by Dani Collins
Don’t, Nina. She needed to keep this in perspective.
She brushed away deeper yearnings and offered a saucy smile. “Put those straight back in the drawer.”
One side of his mouth pulled. “You think you’re in charge here? Think again.”
She grew tight all over, anticipation overwhelming her. She wanted him to drag her dress apart and ravage her, but he only picked up the tail of her braid where it dangled in front of her shoulder.
“I’ve been staring at this all day, too. Thinking about taking it apart.” He removed the elastic from the end. His gaze came up to crash into hers. “Thinking about taking you apart.”
Excited tension rose in her throat. If she were another animal, it might have been a purr or a growl.
He took his time, the rogue, working his fingers into her braid to free it, turning her so he could follow it when it turned into a French braid that started above her opposite ear. He paused a few times to set maddening kisses against her neck.
“I like the pink.” He turned her to face him and combed his fingers into her hair. “I want to feel you run this all over my naked skin.”
“Oh, you think you’re in charge?”
“I do.” He made one careful revolution of the hand still tangled in her hair. Now he had her trapped with a tighter grip. “I think you’re at my mercy.” He touched his mouth to her lips, barely leaving a burning spark of static before he set a peck on her nose and a tender kiss on her brow. Another grazed her cheekbone, then the corner of her mouth, then the base of her throat.
He roamed his free hand all over her, waking her body to his touch. She did the same, rediscovering the muscled strength beneath his crisp shirt and tailored trousers.
When she felt the belt of her dress tugged open, she held her breath. A cool rush of air wafted across her abdomen and upper thighs as he opened the dress. His hot hand crept inside, sliding across her waist and around to her lower back, drawing her half-naked body into his clothed one. The cool metal of his belt buckle branded her stomach.
“Reve.” She curled one hand under his arm to rest on his shoulder blade, her other around his neck.
“Why have I never taken you dancing, Nina?” His hand went to her tailbone, but he left the other in her hair. He opened his hot mouth against her neck as he gently swayed them against one another.
Her mind nearly exploded, she was accosted by so many sensations. Her hands moved on him, trying to ground herself in his solidness, but her eyes nearly rolled into the back of her head as he continued placing seductive kisses across her collarbone and under her chin.
When he kissed her again, the tenderness was still there, but the heat had arrived. The need.
But even as she drank up his deep, ravenous kisses and sucked flagrantly on his bottom lip, sinking ever deeper into the greedy underworld of lust, she was overwhelmed with a tremendous need to give.
His hand slid down to her bottom, palming her cheek through lace and silk, and she moved in time with his petting, seeking more of his fondling while also pressing into the hardness behind his fly. When she would have dipped her mouth into his throat, the sharp tug against her scalp reminded her he still had a fistful of her hair.
They looked at each other with dazed eyes. He released her, causing her to wince a little as he untangled his fingers, but he smoothed his hand over her hair in apology and wordlessly drew her back into their kiss.
Now they blatantly tangled their tongues and clung to each other, and her only thought was that she didn’t know how she had lived without him. Without this. She wanted to stand on his feet and climb inside him. Have nothing between them but the perspiration he brought forth onto her skin.
He drew back enough to brush her dress off her shoulders, his gaze reverent as he looked down on her breasts. She opened the front closure of her bra herself, peeling back the cups in offering, reveling in the growling noise that sounded in his throat as he cupped her breasts, firmly and slowly, massaging as he went back to kissing her, then finding her nipples and giving gentle pinches that struck twin shots of electric gold straight to her loins.
A sob escaped her and she gave a light scrape of her nails through his shirt against his shoulders, telling him how torturous this was.
When he let her breathe, she gasped, “I can’t stand. I’m too weak.”
“I’ll hold you up.” He wrapped his arms around her, his hands going to her bottom again, sliding inside her panties and squeezing the taut globes.
She stood on tiptoe, barefoot because she’d kicked off her sandals when she entered the apartment. She clung to him and felt all of her inhibitions slipping away. Everything in her became want. His.
She rubbed him through his pants and felt his whole body go taut. “Do you want my mouth here?”
“Yes.” His breath hissed through his teeth as she continued caressing him. “Your hands, your mouth. I want to suck your nipples until you’re ready to come. I want to feel your thighs squeezing my ears when you do.”
She was nearly there now, her panties so damp he must feel it where he was reaching his long finger from the back of her thigh toward her hot core.
“What are you waiting for?” She sucked the side of his neck, wanting to mark him. Wishing she had the right to call him hers for all time.
His muscles gathered and he twisted, pressing her toward the bed. She sat and opened her knees, hooking her hands in his belt to draw him closer. It was the playful push-pull they’d always had. The small oversteps of familiarity formed a link of trust that grew stronger with each passionate encounter.
As she began to unbuckle him, however, it struck her this might be one of the last times she made love with him. It made her clumsy as she worked to open his fly and push his pants off his hips.
She exposed his thick, straining erection, and his hands on her shoulders gave a restrained clench while she breathed out a shaken breath upon him. His abdomen hollowed and she kissed the tense muscles there. Then she tasted and caressed and swallowed him into her mouth, applying delicate suction so his hands moved to her head and he shook.
His breaths were the sound of metal on gravel, uneven and loud enough to fill the room. His buttocks were hard. She tested them with the sharp dig of her fingernails and wanted to finish him like this. Leave a memory in him that would live eternally, but he dragged himself free of the draw of her lips and clenched his fist around his shaft, visibly straining to keep control of himself.
“My turn.” He set splayed fingertips on her chest and nudged her to fall backward onto the mattress, then leaned over her to kiss her.
He ravaged her mouth the way she’d been aching for him to do. The way that said she was his entire world right now, the only thing that mattered to him. His bare chest was against hers, the fine hairs just rough enough when she twisted to create delicious friction. His steely thighs were planted between her twitching legs. His hot sex teased her through the wet silk of her panties.
She ran her hands under the edges of his open shirt, caressing his damp back, and pushed the shirt off his shoulders. He lifted long enough to throw it away, then gathered her breasts again, murmuring, “So pretty.”
His mouth went to her collarbone, her breastbone, the upper swell of her chest and the turgid nipple of one breast. He tortured the other with a soft pinch, keeping it up as she wriggled and dove her hands into his hair and tried to speak past the swirl of intense pleasure that gripped her.
He shifted and his blunt tip pressed against her, teasingly blocked by wet silk.
“Move it,” she gasped, trying to grapple the placket aside.
“I want all of you.” He went to his knees, as aware as she was that their time was short. That they couldn’t hold anything back at this point because there wouldn’t be a next time.
That thought had her giving herself over to him, letting him kiss and lick at the
insides of her thighs and steal her panties.
His bared teeth were too feral to be called a smile as he easily arranged her how he wanted her, with her thighs draped over his upper arms. His breath wafted against her curls.
“Hello, lovely.” He parted her and swept his tongue along her folds, slowly tightening the coil of need in her abdomen with ruthless languor.
When she gasped, “I want you inside me,” and tugged at his hair, he slid a finger inside her and continued lapping and loving and driving her ever closer to sheer madness. She trembled with need, moaning with loss as he removed his finger. Two came back, and he delicately worked them in and out of her as he swirled and sucked.
Her last vestige of self-consciousness disappeared and she became pure instinct. She pressed him to increase his tempo and lifted her hips into the press of his mouth. Then she gave herself up to the wild wave that threw her into the abyss.
She might have screamed. She didn’t know.
* * *
This. Reve needed nothing in life beyond Nina exactly like this, utterly weak with passion. He kicked off his pants and shifted her into the middle of the bed, then settled over her. His swollen tip felt as though he would split his skin, but he soothed the ache by anointing himself against her slippery, pulsing folds.
She made a soft, receptive noise and her knee came up, her calf slipping across his back with invitation.
He slid in and went blind at the sensation—hot and soft and blissfully wet. She was the only woman he had ever been truly naked with, which wasn’t the only reason this was so intensely pleasurable. It was the surrender in her soft body beneath his, the welcome in her sigh against his ear. The heaviness in her eyelids and the caress of her fingertips against his spine reduced the world to just this. Them. Joined.
He had forgotten how profound this was, and his heart shook in warning.
He might have withdrawn then, but the slightest friction on his impatient flesh sizzled his brain and caused her to hum with renewed arousal. He felt a quake of pleasure go through her and he was lost.
His only thought then was to hold back while he waited for her to catch up to him. He made himself lie still with his heartbeat buried inside her. When he whispered how good she felt around him, she shivered and tightened her clasp on his flesh.
He caressed her shoulders and arms and thighs and bottom, sliding his touch to where they were joined, and delicately drew another hum of awareness from her. He contorted so he could suckle her nipples and feel the lovely tension gather in her.
When she opened her eyes and he saw the haze of passion clouding her pretty brown eyes, he rolled her to straddle him.
This was the woman who had haunted him for months. She sat tall and ran her hands over herself, watching him with a seductive smile as she touched where she held him captive.
He ground his teeth and cupped her breasts, lifting his hips because he was unable to help himself.
Her pupils seemed to explode. She caught his wrists and began to lift and roll as she rode him. Every breath was a harsh sob that accompanied the impact of their flesh. He moved his hands to her hips, guiding her so they were in perfect sync.
Her sobs grew more anxious as she closed in on the finish. His throat burned with the ragged noises he was making, striving to hang on, to get there, to arrive at exactly the same moment—
She froze, and her mouth hung open to release a silent scream.
All his senses disappeared. He was torn from this world for long seconds before he was thrown back with such a slam of pleasure, it was nearly pain. He gripped her hips, trying to meld them into one as he bucked with jolts of sheer ecstasy.
He knew at a distance that he was losing something of himself. Something he would never get back. But in these sharp, endless, euphoric seconds, he didn’t give one tiny damn.
She could have all of him. He was already hers.
CHAPTER NINE
“FOR A FOUR-HOUR train trip?” Nina looked around the extravagant stateroom that was their private car. “This looks like something from the Orient Express.” She trailed her fingertips along the beveled edge of the cherrywood dining table, wondering what he must have paid to have this car added since she doubted this route typically had sleeper cars.
“I tried to book a helicopter. You said no.” He hung his jacket in the closet.
“Because I thought I would be traveling alone and would buy the ticket myself.” When he’d asked her in New York how she wanted to travel to Luxembourg, she had thought he was making conversation, trying to avoid talking about their kiss at the showroom. “I wanted to go by train so I could watch the scenery.” She peeked through the closed drapes.
“We’ll open them once we get going. At least in here, we don’t have to see anyone, not even the conductor. Unless there’s something we don’t have.” He glanced in the well-stocked refrigerator and checked the labels on the wine in the racks. “Hungry?”
“We just had breakfast.” She glanced around the jut of a separation wall. The top of it was clouded by etched glass, and the bottom was cherrywood paneling that matched the rest of the room. There was a very plush-looking double bed tucked behind it.
“We could go back to bed,” she suggested.
They had been doing little else other than making love since last night. Dinner on the Seine had been canceled, and they’d made do with the charcuterie board for dinner. They had wound up fooling around on a dining room chair and then having sex on the sofa. They’d dozed there, then had a bath together—along with a couple of orgasms. Sometime after midnight, they’d woken and come together in a wordless fog of simply needing to be joined.
They’d both risen achy and sore this morning, agreeing that it had to stop. But they’d showered together and landed on the sheets soaking wet, groaning each other’s names as they drove each other to another lofty pinnacle.
It was the best possible madness, and also a type of hoarding for the cold winter they were both avoiding any mention of.
“You’re not going to see much from the bed,” Reve chided, his eyelids already drooping with the drug of lust.
Nina lifted her chin. “Depends what I want to see, doesn’t it? For instance, I have had it with that tie.” She pointed. “Get rid of it.”
“I pity the conductor,” he said as he loosened the red silk with its subtle paisley pattern. “Having to go home to his wife and tell her he found a couple today who had literally screwed themselves to death.”
“We all die of something. Pick your poison.”
He barked a laugh. “You. It has to be you.” He tackled her in a handful of steps, tumbling her onto the bed beneath him.
This immersion in each other was pure denial of reality, as well as deliriously exquisite.
Also, it turned out to be exactly what they needed. They conked out immediately after climaxing and jerked awake when a bell sounded. A voice announced, “Arriving at your destination in fifteen minutes.”
“Is this one of those hibernation capsules, and we’ve traveled through space and time?” She rose to dress, her brain barely functioning. “I am definitely not going to earn the fashion designer’s secret handshake if they see the way I treat my new clothes.”
She shook out her chiffon culottes—an old standby that a Tokyo designer had given a chic makeover. They hugged her waist and hips then fell in loose, flirty pleats to accentuate her calves and ankles. Her muslin blouse by a Vancouver designer was a deceptively simple peasant style that had its own billowy grace.
When she’d gone through her things from Reve’s storage, she’d found and reclaimed her lace-up retro-looking saddle shoes. They’d served her well on the endless sidewalk commutes of New York so she’d brought them for what she expected would be a lot of footwork in the tiny village near Mondorf-les-Bains.
The spa town had sprung up around the discovery of a hot spring
back in the eighteen hundreds, but a smaller, more exclusive “retreat” had been built among the neighboring vineyards a hundred years later. It hadn’t had thermal waters, but it did have top doctors charging top dollar for discreet services.
As the train slowed, she glanced up from fixing her hair to see Reve watching her with a sober expression as he knotted his tie. Each rock of the carriage was a slow tick of their time winding down. They both felt it.
“Don’t look like that.” He came over to squeeze her shoulder and kiss the top of her head. “Nothing in life stays the same.”
He was right, but it still put a lump in her throat.
She donned sunglasses and a hat, but if there had been any interest in Oriel’s connection to Luxembourg, it was long over. No one seemed to give them a second glance as they disembarked. A young man waited with a key fob and directed them to a sedan outside the train station.
Reve programmed their destination into the navigation system, and within minutes they were traveling east toward the German border, leaving the city for softly rolling hills and picturesque villages.
“Was there no border check when your mother came through?” Reve asked as the Moselle River came into view. “Did she realize she was leaving Germany?”
“It was already a very low-key system. She stopped to ask the border guard where they could eat while she figured out how to get back to where they were going. He suggested the café where she wound up collapsing.”
“The investigator said there were private houses in the area that were a cottage industry—pun intended. They provided discreet accommodation for the celebs who used the clinic, but he wasn’t able to find which one Lakshmi stayed at. Most of them are still operating, serving the wine tour crowd.”
“Is that where we’re staying?”
“Actually, he found a vineyard owned by the family of the doctor who signed your birth certificate. I had to pay triple to get another reservation bumped, but I’m hoping to succeed where the investigator failed. Get some answers.”