by Julie Kenner
But then it would be between them. What would it mean for their friendship if he didn't feel the same way? Was she willing to risk losing what they had for the chance to kiss him? To see if all the possibility she sensed bubbling under the surface of their long standing camaraderie was real or fantasy?
No. He meant too much to her. His friendship was part of the bedrock of her life, a foundation comprised of the love of her parents and the knowledge that Leo would always be there to pick her up if she fell.
Decision made, she was willing herself to turn away, willing her legs to propel her body back to shore, when she heard the wave approaching. She knew from the sound of it — a subtle roar she felt in her stomach — that it was bigger than the swells that had been rolling under them until now.
She barely had time to look at Leo before they both ducked, letting it roll overhead the way they had when they were kids. When she was sure it was past, she came up to find that the water had moved her closer to Leo.
Much closer.
He was only inches away now, his lips parted as he looked at her with what she was almost sure was desire.
“Leo…”
It was all she managed to say in the moment before he pulled her toward him. She slid her hands into the hair at the back of his head and wrapped her legs around his waist as his mouth closed on hers. He was taller than her, his feet firmly planted in the sand as the waves crashed around them. She was only dimly aware of their power. It paled in comparison to the need rolling through her body as Leo’s tongue swept her mouth, his hands pressing her ass against the hard-on wedged between her thighs.
She opened her mouth, wanting all of him, meeting every thrust of his tongue with her own, fisting his wet hair in her hands. They were in their own universe now. Nothing but them and the empty beach and the almost full moon casting a column of light over the sea. He was mapping her mouth, exploring it with his tongue, then nibbling at her bottom lip before capturing it again.
He pulled away, leaving her gasping — for breath and for him. She wanted more.
So much more.
“Diana…”
She placed a finger over his lips. “I don’t want to talk, Leo. We’ve been talking our whole lives.”
“We haven’t talked about it. About what I do. About what that would mean for you.”
“I don’t care, Leo. I don’t fucking care, okay? I just want you to make love to me now.”
He seemed to hesitate, and for a moment she feared he would turn her away. Then he groaned and pressed his lips to hers, and this time the kiss wasn’t an exploration but a possession.
Her hands traveled down, across the broad expanse of his shoulders, down to the biceps that bulged as they held her ass. He kissed his way along her jaw toward her ear, nibbled at the lobe until she gasped, throwing her head back until her hair fanned out in the water around them.
She let her hands travel down the rise of his pecs, past the hard muscles of his abs, into the swim shorts at his hips. Then he was in her hand.
Long. Thick. Hard.
The feel of him in her hand sent an explosion of lust to her core. She was slippery for him, so on fire she could imagine the feel of him inside her. All she would have to do is pull aside her knickers, push herself onto the pulsing shaft in her hands.
“Fuck, Diana…” He held her aloft with one hand, then slid the other one around to the front, sliding it between their bodies, past the mound of her pubis. She moaned as his fingers brushed against her clit on the way to her secret folds, his mouth trailing kisses along her shoulder to her collarbone. Then his fingers were inside her, claiming her as he licked the hollow of her throat on his way to her breasts.
He was throbbing in her hand as she moved her palm over his shaft in long, languid strokes, relishing the feel of him expand as his need for her grew. It took every ounce of willpower she had not to position herself over the thick head, envelop him in her heat. She’d waited her whole life for this moment, and she had no idea what would happen when it was over.
She was going to lose herself in it while she could.
He lowered his lips to one lace-covered breast, closed his mouth over the fabric of the bra. She moaned as her nipple, cold from the water and wind, was enveloped in the heat of his mouth. It was a wicked combination: his cock in her hand, his fingers inside her, his mouth on her breast, the surf pounding around them in perfect rhythm to the longing beating through her body.
He lifted his head, looked into her eyes. “I need to see you. And I need to feel you.”
He turned her around in his arms so he was carrying her like a bride over the threshold, then stalked through the surf toward the beach. Her body hurt with the absence of his fingers inside her, the lack of his mouth on her skin. How had she lived without them — without him — all this time? How had she sat across from him, making polite conversation over drinks when his body — his heart — had been made for her.
He didn’t take his eyes off her as he made his way toward the beach, the water gradually growing more shallow, falling away from their bodies. She registered the chill in the air with detachment. Nothing mattered but him.
His strong arms around her. His body warming hers. His eyes seeing into her soul.
“We should go inside,” he said. “It’s cold.”
She kissed him. “I don’t want to go inside, Leo. I’ve waited too long already.”
His eyes seemed to turn black in the moonlight. “Then let’s not wait any longer.”
Chapter Fourteen
He lowered her to the sand, laying her out carefully. It had been ages since they’d been in bathing suits together. She’d been little more than a kid the last time he’d seen her so scantily clad, and he’d been too young to understand the depth of his feelings for her.
Now he saw that her body was more magnificent than he could have imagined, her breasts full and perfectly formed, the dusky brown nipples barely visible through the lace of her bra. He let himself have the luxury of looking at her, allowed his eyes to travel to the tiny waist, the full hips that were made for his big hands. Her panties were wet, plastered to the mound at the top of her thighs. His pulse quickened as he remembered the walls of her pussy clenching around his fingers. Her legs were full at the top, narrowing to slender knees and calves, and he knew the skin on the inside of her thigh would be soft and fleshy when he raked it with his teeth. Her skin shimmered with droplets of water.
She lifted a hand. “Please.”
It was so polite, so Diana, to ask nicely when the fire raged in his body. When he thought he would be consumed by it if he didn’t bury himself inside her before another moment could pass.
He lowered himself next to her on the sand, pulled her into his arms. “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable,” he said, thinking of the sand.
She wrapped her hands around his neck, licked the salt from his lips. “The only thing that’s making me uncomfortable is the fact that you’re not inside me yet.”
She kissed him, slipping her tongue inside his mouth as she hooked a leg around one of his hips, pressing herself against him until he could feel the heat of her pussy against his engorged cock.
He rolled her gently under him, used one of his knees to spread her thighs while he kissed her. He wanted to know every inch of her body, and he started with her mouth, kissing her deeply and thoroughly, letting his mouth explore every corner of it, pulling back to lick her full lips. She bit his bottom lip, hard enough to give him a shock of pleasure-pain that shot right to the tip of his shaft.
“All this time you’ve been hiding a naughty side,” he murmured, moving his lips down her neck, licking his way to her collarbone.
“All this time you thought I was a good girl?” she asked.
He unhooked her bra, tossed it aside. “All this time I’ve known you were my girl.” It thrilled him to say it.
His. For now at least, she was his.
He lowered his head to her breast and captured the nipple
in his mouth. She gasped as he sucked, working the insistent peak with his tongue while he fingered the other one with his free hand. The little bud rose quickly to a stiff peak, and he tugged at it gently with his teeth before lapping at it with his tongue, soothing it before he sucked and nibbled again.
She grabbed a handful of his hair, almost hard enough to hurt. It only made him bigger. Hotter. He released the nipple from his mouth and kissed his way down her stomach. It was flat but deliciously soft, and he dipped his tongue into the well of her naval, before making his way farther downward.
Kneeling between her legs, he took one slender calf in his hand and kissed his way from her ankle to the tender spot behind her knee. She lifted her head from the sand, watched him spread her open, his mouth moving up her thigh, kissing and nibbling at the delicate flesh inside her legs. The scent of her pussy hit him like a bolt of lightning.
Earthy. Sweet. Musky.
It set his blood boiling, causing another painful rush of need to his already about-to-explode cock. He distracted himself by lowering his head to look at the dewy wetness clinging to her folds, proof that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. He ran a finger through them, upward toward her clit. Her sigh was like a summer breeze, rising up, mingling with the wind blowing in off the water. He wanted to hear that sigh again. Wanted to look in her eyes when she came for him.
When he poured himself into her.
He ran his tongue through the petals of her sex, resisting the urge to bury his face in her pussy. It was too soon for that, and he circled her clit with his tongue, flicking the tiny bundle of nerves until she moaned. Her hips rose off the sand to meet him, and he lay a hand flat on her belly, both to keep her still and because it was a form of possession. A way to make it clear that for now, at least, her body was his.
He slid his fingers inside her while increasing the pressure on her clit with his tongue and was rewarded with an increase in the juices lubricating his fingers. She moaned, moving her hips against him as he lapped at her clit, slid another finger inside her, moving them in and out in time to the rhythm of his tongue.
Her channel was tight, the muscles already clenching down on his fingers. He sucked at the little seed while he hooked his finger inside her, putting pressure on her G-spot.
“Oh, my god… Leo… I can’t…”
She was close. He could feel it in the way the walls of her pussy were tightening around him, the increase in wetness around his fingers, her swollen clit, the way she pressed her hips against his mouth.
“Please…” she gasped.
His cock was so hard it hurt, but he wouldn’t take her until she came against his mouth.
He wanted to taste her.
He buried his face deeper in her warm sweetness, covering her clit with the heat of his mouth while he plunged his fingers inside her, holding one against the secret spot that was slowly driving her mad.
She was moving against him hard and fast now, her hips fucking his fingers and his mouth, her body determined to take its own pleasure, her mind occupied only with release. He increased the speed of his tongue and fingers, letting the friction carry her to the abyss until she cried out, shuddering against his mouth, the creaminess of her come invading his tongue as he lapped her clean.
When she settled back into the sand, he rose on his knees and reached for his jeans, extracting a condom from the back pocket. She sat up, licked from the base of his shaft to the tip, sucking on his swollen head until he growled. He shoved her gently back onto the sand and rolled the condom on his rigid staff, then nestled the crown against the wetness of her opening.
He paused, looking down at her, at their almost joined bodies.
“What is it?” she asked, breathless.
“Nothing,” he said. “I just want to look at you.”
“Look at me all you want,” she said. “Just do it while you fuck me, please.”
He chuckled, his love for her welling inside him like a secret spring. How had he lied to himself — to her — about it for so long? The question didn’t linger. A moment later, he thrust inside her in one powerful movement, burying himself balls deep.
She cried out, lifting her hips to meet him. He didn’t move right away. Just closed his eyes against the exquisite pleasure of her heat all around him, the pressure of her pussy wrapping him in an intoxicating cocktail of warmth and comfort and safety and something like home.
She opened her legs wider, and he sunk deeper inside her. The subtle shift removed the last vestige of his self-control, and he dragged his cock out of her, then drove into her hard and fast, his head slamming again the top of her cervix as she screamed.
“Okay?” he asked, forcing himself not to repeat the motion until she answered. Forcing himself not to drive into her again and again until he exploded inside her.
She answered by grabbing his ass, pushing him harder and farther inside her. It was all the encouragement he needed, and he thrust inside her again and again, feeling his orgasm build at the center of his body even as her movements became more frantic.
He was desperate to come inside her. But he wasn’t ready for it to end.
He rolled her on top of him, his breath catching at the sight of her naked body straddling his in the moonlight. She moved on him without prompting, grinding her hips in a rhythm that was so sensual, the image alone almost sent him over the edge.
He grabbed her gloriously full ass, thrusting upward to meet her as her head fell back. Her breath was coming fast now, a flush spreading across her chest as she moved on him. He reached up, circled her clit with his thumb as he impaled her again and again on his cock.
Gasping, she rested her hands on his chest, leaned back a little so that his cock sank even more deeply inside her. He increased the pressure on her clit and felt her hips quicken, her body taking over as it reached for its promised climax.
“Look at me when you come, Diana.”
She opened her eyes, met his gaze. His whole world was in her eyes.
Past. Present. Future.
And then she was convulsing around his cock, the muscles of her pussy clenching hard around him as she came. It was the moment he’d been waiting for, and he let go, falling after her into the void, the orgasm ripping through him like an earthquake. It was like being suspended in space.
Weightless. Empty. Soundless.
He let himself drift. Let himself burn.
When he finally came back to himself, it was with the sweet weight of her body draped over his, her hair every which way, just the way he liked it. He wrapped his arms around her, slipping one hand into her hair, holding her close. She’d been his forever, he just hadn’t known it.
He kissed the top of her head, letting a fresh surge of rage flow though him at the thought of someone trying to hurt her. They would have to go through him, and he would do anything to see that she was safe.
Maim. Wound. Kill.
Anything.
Chapter Fifteen
She felt his absence even before she opened her eyes. She kept them closed for awhile, replaying the events of the night before. It was somehow both a surprise and an inevitability that she had ended up in his bed. That’s how it felt now anyway.
His claiming of her on the beach had been every bit as forceful as the tide roaring in from the depths of the Mediterranean, but it had only been the beginning. Afterward, he’d carried her naked to the empty house, continuing up the stairs and into the large master bathroom where he’d tenderly washed the sand from her skin before taking her from behind, her hands and breasts pressed against the glass doors as he drove into her. When they were done, he’d led her to the big bed facing the glass doors. Beyond them, the ocean swept unchanging onto the beach, oblivious to the fact that her whole world had opened up in the three hours since she’d gone down for dinner.
But Leo wasn’t done with her, and he spent the next few hours exploring every inch of her, making her come again and again, wringing her out with the intensity of the pleasure he
wrought from her body. In between, they lay in silence, her head on his chest, his heart beating out a comforting rhythm against her ear. It felt like a part of her, like she’d heard it since before she was born. They talked about everything — their childhood and their memories and all the secrets they’d kept from each other. And sometimes they talked about nothing at all.
She’d fallen asleep as the first light of dawn began creeping across the ceiling, Leo’s arms wrapped securely around her. Now she opened her eyes, looked around the room, flooded with light. He was gone, just as she suspected, but she could hear the sound of water running in the kitchen, could smell melted butter and warm sugar. Was it Leo or Mina?
She bit her lower lip, suddenly nervous. Would things be weird between them now? Would he regret what had happened? She didn’t know, but even if they weren’t weird, even if he didn’t regret it, they weren’t in the clear. Antonis Stavros was out there somewhere. It was possible he’d pushed aside his mission to kill her in the name of getting his shipment safely to port, but she couldn’t count on that forever. And even if she could, she was not okay with Maggie’s killer going free. Not okay with such a vicious man brokering the sale of weapons whose one purpose was to kill.
She sat up, stretched, then reached for Leo’s shirt. She held it to her nose, breathing in his scent — salt and wind and denim. She stood, slipping it over her head, then looked at herself in the mirror over the bureau. She only thought about trying to tame her hair for a minute. There was really no point.
The sounds from the kitchen got louder as she made her way down the stairs. She looked at her bare legs, rethinking Leo’s shirt. What if Mina was in the kitchen? Diana wasn’t exactly dressed for company.
But when she turned the corner into the living room, she saw Leo standing at the stove, flipping a pancake. For a moment, she could hardly breathe. Her fingers itched to touch his shoulders, to trace the perfectly formed muscles she already knew by heart, to touch the line of hair disappearing into the jeans slung low on his hips.