Our tongues played as we kissed from the side. I spread her cheeks and moved deeper still. Her behind pressed against me for full penetration, her feet at my sides as I pumped her, picking up the pace until her long rolling orgasm completely overtook her. I grabbed her hips, pulling her to me as I spilled. And then we paused, listening to the sounds of the ocean and the birds who came out to feed.
With the sky turning gray and the ocean chill invading the bluff, we gathered our things, put the top up, and returned to my motel.
I knew I was going to remember this night forever. I was hoping that she would too, when she turned her head and whispered, “Marco, I never want this to end.”
I was going to do everything I could to make sure it wouldn’t.
Chapter 16
Shannon
I woke up with a headache and briefly calculated how much champagne I’d consumed—we’d consumed—and took in a deep breath. I was alone in the bed, covered in rose petals. Some of them were caught in the strands of my hair splayed all over the pillow.
I took stock of what the night had been like, both of us unable to sleep because just about every flesh on flesh turn of our bodies created another sensual experience, if not a full-on intense lovemaking session. Overwhelmed was the word that describes me perfectly. My stomach was churning, my heartbeat was still racing because my libido had been amped up so often, it was stuck on full tilt.
I brushed his pillow where his head had been, then grabbed it and pushed it against my face, inhaling his strong, masculine scent laced with an exotic cologne I’d gotten so used to. I couldn’t get enough of him.
I was lost.
We’d whispered many things to each other in the early morning hours, and yet I was careful not to sound too smitten. But the truth was I was drowning in pheromones for this man, and it would be a mistake to be the first one to utter those words, “I love you.” But that’s how my heart sang no matter how much I tried to stuff it down.
My experience with men was seriously lacking, but I knew that he was volatile enough to go through heavy mood swings, and because of his current financial situation, he’d be more vulnerable to this now. I didn’t want to be one more problem he had to deal with. I could be patient if I wanted that chance for the brass ring.
With the interview with Rebecca, I’d already caused problems enough.
I wanted to be his calm before the storm, the someone he could reach out to and trust, even while I harbored that deep secret of my past and how it intermingled with his from so many years ago. I guess I was lucky he didn’t remember. No chance I’d ever forget it, and no chance I would ever be able to recover from all this, either.
Somehow, I’d find a way to tell him. He was a man who deserved as well as needed the truth. I. Would. Do. This.
I heard him talking on the phone in the living room, so I slipped on Oceanis white cotton robe, cinched up my waist, passed on the logo slippers, and padded out to the living room barefoot to find him. I grabbed my phone on the way, and, as I approached, took pictures of his back as he sat on the arm of the couch, legs crossed, looking out at the ocean.
I walked around him to block his view, still taking pictures. He frowned until I opened the sash of my robe and let my body do the talking. I began filming his expression as more of my body was revealed. He uncrossed his legs, lost his place, stumbled to finish a sentence.
His eyes were filled with lust as I moved slowly towards him, slipped my robe off my shoulders and then kneeled in front of him.
He was desperately trying to end his conversation, which made my ministrations all the more exciting for me. I discreetly turned off and placed my phone at my side and let my fingers walk up from his knees to his hardening cock, spreading the robe over his knees to look at what I’d created.
With his eyes closed, he tried to concentrate. “So, you’ve got it all set up, then? And he’ll—argh” he gasped as my lips and tongue played with the tip of him. I looked up, watching his eyes as I took one long lap of my tongue from his stem to his tip.
He suddenly gasped.
I could hear whomever was on the other end of the line ask him if everything was okay.
“Yes. Yesss,” he hissed as I took him into my mouth all the way until my lips were pressed against his lower belly. He tried to continue. “I’m just so taken with the view from up here. It’s incredible.” He leaned over and let his hand slip down my spine, traveling clear to my butt crack and then smooth over my buttocks, giving me a silent paddle. “It’s so fine,” he whispered. And then he sat up and signed off the call.
He threw his phone on the couch. “I hope you didn’t tape any of that?”
“Just the part before I slipped off my robe,” I said, licking his tip and running it over my lips. “I hope I didn’t embarrass you too much.”
“You are soooo bad, Shannon,” he howled, standing, picking me up and throwing me over his shoulder. He spanked my ass several times on the way to the bedroom.
He spanked deliciously hard.
“Ouch!” I howled.
He threw me on the bed and shook his head as well as his right forefinger.
“You deserved every one of those and you know you did. You are a naughty. Little. Girl,” he said as he climbed up to join me, brushing rose petals to the side.
I stubbornly kept my legs tight together as he tried to separate my thighs. I watched him struggle, my hands above my head, fiddling with my hair, my stomach undulating and teasing him so, trying to act absent-minded but needing him to consume me one more time. His cock was red and huge this morning, engorged from earlier this morning since our last encounter.
He finally got my knees to separate and I arched up, feet planted on the bed, giving him full access.
“Oh, baby. You are so swollen. Did I do that to you?” He mocked concern, frowning.
“You did, and I liked it.”
“Poor thing. Look at how pink and,” he dipped his head and lapped my sex, “Hot you are. I’d say feverish.”
I felt the jolt from his touch all the way up my spine. Something in my stomach lurched.
“Fix it,” I whispered.
His eyes sparkled with the birth of an idea. He held up one finger and ran to the kitchen and pulled something out of the freezer. When he returned, he had the gel pack in one hand and a leftover champagne bottle in the other.
“Hold still. Doctor Marco is going to fix it for you, sweetheart.” He held the frozen but still soft gel pack against my flaming lips and pressed. At first, I felt nothing, due to the swelling, but all of a sudden my insides began to spasm and react to the cold.
Discarding the gel pack on the floor, he opened the champagne, took a swig, and then tipped it over and poured it all over my lips. He lapped and poured, poured and lapped, letting the champagne also drip down his chin onto his chest.
“You want some?” he asked, his eyes wide and dangerous.
I nodded, raising my head to accept the cool bubbly liquid. My ass was sitting in champagne-soaked sheets. My boobs glistened as he did a pour over and sucked my nipples. The pulsing inside me continued. He drank the rest of the bottle letting it roll off the bed and onto the carpet.
I was desperate for him to be inside me. “Marco, please,” I begged.
He fingered my folds again, gently pinching my clit. “You want this, don’t you?”
I nodded again, breathing hard, licking my lips, loving how he rimmed and penetrated my opening.
His motions were gentle as he adjusted his upper torso forward, taking hold of my wrists still high above my head with one hand, and pressed his warm cock at my cool entrance with the other. Slowly he pushed his way inside, watching me, watching how wide my eyes got, watching my breasts rise and fall as he stretched and massaged my throbbing parts, rubbed my nub gently and breached my entry, violating me so lovingly. I felt my muscles immediately close down around him. I arched, pressing my breasts to his chest. He kept my hands immobilized but lifted my left knee to above h
is shoulder, angled to the side and pressed deeper, and then deeper, until he was knocking on the door of my sweet spot.
His slow hip movements, expertly riding me and playing my body like an instrument replaced the throbbing pain with pure pleasure. His back and forth was slow, deliberate. There was no urgency to any of it, as his gentle rhythm grew my arousal slowly.
This was all about me, and he made no mystery of it as he watched my face and my body react to him. I writhed against the constraint of his fingers gripping my wrists, so I could fully enjoy the capture.
Several minutes later, my internal muscles suddenly clamped down on him, causing me to suck in a deep breath. I exhaled and sank into the wonderful rolling orgasm, leaving my body shaking.
“Oh, baby. You are so beautiful. Look at that,” he whispered.
He plunged in, and then held himself as I continued to spasm, falling over the edge of my quick little orgasm like a leaf over a waterfall. And then I felt the familiar pulsing as we both stopped moving and experienced the full impact of our union.
I had never felt so loved. I would never recover from what he’d done to me, both to my body and to my heart.
I was lost forever.
We ate breakfast in the fern and palm tree courtyard dining area filled with filtered morning sunlight. I was still reeling from the emotional love-making session that preceded our dangerous shower. I couldn’t stop smiling, looking down at my lap, almost embarrassed at how intimate and persistent Marco was with me.
I felt cherished.
I also felt a twinge of sadness that I was having an experience that perhaps should have belonged to my sister. And yet, I also wondered if their relationship was somehow different from what I was feeling now.
I could tell he was studying me from across the table.
“You’re awfully quiet, Shannon.” He took my hand across the table and smiled.
“I have no words. I’m a reporter, well, a weather girl,” I said as I tossed my head from side to side, “and I have no words. That’s kind of funny, don’t you think?”
“You mean like me not doing something because I’d be afraid it would be dangerous?” He tried.
“Yes.” I leaned forward, putting both elbows on the table. “I never expected this. To—” I was going to say, “to feel this way,” but stopped myself.
He was showing his confusion, his brow furrowed.
I understood now why Emily was so upset when Marco postponed their marriage until his next deployment was over. Almost as if she knew she didn’t have much time left. I did have time. I just didn’t want him to go. I continued.
“I guess I’m regretting how I’ll feel when you’ve left our sunny state.”
He paused, still holding my hand. “Then come with me to Boston, Shannon. You could even find work there if you wanted.”
I didn’t want to go to Boston as his extra piece of luggage. I wanted what I had here, and I never expected to feel so torn.
“No, Marco, I can’t do that.”
“You visited me once, you could come again. You have friends there, right? Some other reason to come to Boston?”
This was the question I didn’t want to address. I wasn’t ready.
“I just felt like it.”
He angled his head. “Did you come to see me?”
I had to lie. “Not entirely. My friend told me about this Bachelor Towers place where women weren’t supposed to own apartments. I had to see for myself because it sounded so backward. But when I read an article about who lived at the towers, and saw that you were one of them, well, with your project here in my little sleepy town in Florida, I had to see who this man was.”
I didn’t want to look him in the eyes because I was afraid he’d see the truth. I’d just dug my hole a little deeper. Would there ever be a way I could extricate myself out of this and keep us together?
“I hate the press. They can be so cruel. And you know, you can’t trust much of what you read.”
“I’m with you there, Marco.”
“So, about my leaving, I have to go early tomorrow morning. I’ve got some business things to attend to and fix a wire transfer that I found out this morning didn’t happen. I can’t do that from here. And then Tuesday I go to D.C. If Boston is too soon, why don’t you meet me there, then?”
“Washington, D.C.?”
He nodded. He wasn’t pushing. I was flattered with his persistence.
Relieved we’d gotten off the subject of my first trip to Boston, I smiled. “You know the answer to that. I have to work, but thank you, Marco.”
“Then quit.”
“I don’t want to quit. I like my job, most days. And I like the warmth of Florida. The beach, the tropical breezes. It’s sort of exotic to me, a mixture of Mexico and the Caribbean. I feel at peace and at home here.”
He nodded. “Someone asked me yesterday if you were tough and I told him no. But I was wrong. You are very tough.”
Ask me a different question, Marco. Tell me something I can count on.
I was proud of myself, until he asked me another question.
“Okay. I’m going to try one more time. Come with me to India, to the sultan’s palace. That’s exotic. You can smell the spices in the air. Beautiful beaches, blue water. His Pink Pasha actually sits on an atoll with coral pink sand. They import flamingos so you’ll feel right at home. Imagine wandering around the palace at midnight. The stars never looking brighter. Torches flaring. Beautiful silks and tapestries blowing in the breeze. Opulence you wouldn’t believe. You could use it as background for a news story about traveling to exotic lands.”
“And when are you going?”
“I have to be there in five days. I’ll be done in three, maybe four days, to meet with his sons and their team, but he’ll want me to stay longer. Why don’t you fly to Boston first and we’ll fly out together? It’s a long flight, but on a private jet, it’s way more fun.” He wiggled his eyebrows.
I found it hard not to blush. My heart was fluttering at his beautiful descriptions of a place I knew nothing about. I agreed it would be an interesting trip, to learn about those lands and cultures, since my cultural exposure was so limited. It was very tempting.
I decided to split the difference, keep the door open but make sure I wasn’t something he was going to drape across his arm. I didn’t want to be his girlfriend, a harem princess and then just see where it went. That train had already left the station. I wanted to contribute somehow. I didn’t want to be a restricted bird in a golden cage.
Marco would have never liked that, either. Why did he expect that I would?
“I’ll do this. I’ll ask for time off. I’ll ask for a week, ten days, and I’ll try to give you an answer today. But I don’t want you to be angry at me if I won’t quit my job to do it.”
“I understand.”
He held out his hand and we left to attend his project meeting. Our plan was that he was going to take me home and then pick me up again for dinner. He’d already told me he wanted to retire early. So that gave me an idea.
“About dinner, Marco. Why don’t I make you something at my place? If you’re comfortable you can spend the night or come back here. But it’s up to you.”
“What would you like?”
I waved my hands out above my head. “This is beautiful, it really is. But I like my little place better. I like hearing the ocean, I like to cook. You’ve shown me how you live. Let me show you how I live, what I like to do in that little space. I don’t need all this. I’d like you to stay with me before you go.”
It took a few seconds for it to thoroughly sink in. “Okay, we’ll do that. If that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do.”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For listening to me, for understanding what’s important to me. Not everything in my world is about money.”
He was silent for a moment and then he said something that brought tears to my eyes.
“You remind m
e of someone I used to love a long time ago. She passed away way too soon, unfortunately. But I suddenly miss her.”
“I understand.”
And I did.
Chapter 17
Marco
The official Bone Frog Development group sat on mismatched office chairs we’d secured from thrift stores, along with several desks and some file cabinets in beige and sand colors. Our office was one block from the construction site, in a rented repurposed gas station. It wasn’t fancy, but it was cheap space and the group had shown their creative genius by fixing it up with a great sound system, bright colors and eclectic artwork. I found some of my old things I lent to them as well.
My loosely labeled Manager, Rhea, and her partner had designated themselves as leaders of this little conclave, the “mother hens” so to speak. They were fiercely loyal and I liked that they were invested in the project and loved bossing people around. But they were effective at it, not abusive. The team we’d hired together loved them both. Each of them had a different style, which worked well. I couldn’t have made it with one without the other. It was their talent, their management style, and it was a winning combination. I also felt they had my back.
Rhea was the one who didn’t have a problem speaking her mind, whereas Dax, her partner, was the soft touch and the person who smoothed over ruffled feathers. Rhea had been born into a military family and had lived all over the world, and she’d served as a communications officer in the Marines for ten years. The only person she reported to was me, but she didn’t mind the co-managing the group with her lifelong girlfriend.
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