by Lynsay Sands
“Sì, bella, I do,” he assured her, and Jess was just thinking the words sounded oddly like a vow, when his mouth closed over hers.
Jess wasn’t at all surprised at the passion that burst up through her at the contact. It had never really left, but had simmered under the surface from the moment she’d woken and all through their breakfast, waiting to be released again. Now it rushed up through her like a train barreling through a tunnel and she opened for him, kissing him back as eagerly as a starving woman falling on food as her arms slid around his neck.
She tried to press close to him then, but Raffaele held her back, pressing her against the wall with his hands at her waist, before releasing her to tug at the tie of the robe. It undid easily and fell away. The sides of the robe immediately slid apart a couple of inches, but it wasn’t enough for Raffaele. Breaking their kiss, he glanced down. Jess followed his gaze and watched as his hands pushed the sides of the white cloth to either side, leaving her arms, shoulders, and back the only thing it covered.
“So beautiful,” he murmured, one hand raising so that he could brush his knuckles lightly over one nipple. He watched it pebble under his attention, and then his other hand closed over her free breast and his gaze lifted to her face so that he could watch her expression as he began to caress her.
Jess tried to meet his gaze, but her eyes wanted to close as pleasure washed through her. Biting her lip, she forced them wider and groaned as her body arched, her shoulders pressing into the wall and the rest of her thrusting forward as he caressed her.
“So beautiful,” he repeated, one hand dropping down to slide between her legs.
“Oh, God, Raffaele,” Jess gasped, reaching for him as his fingers slid across her slick skin. Much to her relief, he kissed her again then, his tongue thrusting out to urge her lips apart so that it could slide inside. But it was just a quick, hard kiss before he tore his mouth away. When he released her breasts as well and clasped her waist instead, she opened her eyes and then glanced down with confusion when he was no longer standing in front of her.
He’d dropped to his knees, she saw with surprise, and watched as he pressed a kiss to her trembling stomach. But then she gasped and closed her eyes again as he urged her legs farther apart and placed the next kiss to her inner thigh before nibbling and kissing his way upward. When he suddenly tugged one leg over his shoulder, opening her to him, the light teasing kisses stopped.
Flattening one hand against the wall, and diving the other into his hair to help her maintain balance, Jess cried out, and banged her head against the wall as Raffaele began hungrily lashing and sucking at her core. The man certainly knew what he was doing. Using just the right amount of pressure, and the perfect tempo, he drove her to the edge of pleasure over and over again with his mouth and tongue, only to retreat at the last moment, his attentions becoming soothing, easing her back from that edge, once, twice, and then a third time.
Jess gasped, groaned, moaned, and begged by turn, her hands plucking and then pushing at his shoulders. She wanted him to stop doing that and kiss her. She wanted him never to stop. She wanted him inside her. She wanted him, and she was contemplating pushing Raffaele onto his back and mounting him to find that release he was holding hostage when he finally gave it to her. Releasing the grip he’d had on her legs to keep her in place, he added his fingers to the mix of pleasure he was giving her. She felt him push a finger inside her as he continued to torment the nub at the core of her excitement, and then it withdrew, and two pushed up the next time, and that was it. Jess threw her head back on a scream as a world of pleasure rushed at her, sending her body convulsing and shimmying until her legs couldn’t hold her anymore. She felt them collapsing, but found it hard to care. She was already sliding into the waiting darkness.
It was the sound of a phone ringing that woke Jess. Sensing movement beside her, she turned her head in time to see Raffaele finish getting to his feet and dash to the end table where his phone lay.
“Hello?” Raffaele murmured, and turned to peer at her, his eyebrows rising when he saw that she was awake. Flashing a smile, he moved back to offer his hand to help her up as he said, “Yes, Zani. We’re done with breakfast.”
“Thank you,” Jess murmured once she was on her feet, and then drew her robe closed and felt around at her sides for the ends of the sash.
“Ah, yes, well, there is a problem with that plan,” he announced grimly.
Finding the ends, she quickly tied the robe closed and then glanced to Raffaele with curiosity, wondering what he was talking about. What plan?
Raffaele frowned and turned away to cross the room. That and the way his voice lowered as he spoke again told her that he’d tried to keep her from hearing in the hopes of avoiding upsetting her.
“Because the bastard’s standing by the pizza shack downstairs watching our door. Or he was. Check and see if he’s there on your way back . . . No. Don’t scare them off. They’ll just move somewhere else and we won’t know where they are. Just see if they’re still there.”
The bastard he was talking about was Vasco, Jess knew, and recalled spotting the man as they’d set the breakfast dishes outside. She’d been terribly upset about it at the time, but a kiss from Raffaele had pushed the other man from her thoughts completely. Raffaele was better than drugs in that way, she thought wryly, and then turned her worries to Vasco.
Jess was no longer afraid of giving in to the man’s seductions. She wasn’t foolish enough to think she suddenly wouldn’t find him attractive just because she’d had sex with Raffaele. But she was quite sure the fact that Raffaele could give her so much pleasure would give her enough backbone to resist the attraction she felt for Vasco. After all, Raffaele could show her—if not more, then at least equal—pleasure to that which Vasco had stirred in her. And he wasn’t a dead, soulless, bloodsucking vampire.
“Zani and Santo are coming back and we’re going to figure out how to get out of here without Vasco seeing us and following.”
Jess pushed her thoughts away and smiled crookedly at Raffaele as he slid his phone into his back pocket and moved toward her.
“Then I’d better go get dressed,” she said, and then wrinkled her nose as her gaze slid over him still in his jeans and T-shirt. The man hadn’t even got the chance to undress when they’d had sex. They’d both been too desperate to take the time to strip him.
Shaking her head, she turned and headed through the bedroom and to the bathroom, tugging the T-shirt and her underwear and shorts from the pockets of the robe as she went. They were a little wrinkled, but she would just have to live with that, Jess decided as she pushed the bathroom door closed. She started to turn away, but came up short when she caught a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror.
Mouth dropping open, Jess gaped at herself. Her face was flushed, her eyes were sparkling, but it was her hair that had her staring at herself with dismay. Medusa had nothing on her. Jess’s hair was a tangled mess, standing up in every direction. She didn’t recall Raffaele even touching her hair, so assumed this was a result of something she’d done. Rolling her head back and forth against the wall as he’d pleasured her perhaps, or the unfortunate result of her passing out while it was still wet and it drying in a dark cloud around her head.
Good Lord, how had the man not looked at her and squawked in horror? Or laughed his head off? Instead, he’d smiled gently. The man was obviously a saint, she thought. The polar opposite to Vasco’s evil. She was so lucky to have met him, Jess thought on a little sigh, and then grabbed Raffaele’s brush off the sink counter and began to drag it through her hair, trying to tame the wild mass. She had to dress and get back out there. Zani and Santo were returning and they were going to come up with a plan for her to escape the evil pirate and his lusty ways.
“Vasco and Cristo are still there,” Zanipolo announced grimly as he led Santo into the room. “You should have let us handle them.”
“Handle them how?” Raffaele asked dryly. “We have no rights down here,
Zani. The Council that governs this area has to handle them.”
“But they aren’t,” Zanipolo pointed out with irritation.
“No, they aren’t,” Raffaele agreed. “But they might decide to take care of us if we break their laws and kill a couple of immortals. We aren’t hunters down here.”
Zani grimaced at the words, but then nodded, and said, “Still, we could have at least scared them off.”
“If you managed to scare them, which I highly doubt you could, they—”
“What do you mean you highly doubt we could?” Zanipolo demanded, going stiff with outrage.
“They’re pirates, Zani,” Raffaele pointed out patiently. “I suspect they were real pirates back in the day. That means they aren’t the sort to scare easily. But if you had managed to scare, or even just harass, them away from the pizza shack, they would have simply moved somewhere else, somewhere less visible, and then they’d see us leave and follow. That’s the last thing I want. I need to get Jess a safe distance away from them.”
Zani frowned, but then nodded and sighed. “Right. So . . . what do you want to do?”
Raffaele was silent for a minute and then turned to cross to the sliding glass doors. Stepping out onto the balcony, he peered around. There was a palm tree to one side of the balcony, blocking part of the view of the pools and the lounge chairs around them. Which meant the balcony was blocked from view too.
“You’re thinking of getting her out this way?” Santo asked, his gaze sliding around the crowded area in the center of the buildings as he joined him.
“Yes.” Turning, Raffaele strode back inside and moved to the pull-out couch. “Jess can’t leave through the door so long as the pirates are standing out there watching. They’ll follow us, and I promised I wouldn’t let that happen.”
“So, she has to leave another way,” Zanipolo reasoned and, not having heard the exchange between Raffaele and Santo on the deck, asked, “What are you thinking?”
“The balcony.” Raffaele tugged the blanket off the bed, tossed it over the chair, and then pulled the top sheet off and straightened. “I’ll lower her down to the next balcony, climb down and lower her to the ground floor. Once we’re safely away, you can grab our bags and follow. They won’t follow you if Jess isn’t with you. You can meet us in front of the hotel. I’ll arrange a car while we wait for you.”
“You don’t think the suitcases might make them suspicious enough to have one of them follow us?” Santo asked dryly.
Raffaele frowned at the suggestion.
“And lowering Jess down from the third floor tied up in a sheet is likely to attract a hell of a lot of attention from the people sunbathing around the pool,” Zanipolo pointed out.
“I know,” Raffaele growled with frustration. “But she can’t go out the door.”
Pacing to the windows, he peered out and propped his hands on his hips. Raffaele considered the few options he had and then relaxed a bit and nodded. “We’ll wait until dark and do it then and all of us will leave the same way.”
“That means a later start for Santo Domingo,” Zanipolo pointed out.
Raffaele shrugged. “It can’t be helped. We weren’t going to get there in time to go to the embassy anyway.”
“Jess might be upset,” Santo said quietly.
“I’ll let her make the decision. Wait until dark and slip away, or leave now and risk Vasto following us.”
“Vasco,” Zanipolo corrected.
“Whatever,” Raffaele muttered, and glanced toward the open French doors and the bedroom beyond as the sound of the bathroom door opening reached them.
Jess walked out to join them, a troubled expression on her face. Pausing in the doorway to the bedroom, she glanced from man to man and asked, “What are we going to do?”
“That’s up to you,” Raffaele said solemnly.
Eleven
Jess peered unhappily over the balcony at the empty pool area in the center of the buildings. The paths and pools became a ghost land at night. She wasn’t sure why. She would have enjoyed a night swim, and there was no reason the guests shouldn’t use those paths to make their way to the restaurants situated at both the top and bottom of the resort. Yet, for some reason, most of them used the outer paths on the edges of the resort.
Perhaps because that was the side where the elevators spat them out and the stairs exits were, Jess thought, but had no real idea. And she was just as guilty as the rest of the guests at avoiding the pool paths at night. She found the solid sidewalks easier to walk on in heels than the small pebbled paths around the pools on the way to dinner, and wouldn’t risk tumbling into one of the pools on the way back should she slip on the wet pebbles and fall.
“Hmm,” she muttered. She’d just figured out why the pool area was so dead at night. Go figure.
“What?” Raffaele asked, stopping to peer at her face. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” she said with a frown, and then just as quickly said, “Yes. Are you sure this is going to work?”
“Positive,” Raffaele said firmly, turning his attention back to the end of the blanket he was wrapping around her waist. “You will be perfectly safe, I promise. I am going down to the second-floor balcony first. Santo will lower you down to me. I will catch you and pull you in and then he will climb down and we will do it again to lower you to the ground floor. Once we’re all down, we will call Zanipolo and he will toss the suitcases and then climb down to join us.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t sound too safe either,” she told him with disgruntlement as he tied off the blanket and tugged to test it. His knot held. “I mean, suitcases are heavy. What if one of us gets hit?”
“No one will get hit,” he assured her, and started to climb over the balcony rail.
“But—” Her words died as he paused on the other side of the balcony railing and pressed a quick kiss to her lips.
“Everything will be fine. I promise,” he said firmly, and then dropped out of sight.
Gasping, Jess grabbed the rail and peered down, relieved to see Raffaele climbing over the railing of the balcony below.
“Wow. I thought he fell,” Jess muttered as he disappeared from sight. Probably to reassure the people in that room that all was well and he wasn’t there to rob them.
“Nay. Raffaele is like a cat. He always lands on his feet,” Santo assured her as they watched. When Raffaele leaned out and gave them the thumbs-up, Santo straightened and turned to her.
“I don’t think—” she began nervously, and then grunted in surprise when the huge man picked her up and lifted her over the railing to stand on the lip on the other side.
“I’m going to lower you to him,” Santo said solemnly, as if she hadn’t already known what the plan was.
Jess merely nodded, afraid to open her mouth for fear a tiny terrified shriek might come out. Heights never used to bother her, but after hanging from and nearly falling from her own balcony earlier, she was a bit nervous about being dangled over the edge like a baby hanging from a stork’s mouth.
Grasping the blanket, Santo wrapped his end around one wrist, and then he grabbed the end closer to her body with his free hand and lifted her up off the railing. Biting her lip to keep from screaming, Jess clung to the material and closed her eyes. She so didn’t want to see the ground coming up to meet her if Santo’s grip on the blanket slipped.
Jess didn’t open her eyes again until she felt hands clasp her waist, and then it was just in time to watch the world whirl around her as Raffaele turned her and lifted her over the railing. The moment he set her down next to him on the solid concrete floor of the second-floor balcony, she threw her arms around him in a tight hug.
“See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked lightly, patting her back soothingly.
Sighing, Jess forced herself to step back so that he could lean out and look up to where Santo was. Another hand gesture had the blanket released. Raffaele caught it and stepped back as Santo swung down and dropped onto the balcony besid
e them.
“One more,” Raffaele said encouragingly as he moved to the railing.
This time Jess watched silently as he climbed over it and dropped out of sight. They were only on the second floor now. Even if she fell, she wasn’t likely to get badly hurt. At least, she didn’t think so.
“Ready?” Santo asked, turning to her.
Jess walked to the railing and peered over. Raffaele was standing in the grass in front of the ground-floor balcony, looking up. Glancing to Santo, she said, “I can probably climb down too.”
“Why bother when I am here and you are already trussed up like a turkey?” he asked with amusement, and picked her up to set her down to stand on the outside of the railing. It seemed to be little more than a moment later that she was standing on terra firma.
“So far so good,” Raffaele murmured, pulling out his phone to call Zanipolo.
Jess merely nodded and glanced at the dark windows of the room they stood in front of. It was either unrented at the moment, or its present occupants were at dinner, she supposed as she turned her attention to the area around the pools. The lights were on, and the pools looked lovely. Any other time she might have liked to go for a swim, but that wasn’t an option just now. She was too nervous that Vasco would somehow sense she was escaping and come around the building to catch her.
“Right,” Raffaele said a moment later as he put his phone away. “Zani says Vasco and Cristo are still by the pizza shack. He’s going to lower the luggage to Santo on the second-floor balcony, and he’ll drop them to me, and then Zanipolo and Santo will climb down and we can go. Sound good?”
Jess nodded. She even managed a smile this time as she told herself it would just be a couple more minutes.