Free Art of the Lie by Delphine Dryden Page A

her.
    “Don’t move.” He got up quickly, leaving Lindy’s back cold, but returned in less than a minute. The telltale crinkle of the condom wrapper in the dark explained his errand and Lindy wished she’d planned ahead better and gone on the Pill before propositioning him. Then he was there again, warm against her back, sliding one leg between hers.
    A dollop of cold fluid hit Lindy’s pelvis and she gasped. Richard chuckled, scooping the thick stuff up and reapplying it lower, slicking it inside her with two fingers. “Don’t panic, it’s just lube. I know you’re sore, and another round is probably a bad idea right now. If I were a nicer guy I wouldn’t do it at all, but I’m not that nice. The lube will help, though.”
    It helped, although Lindy still hissed when Richard entered her. The sting only lasted a few seconds but a deeper ache persisted, a pain almost like a bruise. Lindy was surprised to find herself responding despite that. The new angle brought Richard’s cock up sharply against the front wall of her vagina, and his fingers never rested from teasing at her clit. She nearly cried as he started moving more purposefully inside her and she felt an orgasm begin to build. His touch was like a drug, sweetly luring her to her doom with pleasures she could never achieve on her own. Had she become an addict just then, she wondered, or had her downfall come the first time, and she was only just seeing it for what it was?
    “So tight,” Richard murmured into her neck just as she started to reach the point of no return. “Feels so good. Come for me, Lind. I need to feel you come.”
    She couldn’t have done anything else. She had already started coming, shuddering into a sweet cry of relief when her orgasm finally peaked. She squeezed Richard’s cock tighter inside her and moaned when she felt him pushing through that impossible pressure to reach his own climax with a hoarse shout.
    He was already asleep when he slipped out of her a few minutes later, and she wondered if she should wake him so he could take the condom off. Instead, she stayed in his arms until the sun began to rise. And after she had watched the lights and colors of the morning long enough, she rolled carefully out from under Richard’s heavy embrace, gathered her clothes and walked back across the hall to her own home to get ready for her big meeting. She had never noticed before what a very long walk it was.

Chapter Six
     
    Coming from an apartment with no air conditioning, Lindy found herself growing chillier by the minute in the sleek and crisply cooled office of Paul Maddox. Everything in the space was smooth and polished, from the glass desk to the glossy black leather and chrome on the Barcelona couch where they sat discussing her designs.
    “We would probably need to simplify some things for production,” Stephen Markham explained, “but you would have final approval of changes. Getting a source for the knitted stuff might be a challenge, especially now that we’ve stopped using those overseas suppliers. Sweatshops are evil, of course, I give you that. It was the right thing to do. But some of them did fabulous work.”
    Red House’s creative director was examining a handbag as he spoke, turning it inside out to look at the seams. Lindy was glad she’d lined the purse so the back of the embroidery didn’t show. She had a feeling Stephen’s sharp eyes would catch any mistakes.
    “Stephen,” Paul Maddox reminded him with a wry smile, “you promised not to reminisce about the sweatshops anymore, remember? I explained all that.”
    “I remember you asking me to stop,” Stephen said with a shrug and a defiant toss of his bald head. “I don’t remember making any promises.” He pouted at Paul, who just shook his head. Lindy could tell they were teasing, but she still felt compelled to try to broker a peace.
    “Well, I have a lot of pieces right now with no knitted sections at all. Scarves, in particular. I’ve been