“Where else?”
“Yes, sir.”
The car purred into motion along the narrow alleyway.
“I just hope Hugh has gone to bed,” Gavin muttered. “I can’t stand any more pity today.”
Annoyance pinched at Allie. “When your friends care, you think it’s pity?”
Gavin shifted on the seat so she could see his face, which meant that he could see hers. “Aren’t you here because you feel sorry for me?”
“I’m here because you just got a body blow right when you thought things were looking up. I expected you’d want someone to talk to, to lean on. Someone who could help you through the bad time. That’s not pity. That’s caring.” Maybe more than she wanted to acknowledge to herself.
“Well, I certainly leaned on you, didn’t I?” But in the filtered illumination of the New York City streetlights, she could see the tension in his jaw ease as something flickered to life in his eyes. He slid closer, slipping his hand under her hair to hold it away from her neck. “I must reek of bourbon, so I won’t kiss you on the lips, but . . .” He found the skin pulled tight over her jawline and pressed his lips against it before he licked along the edge of the bone.
Enveloped in the cushioned leather of the big Bentley and the scent of Gavin’s spicy soap mingled with expensive liquor, Allie felt a bolt of electricity streak down her neck to fork at her breasts, bringing each nipple to a hard, aching peak. Then it seared low into her belly to coil itself into a hot, yearning knot. She gasped, and he dragged his lips along the tendon of her neck until he reached her clavicle. Tracing it with his tongue, he brought one hand up to her breast, his palm putting just the right pressure against the tight point.
She understood that he was seeking a different kind of oblivion than the bourbon would bring. He could lose himself in the giving and receiving of physical pleasure and forget his despair for a time. As the vibrations of his touch echoed through her, she wanted to open herself to him, to ease his pain so she could bring him back to the brilliant, perceptive man she was coming to find irresistible.
She threaded her fingers into his hair and pulled up his head to find his mouth. “I like the aroma of bourbon,” she said before angling her head so she could feel the firmness of his lips and tease him into opening them.
Gavin groaned against her, the vibration adding an extra dimension to their kiss. He pulled her closer, but their knees got in the way. “On my lap,” he said, his hands on her shoulders, urging her toward him.
She did him one better, turning to kneel with one knee on either side of his thighs. The denim of her jeans slid on the leather seat as the car accelerated, so she skidded up against him with her legs practically wrapped around his waist.
“Good use of momentum.” His voice had gone hoarse.
She could feel his erection pressing against her, harder as they hit a pothole, even with the Bentley’s expensive suspension. “Ahh, Gavin.”
He slid his hands under the hem of her silky top and found the catch of her bra, opening it so she felt the bra come loose. Then he was kneading her breasts under the fabric, his thumbs rubbing over the sensitive tips, the electric sensation zinging through her. She braced her hands on the top of the car’s seat and threw back her head, letting him touch her any way he wanted to because he needed to be in control right now. He pushed up her shirt and bra so that he could suck on her breasts, pulling at the nipples with his lips, swirling around them with his tongue, grazing them with his teeth.
She tried to muffle her moans, but her skin grew more and more sensitive so that each touch reverberated deeper and lower inside her. Only the hard grip of his hands on her waist could keep her still enough for him to torment and tantalize. She reveled in the feel of his fingers pressed into her skin to hold her for his pleasure. She wanted to offer him this, to make him forget for a little while. It was an act of love. The thought startled her before it was swept away under his delicious assault.
He unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans, slipping one hand into the V of her thighs, gliding against the slickness he’d created there.
“Allie, you are so sweet and wet.” He found her clit and massaged it, the contact sending waves of pure arousal crashing through her. She could feel the build of her orgasm tightening and tightening. Then he wedged his hand farther down so he could slide one finger inside her, flexing it to trigger tiny explosions in her center.
“Yes,” she hissed, her fingernails digging into the leather cushion as she bowed backward.
His mouth was on one of the breasts she had unconsciously thrust forward, drawing hard on the nipple. She lifted partway off his lap so he could move his hand more easily in the confines of her jeans.
He took full advantage, working another finger inside her and thrusting in and out with short strokes while his palm dragged against her clit. She could feel herself grow even wetter as he pushed in while tonguing her nipple. For a long moment she teetered on the edge of climax, held suspended in the web of sensation he wove around her, and then her whole body clenched and exploded, clenched and exploded. Her mouth opened to shriek before she remembered Jaros was only a few feet away.
She swallowed her cry just before it broke from her, turning it into a long, ragged groan. She shook with the force of containing the power of her orgasm.
“Let go, Allie,” Gavin said, flexing his fingers at a different angle. “Come for me.”
Her body shuddered as it tightened around him again and released. “No more,” she begged, collapsing with her head on his shoulder, his hand still in her jeans and her body. “I can’t.”
He went still, wrapping his free arm around her while echoes of her orgasm rippled through her. She could hear the rasp of his breathing and feel that his heart was pounding almost as hard as hers.
“Mr. Gavin, we are home.” Allie would have jumped at the intrusion of Jaros’s voice except that her body was too wrung out to move.
Gavin gave a strange little bark of a laugh. “Take us to the garage, and leave us with the keys in the car.”
“Yes, sir.” The intercom’s low hum cut off.
Allie felt a flush of embarrassment. “He must know what we’re going to do.”
“You’ve already done it.” His tone held a flicker of amusement.
“Oh God, I won’t be able to look him in the eye,” Allie said. “Or Ludmilla.”
“Discretion is an important part of Jaros’s job. He’ll never acknowledge what happened in any way.”
“But he still knows.”
Gavin did something with his fingers that brought her nerve endings back to full alert, banishing the driver and his opinions from her mind. It was hard to feel shame when a man’s mouth was on your bare breast and his fingers were moving in mind-blowing ways inside you.
The car rocked a couple of times as though it were bumping over something; then it slowed to a stop. Allie buried her face in Gavin’s shoulder again as she felt the car door close. “Is he gone?”
“Yes. We have the Bentley and the garage all to ourselves,” Gavin said. “It’s my private garage, so you don’t have to worry about further interruptions.”
He gave one last flex of his fingers before he pulled his hand out of her jeans. He sat her back on his knees before lifting his hand to his mouth to suck on his fingers. “Vintage Allie,” he said, meeting her eyes with a look of pure lust.
Then he shifted and flipped her onto her back on the seat beside him, yanking her jeans down over her hips. She helped him work them off and then dragged her top and bra over her head.
He knelt between her thighs, his arm braced on the seat back as he swayed slightly. “You glow against the black leather.” He used one index finger to trace a line from her forehead down over her lips, her neck, between her breasts, her abdomen, to the yearning place between her legs. “I want another taste,” he said before he scooped his hands under her buttocks and tilted her upward as he lowered his head to meet her.
He put his mouth there, swi
rling his tongue around her clit before dipping the tip inside her. He stopped to blow a warm breath against her. “You taste like the mountains and the sea together, earth and salt.” Then he licked her again, sparking little shocks deep within her, making her go liquid, causing tiny mews of pleasure to climb out of her throat.
She buried her fingers in his thick, dark hair, not sure whether to hold him there or pull him away as he teased her in already sensitized places.
But he brought the delicious torment to a stop, lowering her to the seat and disentangling his hair from her grip. “The taste of you is too good,” he said, pulling a condom out of his pocket and unzipping his trousers to roll it onto his erection. “I need to be inside you.”
He pulled her knees up to his hips, seated the tip of his cock just barely inside her, and buried himself in her with one hard thrust. She cried out at the same time he did, their voices combining in a single animal shout.
The swell and glide of him deep within her made her earlier orgasm seem somehow less because he hadn’t been fully there with her. Now she could feel the power and pulse of him in the most intimate places. He moved, his hands wrapped around her knees holding her up off the seat, so he could drive in and pull out at the angle he wanted. He started slowly, thrusting and withdrawing in a deliberate, sensual rhythm, his breath sounding in the same tempo.
She opened her eyes to find his gaze locked on the place where their bodies came together, watching himself invade and withdraw. It sent a thrill rippling through her, and she tightened her inner muscles around him as he slid fully into her.
He met her gaze. “Minx,” he rasped. And then he let himself go, closing his eyes as he drove into her faster, harder, deeper, while he groaned out her name over and over again like an incantation.
She felt the tension coiling inside her, the motion of his cock and the friction of his trousers against her clit enough to stoke her arousal again. Even his dark, husky voice seemed like a caress.
And then his grip turned to iron as he plunged into her and stayed, shouting and pulsing, so that her orgasm went off just seconds later than his, the joint convulsion seeming as though it would blow out the windows of the car.
As the cataclysm inside her quieted, Allie unclenched her fingers from the edge of the seat she held in a crazed grip above her head. She hoped she hadn’t left fingernail marks in the expensive leather. Gavin’s grasp on her hips gentled, too, and he eased himself out of her so he could lower her hips to the seat.
She gave a little moan at the absence of him.
“Are you all right?” he asked, stroking down her thighs with a featherlight touch.
She opened her eyes to see concern darkening his eyes as he knelt with his shoulder wedged against the seat. “All right would be an understatement.”
His smile was relieved. Flipping open a compartment in the big car, he disposed of the condom. Allie noticed the fog on the car windows and lifted her arm to flatten her palm against the steamy glass. “This is so Titanic.”
“I certainly felt the earth move,” Gavin said, rolling her onto her side so he could lie on the seat beside her.
“No, the movie Titanic. When they make love in the car and steam all the windows up.”
“Oh God, no! Don’t compare us to that treacly costume disaster.”
The cashmere of his sweater and the wool of his trousers were soft and warm against her bare skin as she snuggled close. “You mean you’ve never stood on a railing, held your arms out, and yelled, ‘I’m the king of the world’?”
He snorted before wrapping his arm tightly around her waist and tangling his legs with hers. “Right here and now, I feel like the king of the world. No doomed ocean liner necessary.”
She liked that, even though it was strange to realize that he was still fully dressed, and she didn’t have a stitch of clothing on. “You know that French painting of a picnic in the park where the men are in these starchy suits and the woman is naked?” she said. “That’s how I feel.”
“You’re talking about Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe.” The deep rumble of his voice vibrated against her back. “Were you shocked by it, like all the prim art critics of the time?”
“Well, yes. It’s meant to be shocking. But I liked her confidence. She just sat there, looking at whoever was painting her picture, as though there was nothing strange about being naked outdoors with a couple of overdressed men.” Allie cast back to the art history course she had enjoyed more than she expected, trying to remember the painting more clearly. “It’s sexy, too. Like she’s undressed so they can look at her and touch her. I always wondered if the woman in the background was bathing before or after she had sex with the men. It’s clearly a small orgy.” She could feel Gavin shaking against her and tried to twist her head around to see why.
His shout of laughter ricocheted around the confines of the car.
She allowed a smile to curl the corners of her lips. She’d made him laugh when, a half an hour ago, he’d been at the bottom of an abyss of despair.
“A small orgy,” he stuttered between chuckles. “Isn’t that an oxymoron?”
“Not to my mind.”
His lips brushed her bare shoulder. “You are so good for me, my flame-haired sprite.”
“Your what?”
“Have I never said that out loud before? That’s how I think of you.”
She liked the flame-haired part, even though it was way too poetic for her carrot-top. “A sprite? What do you mean by that, exactly?”
“A small creature with magical powers. Mighty magical powers.”
“Okay. I’ll take it.” Lulled by the heat of his body, the satiation of her own, and the coziness of the car, her eyelids drifted closed.
“Allie.”
She came awake with a start, staring around in confusion for a second before she registered the solid wall of Gavin’s body against her back.
“Could we go back to your house tonight?” he asked, his voice strained. “I don’t want to face Hugh just yet.”
“Pie would love to see you again,” she said, trying to wriggle out of his grasp to reach for her bra. “There’s nothing she likes to sleep on more than Armani.”
His grip tightened. “You don’t have to move yet. It felt good to have you go loose and relaxed in my arms.”
“So you weren’t insulted?” Allie snagged her shirt and the bra tangled with it.
“Sleep is something to be treasured when you can’t have it.”
“We can sleep at my house in a nice soft bed. Not that I don’t love leather against my skin.” She twisted to give him a teasing smile.
“You’re giving me ideas.”
“Isn’t that what a muse is supposed to do?”
He kissed her shoulder again and let her sit up, tracing his finger down her spine before he shoved himself upright.
She quickly shimmied back into her clothing, even as she felt the weight of his gaze on her. As soon as she was decent, he swung the door open, offering her a hand as she scrambled out.
“Oh. My. God,” she said, letting her mouth drop open while she looked around the garage.
The floor was red brick, the walls were white brick, and the ceiling was white brick formed into vaults like a medieval church, from which hung a huge stainless-steel-and-glass chandelier. Six cars in various sleek shapes were arrayed around the space, their highly polished metal skins gleaming in the light. In the wall facing her were two arches, one with a brushed-steel door large enough for a car to pass through, and the other with a human-size door of the same metal.
“Are all these cars yours?” she asked.
“Remember my antique-collecting phase? I went through a car-collecting phase, too.” He leaned his hip against the Bentley. “Pick a car, any car.”
She surveyed the selection and decided the Maserati looked the most like a normal vehicle. “The Maz.”
“My personal favorite, but you’ve experienced that one. Why not the Ferrari or the Lamborghini
?”
“Because I’m driving, and I don’t want to mess with those.”
“I’m perfectly capable of driving,” he said. “I only stagger a bit.”
“Which means that if the police stop you and tell you to walk the line, you’ll be in big trouble.”
He pushed away from the Bentley, positioned himself on a line of bricks that ran straight across the floor, and focused his gaze downward as he put one foot directly in front of the other. When he reached the far wall, he threw her a look of triumph. “Straight as an arrow with nary a wobble.”
“I’m still driving.” Although it made her nervous to think about the perils of crazy cab drivers coming near such an expensive vehicle.
“Can you handle a manual transmission?”
“I can handle a tractor pulling a chisel plow.”
“If I ever need a field tilled, I’ll make sure to call you.” He tapped in a string of characters on a keypad, causing a panel to slide back and reveal a dozen sets of keys hung in neat rows. He unhooked a set, and the panel slid closed.
“What are the extra keys for?”
“The cars out at my Southampton house,” he said, weaving slightly as he walked to the low-slung black Maserati. He held open the driver’s door for her and offered her the keys.
Allie shook her head in amazement as she got in the car. Sometimes she just plain forgot how rich he was. Maybe that was a good thing.
Her nerves ratcheted up another notch as she surveyed the array of dials and digital readouts on the high-end control panel. Gavin dropped into the passenger seat and pointed out the basics for her. She took a deep breath and punched the ignition. The car’s big engine purred to life. She shifted into low and eased forward as Gavin pushed a button that lifted the garage door. Once out on the street, she tested the feel of the steering and the gearshift, finding both to be responsive and silky. “I could get used to this,” she said, doing a smooth shift.
“Borrow it anytime you like.”
“Ha! I wouldn’t even know where to get gas for it.”
Gavin was quiet on the ride downtown to her apartment, and she let him be, since she needed to concentrate on keeping the Maserati’s paint unmarred. Her body hummed with satisfaction, both from the sex and from knowing she had gotten him away from the bourbon bottle.
The VIP Doubles Down (Wager of Hearts Book 3) Page 20