Eleanor & Justin (Partners in Passion, Book One)

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An Excerpt From: Partners In Passion 1 - Justin & Eleanor

© Copyright SL Carpenter & Sahara Kelly, 2003.

All Rights Reserved, Ellora´s Cave, Inc.

Chapter 1

"The howl of a lonely wolf shattered the stillness of the cold night, and turned Jessica´s blood to ice. She pulled her worn cloak even closer around her ears and glanced behind her at the darkness of the forest. It seemed that every shadow had grown larger, and every little rustle had turned into a footstep. She shivered."

Eleanor Preston didn´t.

She tossed the paperback down onto her coffee table, wondering once again why the sight of a tall, dark and handsome man with huge fangs hovering over a helpless female should attract such enormous numbers of dedicated and loyal readers.

Glancing at the clock, Eleanor observed that it was precisely ten minutes later than it had been the last time she´d looked.

Twenty past eight.  Still another forty minutes to go before her ride arrived.

They were leaving fashionably late, because it was, apparently, an unpardonable sin to arrive anywhere early.

Marsha had insisted that nobody who was anybody got anywhere before at least nine o´clock.

What, wondered Eleanor now, were they all doing with themselves?  Primping? Reading? Talking on their eternally charged cell phones?

Or were they perhaps, like Eleanor, regretting that they´d ever agreed to go out at all?

She sighed and leaned back in her leather pub chair. She tidied a stray thread in the sleeve of her Anne Klein sweater and winced again at the sight of her legs encased in jeans. 

Eleanor was not a jeans woman.  By any stretch of anyone´s imagination.  Pants-yes. Armani pants, preferably, but only if they were on sale.  Liz Claiborne was fine, and Donna Karan a close second.

But jeans? Not likely.  These were too new, too tight, and too-too jeansy.

Eleanor was convinced that jeans had been designed by men, for men, and were therefore totally unsuitable for women.  Especially women who possessed a well endowed ass.  Rather like hers.

It was only to humor the girls at work that Eleanor had consented to spend a lunch hour trying on these darn things.  They´d been labeled "stretch", but they didn´t do nearly enough of that for Eleanor´s liking.

Snug and clingy, they delineated every curve and hollow, and Eleanor felt that she had a damn sight too many curves and nowhere near enough hollows.  She compensated with her newest emerald green cashmere sweater, which fell softly around her modest bust line and landed just shy of her totally useless pockets.

She sighed again and admitted the painful truth.  She might do lunches with them, shop with them, and even spend an evening with them, but Eleanor was not really "one of the girls".

She was an artist by nature and a graphic artist by profession, and was not modest in admitting she was good at both. Sure, she´d majored in business administration, but her minor had been graphic arts and that was where she´d found her heart.

Her office was one of the few that had a full window, a table with a large sketchpad, and the very latest in graphic rendering software on her computer.  She spent her days happily lost in a world of morphs and vectors, and her nights wishing she had more time left to work on the million and one paintings that were waiting to be hung in the gallery of her mind.

So what, she asked herself for the thirty-seventh time, was she doing wasting her valuable down time on an evening out with the girls?  They´d nagged and teased and dared, and tried every trick in the book to get her to come out for a drink with them.  She knew why.  They wanted to fix her up with someone dreadful, so that she could be as miserable as the rest of them and spend her coffee breaks maligning a good portion of the male species.

Hah.  She didn´t need fixing up.  She knew that men found her intimidating, unattractive, completely asexual, and about as interesting as last week´s newspaper.

Her dates had been sporadic, mostly unsuccessful, and she´d eventually stopped worrying about it as her professional career soared to new heights.  Occasionally she missed the touch of another hand, but she´d found a marvelous toy site on line and now had regular catalogs from DontBeShy.com.  Her newest purple vibrator was far more reliable than any of her previous dates, and also could be turned off when no longer needed.  Quite an advantage to a busy career woman.

The phone rang and jolted her out of her tranquility.

"Elly?  You there?"

She winced.  She hated being called Elly.  "Yes, it´s me.  Marsha?"

"Yep.  Look, I´m having some car trouble.  Can I meet you at the club?  You know where it is, right?  Just park in the lot next door, and I´ll see you there at nine.  I´m so sorry, but Harry´s coming by with a jumper cable to get me started."

"Oh.  Well, perhaps we should call it off, Marsha..."

"No, no.  I promised you a night out, kiddo.  The others will be there too.  We´ll have a knock out night, Elly, you can bet your ass." A laugh followed this statement.

It didn´t come from Eleanor.

"Anyway, I´ll see you there, right?  Right, Elly?"

"Well, yes, I suppose..."

"Cool.  If you´re not there, I´m gonna come get you.  So slide into those jeans and waltz that fine body of yours over there.  See ya."

A dial tone buzzed from the phone as Eleanor stared at it. Fine body?  Marsha must need new glasses. 

She replaced the phone on its cradle and wandered to her hall mirror.

A tall, red-haired woman stared back at her, wearing a very nice green cashmere sweater.  She didn´t think that "fine body" came into the picture at all.

"Fine body" conjured images of curves and dips, of a small waist and a generous set of breasts that would lure helpless men to their doom.

Hers were-adequate.

A truly "fine body" would have legs that went on through several degrees of longitude.  Hers just went up to her hips and then stopped.  At her very well endowed backside.

Eleanor sighed.  There was no getting away from it, because it followed her everywhere.  She could hide it in well-tailored pants and jackets that fell just right.  But in jeans, it was pretty evident.

She possessed one hellaciously rounded butt. A butt that made her jeans look like they´d been painted on.  A butt that meant the silly little back pockets were useless for containment purposes, but useful if anyone cared to know the exact location of each cheek.

She gritted her teeth.  With any luck it would be dark in the club and the patrons would all have serious vision problems.  And she could wear her really long coat.

Then she remembered that it would probably be a smoking club and she wasn´t about to risk her favorite camel hair jacket becoming contaminated. It was bad enough when the smoke smell got into one´s hair.

She swept a quick glance at her own hair.  Neat as always.

Nothing would make her change her customary style.  The bright red tresses had been pulled back tightly and knotted into a sophisticated twist at the back of her neck.  It was tidy, convenient, didn´t get in the way, and certainly never hinted at the fact that when the pins came out it brushed the top of her buttocks.

No one ever saw Eleanor´s hair loose.  Or hadn´t since...since a long time ago.

One of these days she was going to lop it all off, but something held her back, and she had come to terms with it.  Only at night, just before bedtime, would she release the shining stuff and let it tumble down over her shoulders, brushing it sternly and sometimes braiding it to keep it tidy overnight.

She had a feeling the girls would nag her tonight, but that was their problem, not hers.  This was the way she wore it.  End of conversation.

Nervously she glanced again at her watch.

It was past eight-thirty now...she could probably head out and meet Marsha in the parking lot.

 Grabbing her purse, Eleanor reached in for her lipstick, swiped a quick layer on her mouth and winced.  Her makeup consisted of that one swipe and a quick dab of mascara.  Not exactly cover girl stuff.

So what? She asked herself.  Not like I´m a cover girl.

Before her nerves completely shattered, she picked up her keys and let herself out the front door.

This was probably going to be an abysmally awful evening, so the sooner she got it over with, the sooner she could come home.

With that rather depressing thought in mind and her teeth firmly clenched, Eleanor headed for her evening´s destination-The Mating Place.

"Come on baby, push...HARDER."

The woman smiled with a wicked gleam in her eyes as she saw her control over Justin Collins.

Justin strained to control himself as the sweat from his forehead dripped and trickled into the corners of his squinting eyes. "Damn, it burns. Whew. Not sure I can hold it any longer..."

The woman smiled and watched as the muscles rippled across Justin´s chest. His legs and ass strained as he pushed in and out. The woman was in total control and she knew it. He did everything she commanded and that control caused a euphoric glow through her blood simply from knowing Justin´s prime body was hers to command.

His large muscular chest almost burst as he puffed for breath, trying to maintain control. His wasn´t a bodybuilder torso, but very muscular and tight as he pushed up and down. His arms were cast from a sculpture of Adonis. Very large biceps, taut forearms that strained to hold his weight up. His abdomen was a true six-pack. It rose and tensed as he pushed.

She was so hot her sweat almost pooled on her skin and she felt out of breath and light-headed.  Justin was a fine specimen of male testosterone-infused flesh.

And she owned his ass.

"Oh God, I´m gonna bust! I have to..."

"No, keep it up, you´re almost there, come on, come on."

"You vindictive bitch, you´re so damn cruel!"

"And you love it. Come on, do it for me. Come on, you´re so close, just a little...there you go...push, push, mmm."

Justin finally let go and relaxed back. The loud crash of the weights echoed through the gym.

"Now, Justin, that wasn´t so hard," she said, touching his shoulder. "Euuuww, go shower.  You´re all sweaty."

"Same time Tuesday, Nikki?" Justin took the towel and wiped his forehead. He had asked for a weight trainer, but Nikki was brutal. She took pleasure in making him work out almost to the point of killing himself, then pushed him further. If she weren´t married he´d be tempted to ask her out. He had a thing for women that tried to control him.

He watched Nikki standing at the juice bar. Damn, she has a great ass. Justin had a thing for a nice ass too.

After leaving his long time girlfriend a few months back, Justin hadn´t been in the dating circle for some time. Being dumped for another guy was hard on him. Working long hours and not seeing the signs because he became blinded by the routine of life made it hard on his relationship. Of course, her stripping at a local nightspot without telling him didn´t help. Who´d have thought she would fall for the bouncer?

Justin was part owner of a club, but enjoyed the entertaining parts and having-a-good-time parts a hell of a lot more than the daily grind of paperwork and bureaucratic BS. He mostly left that up to his silent partner, Dave. Dave, however, wasn´t all that silent. He constantly found himself in trouble for getting caught with young women in his office.  The Police Commissioner´s daughter being one of them.

The hot shower felt good to Justin´s sore muscles. He let the water wash over his head and down his back, breathing in deeply, relaxing. Steam filled the stall and the heat cleared his head as, for a single moment, he felt at peace.

Buzzzzrzzrrrzzrzrz.  His pager rumbled on the bench outside the shower stall.

Shit, can´t I ever get a break?

He grabbed a towel and dried off his dark brown hair. He let the towel hang off his body´s natural towel rack as he picked up the pager and read the number. "Now what?"

"Where´s Dave?" Justin yelled at Jim, the bartender. A shrug and blank look was all Justin needed to know.

"Not again..."

He walked behind the bar, took a left through the swinging doors and strode down the hall to the stockroom. He jiggled the handle. Nothing. Rustling through his keys he found the stockroom key, unlocked the door and opened it. He and a few guys at the bar in front of the swinging doors, got a full view of a man´s ass. There was a shapely pair of legs wrapped around the hairy ass, and the couple was oblivious to the people watching.

"Uh, Dave?"

Startled, the guy turned his head and the woman jumped back and tried her best to cover herself.

"Hey, Justin, what´s up?"

"Your wife was looking for you. She called me at the gym and told me she was coming over here to find you." Looking down, Justin raised an eyebrow. "Uh, Dave? You might want to pull your pants up. Your condom is dangling rather grossly."

Justin closed the door, shaking his head as he grabbed a seat at the bar. "Hey, give me a drink. Make it a Bacardi and Coke."

Sipping the drink, Justin closed his eyes and let his mind relax. The crowd started to swell and he knew it would be a loud, long night. Just this once he´d like to have a great time and meet a nice woman.