“At least it got you here today,” Mimi retorted.
“Let’s just enjoy the champagne and art, okay? No more lectures.”
They both turned to gaze at the painting again.
“You know.” Mimi cocked her head and looked at the painting from another angle. “I swear these two almost look like they’re about to step off the canvas into this room.”
Erin pulled her eyes back to the painting. “They do, don’t they? Maybe I should stick to make-believe men. It would be a lot safer.”
“Maybe you should go introduce yourself to Georgia’s hunk over there,” Mimi told her. “They say when you fall off a horse, you should get right back on.”
Erin frowned. “This isn’t exactly the same thing. Besides, he might be her new tight squeeze, and I wouldn’t want to poach.”
“Well, too late to find out now.” Mimi glanced to where the couple had been standing. “He’s flown the coop.”
“See? If it was meant to be, he’d still be here. And the last thing I want in my life right now is another high maintenance man. Or any kind of man.” Erin put her empty champagne flute on a tray sitting on a stand. “Listen, this has almost been fun, but I think I’m ready to retreat to my cave. I’ve mingled as much as I can, and this fake smile is making my cheeks hurt. Besides, I’m running out of things to say to people.”
Mimi enveloped her sister in a huge hug. “I’m only a phone call away, sweetie.”
“I know, I know. Give me a couple of days, okay?”
“Whatever. Just take care.”
“I will.” She grinned and blew a kiss at the painting. “Who knows. Maybe a merman will appear out of the Gulf on my beach.”
“That would be a blessing. Call me,” she repeated as Erin headed to Georgia to say her goodbyes.
On her way out the door, she paused briefly to take a last, lingering look at the painting of the merman and the water nymph. Something about it still captured her attention. Maybe the merman’s sculptured body or his strong face. Or the way his eyes smoldered when they looked at the nymph.
Wait. Could painted eyes smolder? Maybe she was losing it completely. She hurried out and putting the top down on her convertible, drove back to her beach hideaway. She hoped the wind would blow the cobwebs out of her mind.
****
Erin tossed her car keys into the bowl on the coffee tale, kicked off her shoes and slid open the glass doors. She padded barefoot across the deck, leaned on the rail and inhaled the salty tang of the Gulf of Mexico.
The wide beach was fairly deserted, even on such a warm summer day. This stretch of it was private to the cottages fronting on it, and it was almost sunset, time for people to be inside, feeding their families or drinking cocktails. She walked down the three steps to the beach and wriggled her toes in the fine-grained sand. Lifting her face to the last rays of the sun, she released her raven-black hair from its French braid and let the soft Gulf breeze play with its strands.
Renting this cottage had been a good idea, despite what her friends and family said. She wanted to get away from the city, away from the sympathetic looks of friends and family.
“You have to get this out of your system,” her mother said every day, until Erin was sick of hearing it. “Get mad. Scream. Shoot him if you feel like it.”
She hadn’t done any of those things. Instead, she’d gone about taking care of everything in a quiet, controlled manner. Returning wedding gifts. Sending out announcements. Canceling all arrangements. At least Alan would have to eat the cost of the honeymoon, unless he took Miss Long Legs on the trip instead.
Throughout the ordeal she refused to cry. After a while, she wondered if her heart was actually wounded or just her pride. It amazed her how little the lack of his presence bothered her. Maybe she’d been saved from a world class disaster. Still, the whole experience diminished how she looked at herself. She began to examine her shortcomings until her friends were ready to slap her.
Once she’d decided on the rental, she was packed and away from her condo in twenty-four hours. In the chaotic aftermath of what happened, she needed some peace and quiet, not non-stop activities that were supposed to occupy her mind.
Mimi finally threw up her hands in frustration and said she’d pick up the slack in the accounting firm they owned, despite her unhappiness at Erin’s decision. In return, this afternoon Erin had driven into Sarasota to meet Mimi at the gallery opening to do the public relations thing with their client.
Now she was back to her solitude and relishing every moment of it.
Dinner was a sandwich and wine out on the deck. Erin lay back in the chair with her feet up on a stool as sunset changed to twilight and stars began to ignite in the clear sky. Without realizing it, she fell asleep.
****
She woke to sense a presence nearby, the feeling that another person was close. Forcing open her heavy-lidded eyes, she saw him standing beside her, broad shoulders tapering to narrow hips, silver light glinting over the curls on his chest and brushing glistening streaks through the rich golden hair on his head.
He was big all over, and hard. Not workout hard like the men she knew. A warrior’s body. There didn’t look to be an ounce of give to him anywhere. He was without a doubt the most masculine man she had ever seen, muscles limned in the ambient light, his face defined by a square jaw and high cheekbones. She couldn’t see the color of his eyes in the dark, only that the faint light from the sky shone in them, reflecting the lust burning there.
Her heart trip-hammered, and she tried to move away on the bed.
He reached out and placed a hand on her arm, stopping her. “No. I won’t harm you. Don’t move.”
She looked around. Yes, this was her bedroom, her window with the moonlight streaming in. But who was this man standing so close to her?
He lifted the sheet covering her naked body and drew it back, as if unwrapping a package, his eyes devouring her as each inch of her was revealed. Her flesh shivered under his gaze. When she lifted her arms to cover herself, he shook his head. “Why would you want to hide a body so beautiful and tempting?”
Erin dropped her hands to her sides, unexpectedly craving the stranger’s touch, the caress of his gaze on her skin. Her heart hammered against her ribs, and heat bloomed throughout all her erogenous zones. How could she be doing this, exposing herself to a total stranger? Yet it seemed so very right. So…so…fated. That was it. Fated. As if arranged by a power greater than both of them.
Excitement and anticipation raced through her as his eyes raked over her, taking in her breasts, her stomach, the patch of dark curls covering her sex, her shaking thighs. Extending a finger, he bent low and traced the line his eyes had drawn, his touch as light as a feather.
When he reached her mound, he nudged her thighs apart and traced his fingertip the length of her slit. She dampened, a pulse already beating inside her.
Using his hand to spread her thighs even wider, he brushed his thumb across the hard knot of her clit, setting the nerves in that little bud afire, then tracing the opening to her pussy as if drawing a circle. Her breathing hitched, and more liquid seeped from her. She fell into a whirlpool of sensation, drawn by his touch, spinning in the grasp of something more carnal than she’d ever known.
Every place his hands glided against her skin, she felt tingles of pleasure, as if electricity sparked from his fingers. His erection, rising proudly from a thick nest of curls, pressed against her thigh. Her hand automatically extended toward it, her fingers closing around its steely length. She heard his indrawn breath and tightened her grip just the slightest bit.
“Careful,” he warned as he uncurled her fingers from his cock. His deep voice wrapped itself around her like warm honey. “Just looking at you arouses me to the point of orgasm. We don’t want this to be over before we even get started.”
“I want to touch you, stroke you,” she protested.
He shook his head. “Tonight is for you. “
He moved to the fo
ot of the bed, the mattress dipping as he kneeled between her thighs. “I think I’ll die if I don’t taste every inch of you,” he told her and proceeded to do just that.
His voice was thick with desire, so intense it set off flutters in her belly. She couldn’t recall ever hearing that level of need—for her—in the voice of any other man, and it raised her own degree of hunger. She wanted nothing more than to lie back on her cool cotton sheets and take his gorgeous cock deep into her body.
Leaning on his forearms to catch his weight, he began with her forehead, tracing light kisses from side to side, then down the bridge of her nose. His lips whispered across her eyelids and traveled the plane of her face until his mouth pressed hers. His lips felt like rough satin and tasted of clean salt water. His scent enveloped her, a mixture of mint and outdoors.
“I’m going to fuck your mouth,” he whispered. “Just like I’m going to fuck your pussy. Open for me and let me inside.”
Mindlessly, she opened her mouth and accepted his hot tongue, somehow powerless to do anything except that which he requested. His tongue was like a flame, leaving tiny fires wherever he touched inside—her cheeks, the roof of her mouth, the very tender skin around her tongue.
When he had drunk his fill, he traced the line of her jaw with his tongue, then moved onto the slender column of her neck. At the sensitive juncture of neck and shoulder, his teeth bit lightly, the sensation sending a waterfall of liquid through her quivering cunt, copious juices that trailed into the cleft of her buttocks.
The fine hair on his legs lightly abraded the insides of her thighs. His cock rubbed against her belly, and his testicles just brushed the outer lips of her pussy. Her skin felt electric every place their bodies touched.
When he lowered his head to her breasts and took the hard bud of one nipple into his mouth, she jerked against him, the sensation so intense she was sure she’d come without any further urging. The pull was gentle and fierce at the same time, sending spikes of pleasure straight to her womb. He sucked the tip deep, grazing it with his teeth and flicking his tongue against it.
Erin lifted her hands to his back. She loved the feel of him, the play of muscles rippling beneath the skin, the rigid column of his spine. Her fingers traced bumps and ridges, markings she somehow knew were his souvenirs of battle. What did he do that was so dangerous?
She ran her hands over the tight muscles of his ass, trying to find some play in his skin that she could hold onto. He flexed his buttocks, and his penis moved against her.
“Your skin is like silk,” he murmured. “Soft and elegant. I could lick every inch of it. Forever.”
“Who are you?” she asked, barely able to form words with his intense exploration setting of sparks in nerves she didn’t even know she had.
“The man who’s going to fuck you every way possible,” he answered. “Who’s going to make love to you more intensely than anyone ever has before.”
Without warning, he slid his hands under her buttocks and lifted her to his mouth, his tongue licking her slit from top to bottom. She jolted in his hands, but he tightened his grip and steadied her. Her hands fluttered as his mouth closed over her heat, his tongue flicked expertly over her clit. Little spikes of electricity streaked from that throbbing knot until there wasn’t an inch of her that wasn’t on fire.
His thumbs opened the entrance to her cunt as if he were peeling back the petals of a flower, and he carefully lapped at every exposed, dripping inch. When he stiffened his tongue and stabbed it into her waiting cavern, she thrust her hips at him and a soft moan escaped her lips. Her hands reached for his hair, fisting in its silken softness while he plundered her with his tongue until she thought she would come apart.
“Please,” she cried as the coil inside her tightened unbearably. “Oh, please.”
Ignoring her cries of desperation, he drank from her greedily, no tiny particle of her vaginal vault left untasted, her juices pouring into his mouth. He hummed in satisfaction, the vibrations sending more pleasure spikes through the walls of her pussy and into her body.
When at last he lifted her legs over his shoulder and positioned himself at the entrance to her body, she didn’t know if she wanted to weep with relief or shout at him to move faster. Instead, she merely tried to urge him on with movements of her hips, her hands gripping his broad shoulders.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
She forced her heavy eyelids upward and found herself trapped in a gaze that was equal parts of hunger and…something she couldn’t quite define. She felt as if he were looking right into her soul, capturing the essence of who she was.
The room filled with the scent of salt water and musk and sex as he placed the head of his cock against her and pushed inside.
Oh my God!
Her eyes had automatically drifted shut again, but again he commanded, “Look at me. Know who this is that’s taking you. Giving to you. Let me see inside of you. Now.”
Her eyes popped open, focusing on the strong, chiseled planes of his face outlined in the moonlight. His thick shaft drove all the way in until he prodded the edge of her womb.
He began to stroke his cock in and out in a steady rhythm. “Move with me.”
Body screaming for release, she found the pace and they moved as if they were dancers in a choreographed ballet. Sex for her had never been like this, a burning spear torching every one of her nerves, her liquid heat bathing him, the inner walls of her cunt quivering and pulsing and milking him.
On and on he drove her, his thumb now tormenting the hard nub of her clit, his hips rolling and thrusting. And all the time her gaze was locked with his, an invisible bond binding her to him.
The orgasm, when it hit them, had the crash and force of a tidal wave, the undertow sweeping them out to sea, shaking them as if they were in the grip of a giant fist. Their bodies shuddered and shook as their hips rocked together and spasms gripped every muscle.
At last he lowered her hips and slid his hands to her thighs, then slipped his cock from its warm cradle and lay beside her, panting. She flung her arm across his chest and felt his heart thundering against his ribs, no less harder than her own.
After a long moment, he unwrapped his arms from around her, kissed her forehead and her cheeks with touches as light as a feather, and pushed himself from the bed.
The loss of his warmth left her feeling bereft. Empty. She wanted to keep him pressed to her forever. An unfamiliar ache settled in her heart.
“Don’t go. Please.” She reached a weak hand out to him. “Tell me your name.”
Without answering, he slid open the glass doors, and a heavy wind blew in, wrapping the sheet around her with the force of it. Erin yanked at it, trying to pull the fabric away from her warm, damp flesh.
“Come back,” she cried. “Don’t leave me.”
****
Erin’s eyes snapped open, and she looked around, disoriented. Bewildered. She was on her deck, in the same chair where she’d fallen asleep. The wind had twisted her long hair and whipped it across her face, and her fingers were tugging at it. There was no one on the deck but her. And she wasn’t in her bedroom.
A dream. She’d been having a dream.
Not possible. She never had erotic dreams. Especially about men she’d never met.
Swallowing her disappointment, Erin leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. She tried to pull back the threads of what had seemed so real. When she shifted her hips, she discovered her panties were soaked, her fluids leaving a puddle on the canvas mat of the chair. Touching her breasts, she realized the nipples were still hard and beaded. Her body felt well-used, but no one had used it. At least no one real.
The face had seemed so familiar, but it wasn’t anyone she remembered meeting. She had no idea who he was, yet she felt as if she’d known him forever.
The painting in the gallery!
That was it. Oh, God, the merman. He looked like the merman come to life in her room, plundering her heart as well as her body.
What the hell was going on?
Thank you for purchasing
this Wild Rose Press, Inc. publication.
For other wonderful stories of erotic romance,
please visit our on-line bookstore at
www.thewilderroses.com.
For questions or more information
contact us at
[email protected].
The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
www.thewilderroses.com
Come To Me Page 20