by Zoe York
Besides. A week—that was nothing. He’d spent longer on a mountainside staring down the scope of a rifle.
They ate in agreeable silence, only broken by his occasional groan of delight at how fucking good the food was. “I want to eat this every night.”
“Welcome to Miralinda,” she said with a wink. “We like our lobster.”
It wasn’t the same as he’d had in Maryland and Maine, but it was just as delicious in a different way. “What other island treats are in store for me?”
“Have you had conch?”
“Nope.”
“Then we’ll add that to the dancing date. And we have a lot of fruit, which you’ve already tried, and excellent eggs…”
“You should have excellent eggs, there are enough chickens running around the island.”
She let out a hoot. “True. And pigs, too. Not here, but on the other side the mountain. Fantastic barbecued pork.”
“You’ll take me over there?”
She held his gaze. “I will. Promise.”
They finished eating, then cleaned up together. With each passing minute his pulse picked up another beat, frustration swiftly building at the fact that their dinner was over and it was time for her to leave.
Time for him to go against all his instincts and leave her alone for a few days.
Time to say goodnight
In a minute, he told himself. “Are you going back to work tonight?”
“No,” she said slowly as she reached up to put the last plate away. “I’m beat. I'll get to bed early and start first thing in the morning.”
He moved closer to her. Close enough to make his intentions—his desire—clear, without pushing himself on her. “Then let me follow you home. Tuck you in. And starting tomorrow, I'll get out of your hair until you have space for me again.”
She gave him a beseeching look. “I didn't mean to say I don't have space for you. That's awful. You're worth more than that to me. You are.”
“I know. But it's the truth that you need me to back off. I never want you to hide the truth from me.”
She took a long, shaky breath, then nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
She reached for him, her fingertips grazing the front of his t-shirt. Time slowed as she blinked, then glanced up at him from beneath her lashes. “Follow me home.”
FIFTEEN
CARA WAS PAINFULLY AWARE OF MICK’S EVERY MOVEMENT AS HE PARKED BEHIND HER CAR and silently followed her up the stairs to her apartment. She lived one block off the main drag in Petite Ciotat, off a private lane, so nobody was watching, but there was something secret and special about tonight, a stolen moment together before she threw herself into work for a week.
A week without Mick. Hell, she hadn’t even had a full week with him, and already the thought of shutting herself off from him hurt her. But deep down inside, she knew she’d been unprofessional since the moment he’d first stepped into the kitchen at Villa Sucre.
And the more she got to know him, and saw behind the mask he wore by defensive default, the less she wanted to fight him.
Now the fight was out of their hands, sure, but could she have done something differently? She’d never know.
She owed it to herself to try and salvage her job.
Starting in the morning.
Tonight, she’d give herself to him once more. All of her, no holding back. A promise of sorts.
It was quiet already in town, most people down at the beach or tucked into their houses, and a potted frangipani outside her door laced the night air with a heavy, sensual scent.
As she fit her key into the lock, he traced the curve of her neck, bare for once beneath her heavy, twisted bun.
“I like the studious librarian look,” he murmured. “All buttoned up. Like a serious, smart present for me to open at the end of a long day.”
She stretched her head to the side, baring the skin there even more. “I didn’t even ask you about your day. Have you had a chance to talk to your friend?”
“He’ll be fine,” Mick said quietly, his voice washing over her, rich and velvety. “No work talk tonight, okay?”
She nodded and pushed the door open.
Her skin prickled with more awareness as he followed her into the darkness. She turned on the small lamp in the hallway. He closed and locked the door with a quiet click.
Turning slowly, she held out her hands and he crossed the space between them. He was so big. Corded muscles stretched the sleeves of his t-shirt, and defined his neck, his forearms, even his jaw and his cheekbones. She followed those hard lines with her fingers, then her lips, whispering kisses over his skin until she found his mouth.
She gave him a slow, fluttery, barely-there kiss, then another. Teasing. Coaxing. But also honest. He wanted the truth and she’d give it to him, but it was heavy. Serious and intense. The truth was she was way past flirting and games. “I want you to do more than just tuck me in.”
His voice was thick with need when he responded. “Me too, kitten. Me too.”
“But I want to do something for you, first.” She kissed him again, harder this time, and he opened for her willingly. She tasted him until her breasts grew heavy and her legs stared shifting restlessly, and his roaming hands promised he was affected just as much. But his mouth was addictive. Heady. She pulled back and saw a lusty, half-drunk look on his face that matched exactly how she felt. “I could kiss you all night.”
“You should.” His grip tightened on her hips as her mouth drifted down his throat, to his collarbone. “There. Kiss me there.”
She parted her lips and swirled her tongue against his skin, tasting the faint salt of a long day. His skin pebbled under her lazy exploration so she widened her mouth and sucked.
He groaned and squeezed her waist. “Harder.”
With a gasp, she sucked again, marking him just below the neckline of his shirt, then she released the fabric and shoved the shirt up his torso instead, so she could kiss him again a little lower.
Then lower again.
She left a line of love bites down his chest and only his rippling abdomen. She kicked off her heels, then carefully lowered to her knees, still in her skirt.
Her blouse was still buttoned nearly to the neck.
She licked her lips as she looked up at him. “What’s next in your kissed by a librarian fantasy?”
“A historian,” he rasped, cupping her cheek in his hand. His thumb rubbed against her lower lip. “That’s my fantasy. A feisty, smart-mouthed historian.”
He pressed into her mouth, just enough to send a dirty thrill through her. She slowly, softly swirled her tongue around his finger, sucking him into her body. A tease, like all the kisses. A promise, too. She’d be whatever fantasy he wanted. When he slipped his thumb out of her mouth, she buried her face in the front of his shorts and rubbed against the thick erection there.
“Kiss me there,” he whispered roughly.
Fingers shaking, she opened his shorts. They fell to the floor and he kicked them to the side, his sandals flying with them.
His legs were a thing of beauty. Long and well-muscled, and the scarring didn’t detract from that at all. It was a part of him, and she longed to know more about that story. For now, she settled for carefully stroking around the pink, puckered skin as she coasted her hands up his knees and onto his thighs.
Over his tight hips. She bit her lip in appreciation of how fine he looked in black boxer briefs. Lady porn in 3D.
And right in front of her, a bulge that made her mouth water.
“Just a kiss?” Her heart was racing as she looked up at him. The look on his face—intense and hungry, but full of warmth, too—sent a jolt of desire through her. She kept her eyes on his face as she hooked her fingers into the waistband and tugged down, freeing his erection.
“Whatever you want to do is going to feel amazing to me.”
She pressed a sweet kiss right to the tip of his crown.
He groaned.
&nb
sp; Emboldened, she kissed him again, this time holding the press of her lips against his shaft a little longer. The intoxicating scent of him swirled around her, and with each restless beat of her heart she drifted into another space.
One where she was the type of woman who did this. Who sank to her knees and took a man in her mouth and drove him wild.
So what if she’d only done this in her fantasies before?
So what if he was really, really big?
She wanted him. She trusted him.
The next kiss, she parted her lips and her tongue snuck out, stealing a taste. God, his skin was soft like velvet there, stretched tight over throbbing muscle, but still so sensitive, she was sure.
She closed her eyes and thought of what she liked when he made love to her breasts, when they were hot and heavy and aching.
Tugging. She like that solid pressure. With a few more tentative licks around the head, she drew him into her mouth and sucked.
“Oh, kitten. Yes, God, yes. Suck me.” She wanted to give herself a high-five at the strangled tone in his voice. Score one for the chick on her knees.
He kept talking, telling her what he liked, encouraging her to go deeper, faster, harder.
And then he stopped her.
“Hey!” she protested as he picked her up like she was made of paper. Her words died in her mouth as he moved her backwards, all the way to the oversized armchair she had instead of a couch.
As the backs of her legs bumped into the upholstered arm, his mouth crashed into hers, and his hands went everywhere. He rucked up her skirt, all the way to her waist, and he started unbuttoning her shirt—very, very slowly.
His fingers were nimble, but with each new inch of bared skin, he stopped and stroked her chest. Up and down, back and forth, teasing her breasts until her blouse was half undone and he could finally cup her mounds through the light layer of bronze silk that lifted them up.
“I was in the middle of doing something,” she muttered without any strength.
“With your talented tongue, I know.” He scraped her lower lip with his teeth as he fit himself solidly between her legs. “You almost made me blow my load down your throat.”
She cried out at the combination of his coarse words and the new nearness of his erection to her sex, covered only in a skimpy pair of panties. “That was the plan.”
“Next time.”
She pressed her legs together, squeezing them against his hips as her body reacted to the filthy promise. “I’m going to hold you to that.”
He laughed and tipped her back, his mouth rubbing against her neck as he found her pulse point and sucked. “You’re going to hold me to it? I’m going to loosen your hair until it flies wild and free, like the fucking goddess that you are, and then I’m going to tangle my hands in it and hold you to it. I want you on your knees over and over again, Cara. As often as I can get it, if you’d like. But tonight? You’ve had the long day today, babe. Tonight is all about you. Your orgasms. Your pleasure. Your very sweet dreams after I tuck you into bed, all worn out.”
She wasn’t an idiot. “Okay.”
Another laugh, right against her skin, and then her shirt was open and being pushed down her arms. When she was down to her lingerie and her skirt, uselessly wrapped around her waist, and her heels, dangling off her feet, Mick stepped back. He stroked himself as his eyes raked over her.
“So beautiful,” he said, suddenly quiet. His lips tugged into a firm, straight line as he rubbed the spots where she’d kissed up and down his torso, leaving red lovebites. “Missing my mark, though.”
She was shaking like a leaf, and precariously balanced on the edge of the chair, so when he dropped to his knees, she nearly toppled over.
“I’ve gotcha,” he murmured, kissing the inside of her thigh. Then the other one. Back and forth he went, two, three times, until she was squirming from the scant brush of his lips across her core as he made each pass from left to right and back again.
“Mick,” she panted. “Seriously.”
“What?” he grinned up at her, and her heart stopped at the moment their gazes collided.
“I—” She couldn’t speak. Emotions she didn’t want to name welled up fast and furious in her chest.
He squeezed her thighs, spreading her legs a little wider apart. “Trust me,” he said with a wink.
Oh, that wasn’t a problem. “I do,” she squeaked as his mouth latched on to the soft skin right at the top of her left thigh. His tongue swirled over the skin as he sucked hard enough to leave a gentle bruise. Then he pulled her panties to the side, baring her sex, and lapped up the proof that she’d enjoyed that very, very much.
“Good girl,” he rumbled before snapping her panties back into place and repeating the mark on the other side.
Finally he stood.
He stared down at her for a moment, his heavy breaths matching her own, then he carefully pulled out her hair clips, setting them on the side table. He watched as her hair fell in what she could only imagine was a tangled mess around her shoulders, but the look in his eyes made her feel beautiful.
Then he wordlessly picked her up, his palms under her ass, and she pointed toward the bedroom.
A few quick strides and she was flat on her back and her bra was coming off. He had no problem coordinating the clasp in the back at the same time as his mouth was closing over first one peak, then the other. Wet, hungry, arousing attention to both breasts, first individually, then pushed together, quickly had her writhing beneath him.
“Still,” he barked, and she giggled at the disappearing act the rest of his words had taken. “Woman!”
She ignored him and made herself useful, getting rid of her skirt and her underwear, then his boxer briefs.
He let her get them naked, then pinned her down again, holding her still as he worked her body into a frenzy of need. From her neck to her breasts, her sides all the way down to the hollow behind her knees, and up again between her thighs, he found all her erogenous zones and worked them over until she was soaked for him.
But when he climbed between her legs again, their sexes rubbing together just right, all he did was kiss her. Long, and slow, and sweet.
Achingly perfect.
And incredibly frustrating.
She whispered his name as she broke off their kiss and shifted under him, trying to line them up.
“Wait,” he ground out, but she’d already gotten him where she wanted him—notched right against the hottest part of her body, where she was slick enough that he started to slip inside her.
It was foolish. She knew that. They were missing something quite important, although she was on the pill. Had she told him that?
“Just…” She was breathing hard as she fought her desire to lift her hips and take him inside her. The feel of him, bare, was totally different. Less slick. Hotter. He rocked back, dragging the tip of his cock back up her slit to nudge against her clit. She whimpered and rolled her hips again. She wanted him back there, poised at her entrance.
“Condom.” His one word barking really did it for her. She’d have to tell him that when her brain unscrambled and she was capable of speech again.
“’Sokay,” she mumbled into his shoulder as he dragged the hard ridge of his erection south again. Yes. She wrapped her legs tighter around him as they fit together.
He froze.
She lifted her hips, tilting her pelvis to ease the stretch of him entering her body. Slow blinks and shuddering breaths passed between them as he searched her face. If he was looking for permission or explanation…well he had the former, and she didn’t have any clue about the latter.
Except there were those big feelings again in her chest. Too big to name. Four letter words are scary. She almost said it out loud, but then he closed the gap between them and kissed her as he pressed home, stretching her wide.
This was different. And not just because they were making love skin on skin, in a bed. But their connection was deeper now. She’d shown him her fragil
e underbelly, her weaknesses, and he’d carefully scooped her up and taken care of her.
His arms braced on either side of her head, he started to move them together as one, surging up and into her, then dragging back out, leaving her hollow and hungry for the next thrust.
He was a machine, his hips pushing deep, pistoning back again. He set a steady rhythm that made her see stars as he stroked against all those magically alive places inside her he’d clearly memorized.
She cried out his name, then just sounds that approximated words—yes, oh, God, yes, there—as the desire twisted and coiled inside her, readying for a final countdown.
But Mick wasn’t in a hurry. He slowed down, keeping her right at that out-of-her-mind pre-orgasm state. How was it possible to feel this good from the inside of your body? And how was he not out of his mind already?
She nipped at his jaw and licked down his neck. Dug her nails into his back and her heels into his fine, sculpted ass. And still he gave her that half-lidded, in-control look.
He was good at that. Putting up that wall. But she’d seen the other look in the living room. The one that said he wanted her so much it hurt. She knew the feeling. And she wanted to know that they were both feeling it, now, as she started to climb toward what felt like the highest mountain peak in the world.
She reached between them, stroking first his chest, then her own. He liked that. His gaze followed her hand as she squeezed her breast, then trailed her fingertips up to her mouth.
But it was when she twisted her hair around her hand and lay back, surrendering to his onslaught, that he lost the edge of his control. And then brick by sexy brick, it all fell away, until he was holding her down and fucking her so hard she could barely breath from the overwhelming pleasure of it.
Yes, she screamed in her head. Yes.
When she exploded, he came with her, filling her up.
He stayed there, buried deep, until her heart rate returned to normal. When he moved to shift away, she tangled her fingers in his. “Stay.”
His grin was quick and easy. “Okay.”