.”

“Sweetie, you have sex on the brain.” She fell back and shivered as his strong hand trailed down her belly to rest in the mound of silky hair between her thighs. His fingers massaged her clit, sending thrills through her groin and her breasts as well.

“Oh, Carl,” Ivy sighed, “don’t stop. Make me cum with your finger first.” She spread her legs wider and rubbed his erection with her smooth, firm thigh.

“I might be old, baby, but I’m not dead yet. I have needs.” He bent and took a nipple into his mouth and sucked hard, nipping it playfully with his even, white teeth.

Ivy ran her hand through his thick, white hair and moaned, “Harder.” She reached down and began massaging his throbbing erection. She teased the head with her fingertips before grasping his hard cock fully in her hand and stroking it gently, tightening and loosening her hold as he pumped into her tanned fist.

“You have magic fingers, baby.” He rolled atop her and looked down into her blue eyes with his own. She continued stroking him, and his eyes rolled up into his head. “Keep that up, and I’m gonna have to give it to you good.” Ivy stroked him and gave his hanging balls a soft squeeze.

“You always give it to me good, sweetie.” She clutched his erection and pulled on it.

Carl continued to finger her hot wetness and massage her throbbing clit until Ivy writhed and moaned beneath him with pleasure upon the expensive sheets.

“I want you in me now, sweetie,” she said, panting. “You’re driving me crazy. I can’t wait.” Ivy arched into his probing fingers with enthusiasm. Carl removed his fingers from her crevasse and braced his arms on the pillow beside her head, positioning himself above her body as he eased himself into her. Ivy moaned, wrapped her arms around his neck, and pulled his face down to her own. Their lips met, and his tongue pushed past her teeth to find hers. She luxuriated in the hot, salty taste of him.

Ivy met his pounding thrusts with vigor until the throbbing between her thighs exploded in exquisite waves of pleasure.

“Oh, my God, I’m cumming, Carl, I’m cumming.” Her pulsing orgasm triggered his, and Carl groaned and shivered atop her. His sweat dripped onto her face before he rolled his spent body off hers, panting.

“Oh, baby, you milk me nice,” he said, breathless beside her.

Ivy ran her fingers through her sweat-damp brunette hair, kept dark with bottles of Miss Clairol regularly now that she had reached her mid-fifties.

“How long are we going to keep this up, Carl?” Ivy asked, looking up at the paddles of the ceiling fan as they turned slowly above them. “Neither of us is getting any younger. How long are we going to keep sneaking around like a couple of kids?” Ivy broached the subject with caution.

The two had been seeing one another for nearly a year, and Ivy had hoped the relationship would advance past the bedroom, but it hadn’t. She turned her head on the soft pillow to see him staring up at the ceiling blankly.

Maybe I gave in too easy. He doesn’t respect me. I should have played at being one of those born-again virgins he’s always complaining about. He really wants a woman he could bring home to his momma, not a play toy. I’m good enough for weekdays when he’s not traveling, but not good enough to take on his damned trips to meet his family and friends.

Carl propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at her with a spark of irritation in his clear, blue eyes. “Baby, we’ve been over this before. I travel too much for any more of a relationship than this.”

He slapped her playfully on her bare hip. “You know you love this. You get to stay in a nice place for a few days and get the best sex you’ve had in your life.” He chuckled and fell back onto his pillows. “Do you want to go out, or should we order room service?”

Ivy did not look at him but sat up and swung her long legs off the bed. “Suit yourself.” She snatched two tissues from the box by the bed and wiped him from between her thighs before it could run down her legs. “I’m gonna take a hot shower.”

“Room service it is,” he said with a snort and picked up the phone. Ivy listened as he ordered T-bones rare, potatoes loaded, and salads with Thousand Island. No desserts. “Are you going to be mad at me all during dinner?” he asked as he rinsed his limp cock at the sink while she stepped into the shower.

“I’m not mad, Carl; just disappointed.” Ivy stood under the hot water, letting the spray wash away her frustrated tears.

Ivy had fallen for the man after their first meeting for coffee and rolls at a Starbucks nearly a year before. They’d connected over mutual interests through a dating site, e-mailed for a few days, and then exchanged numbers and began texting and talking regularly. They both had Midwestern upbringings, college educations, marriages, divorces, and grown children. It had seemed to Ivy that they’d clicked.

After coffee, they’d ended up back at Ivy’s apartment for a long afternoon of bedroom Olympics. For two people their ages, they had managed to sweat up the sheets and had 1enjoyed positions neither had attempted in years. The sex had been outstanding, and the conversations before and after even better.

Confident she’d found the one, Ivy had deleted her profile from the dating site and stopped speaking with other men she’d connected with there.

Ivy, an aspiring author, had self-published a couple of novels and continued to pursue the craft, even in these later years of her life. She enjoyed discussing her work with Carl, who encouraged her to follow her dream by pursuing publishing contracts and securing an agent.

While their meetings had continued in much the same way, a coffee or lunch followed by sex at her apartment, any time Ivy brought up taking their relationship to a more committed level, Carl brushed her off with excuses of needing to travel for his many real estate investment businesses and family trips. After a year, Ivy had yet to meet any of his family, and he’d turned down numerous invitations to meet hers.

Why am I wasting my time on this man? He’s only in this for the sex. My God, I thought I’d gotten past this sort of shit after high school.

Ivy blew her nose into the washcloth, rinsed it, turned off the shower, and stepped out onto the bathmat. She yanked the thick Egyptian-cotton towel from the rack. Ivy wrapped her hair in the heavy towel and reached for another for her dripping body. She sat on the toilet to dry her long legs and inspected them. They didn’t look as though they needed a shave yet, and she sighed to herself. She might be an older woman now, but she did her best to keep herself up.

Ivy didn’t intend to be a woman like her mother, who’d turned sixty, gotten divorced, and stopped living or taking care of her physical appearance. Ivy’s mother had died alone at sixty-five, and she didn’t want to be the same.

Depression ran in her family, but Ivy did not intend to fall victim to it like other females in her mother’s line. Two aunts had committed suicide, and her mother may have as well, though the doctors had assured Ivy and her sister, Carrie, it had been from complications after minor surgery.

The aroma of char-grilled beef met Ivy as she walked out of the bathroom. The little table beside the patio doors held the food and a bottle of her favorite sweet red wine. Carl attended to every tiny detail, and that endeared him to her. He remembered all her pleasures, including the wine she preferred with her steak.

Carl pulled out her chair. “Here you are, Madam. Your feast awaits you, as do I.” He lifted the metal lid from her plate to reveal a juicy, rare T-bone with all the trimmings, including plump, yeasty rolls. Carl poured her wine and set the delicate long-stemmed glass beside one of iced water with a thin slice of lemon floating amongst the cubes.

Ivy inhaled the aroma of the food and realized how hungry she actually was. They’d eaten breakfast together in the hotel’s dining room but skipped lunch to take a horseback ride through the juniper-strewn high-desert mountains above the resort.

Ivy loved horses but hadn’t ridden since her childhood on the farm. Carl, a dedicated horseman, had criticized her for her inexperience and laughed maniacally when the stupid beast had thrown her in some loose scree on the side of the mountain. Fortunately, nothing but her ego had suffered more than a bruise, much to her relief. She couldn’t afford a trip to the hospital with a broken bone.

Ivy took a long drink of the sweet wine then followed it with a longer one of the cold water.

“This looks lovely.” Ivy picked up her fork and knife and began cutting to separate the meat from the long bone of the sumptuous steak. She set the bone aside and cut the meat into bite-sized pieces before sprinkling her potato with salt and pepper and dumping on the butter and sour cream.

She saw Carl watching her mash up the combination inside the brown shell of the potato skin. She wondered if he thought her a backward hick, treating her food the way she did.

Ivy didn’t have the experience of sophisticated dining like he did and feared he looked down on her because of it. She could hold her own at a cocktail party, but she might embarrass him at a fancy dinner party. On the farm, a fork was a fork, and you used the same one for every course.

“Maybe I should have ordered you mashed potatoes,” Carl chuckled. He sliced his salted and peppered potato, dipped it into his little cup of butter and then his sour cream before putting it into his mouth.

He cut the steak before each bite rather than all at once like her. Ivy preferred to eat her food in peace rather than working at it during her meal. Again, she suspected she shamed Carl with her gauche country eating habits.

I’m just not sophisticated enough for him. I’ll never fit in with his country club crowd. I’m good enough for his bed. No, not even his bed. He’s never taken me to his home. He’s been to my little apartment dozens of times, but I’ve never seen his.

At least he takes me to nice hotels and not pay-by-the-hour dumps. I’ll never admit to him that I’ve ever visited one of those. I’m just not good enough. He’s never going to let me into his life any more than this. I should make my peace with that.

Tears stung Ivy’s eyes again, but she batted them back and took another sip of wine. “The wine is perfect.”

“Not the vintage I wanted, but a close second.” He, too, took a drink, wiping his mouth with the white linen napkin afterward. “How is your steak? Rare enough?”

Ivy forked up one of the bloody pink cubes of beef and popped it into her mouth, savoring the succulent, warm juice flooding across her tongue. She chewed and swallowed.

“Delicious. Just the way I like it; only just a little past moo.” Ivy liked her steaks very rare but well charred on the outside.

Her father had taught her how to cook steak on his old charcoal grill and insisted the flavor was in the red juices seared in by the flash charring over the hot coals. Ivy had agreed with her father on very few things, but his view on the grilling of steaks was one of them.

Her mother, on the other hand, had insisted on grilling her steaks to the consistency of shoe leather, rendering it inedible in Ivy’s opinion. Carl liked his medium-rare with only the slightest pink juice running from them, and Ivy thought that blasphemous.

“Are you still upset with me?” He asked as he put a bite of spinach salad into his mouth.

“I’m not upset with you. I’m upset with this situation. You knew from the beginning I was looking for a committed relationship and not just a friends-with-benefits thing.” Ivy was losing her appetite but refused to let the excellent meal go to waste. On her fixed income, steak dinners were few and far between.

“I’m committed to being friends with all the benefits for both of us.” He picked up one of the dinner rolls and threw it at her.

With quick reflexes, Ivy caught the roll before it hit her in the face. “Just a whore for steak dinners and nice hotel rooms, am I?” Ivy snorted dryly.

“Don’t forget the horseback rides,” he said with a mischievous smile.

“Oh, yeah. Did you see the bruise on my ass?”

He lifted his wine glass in mock salute. “And a very lovely bruise it is.”

“I didn’t think I fell that hard, but it’s certainly a doozy of a bruise.”

“No grass up there to cushion the fall,” he said thoughtfully as he buttered a roll for himself. “I think you went down on the solid rock. I’m surprised you didn’t break something.” He bit into the hot roll and chewed. “Maybe we should get you some restraints for the next time.” Carl chuckled with his mouth full of the bread.

“I just bruise easily. I always have,” Ivy said with a sneer.

“I remember the first time we did it from behind.” He chuckled lasciviously. “You had my fingerprints bruised into your ass cheeks for a week.”

She had to smile at the memory. “I know. I thought my sister was gonna have a cow when she saw them.”

“Your sister sounds like a sour old prude. Has she ever enjoyed sex?” Carl took his final bite of potato, followed by a bite of steak.

“Says she has,” Ivy sighed. “She just worries about me too much. She’s afraid I’m going to get hurt.”

“Are you?”

“Am I what?” Ivy finished her wine.

“Getting hurt?”

“Not physically,” Ivy sighed and wiped her mouth. “Emotionally a little.”

“I’ve been honest with you, Ivy. I’m too busy for more than what we have right here.” He motioned around the charming Western-style room accented by its red-shaded hurricane lamps with clear dangling crystals of the nineteenth-century design. “If this isn’t enough for you, then maybe we should rethink it. I’ve never made you any promises. Have I?”

“No, and I’ve been rethinking it, Carl, and rethinking again. I want more, but I want this, too.” She let him refill her wine glass. “I love you, Carl, and you know it. I know I’m not the kind of woman you really want, but I’m here any time you want me. Maybe that’s wrong, but it’s what it is.”

“Baby, I don’t want to hurt you, and I want to be fair, but I’m in no position to take up a relationship of the sort you want right now. I need the sexual release, and you are a very sexy woman, but I have too many responsibilities right now to take on another.”

“I know, sweetie. Let’s just forget I brought it up and enjoy our evening.” Ivy blinked back tears again and drank more wine. Wine always seemed to help her get over her disappointments where Carl was concerned. “I promise I won’t bring it up again.”