Hey, at least she knew he remembered her name.
There didn’t seem anything wrong with anonymity, though, not here in this secret grove of scent with the sea that hush of a promise in the distance, past all the glittering lights. She wished they were anonymous, strangers, and she could just yield to this beautiful night without having to deal with the awkwardness of having been one of Tristan Rosier’s enjoyable encounters for the rest of her life.
She gathered strength at the thought and almost started to pull away—but just then his fingers stroked lightly right up the curve of her spine, through her silky dress, and that shivered through her, weakening all her muscles again.
Her fingers spread on his chest and then stroked up it to curve over his shoulder. She didn’t mean to. She swore she didn’t. She’d just always wanted to know what those shoulders felt like. Shoulders that could pull his entire body weight up a cliff face with as much ease as if it was just an enjoyable way to work the kinks out from a morning in the lab.
They felt good. The kneadable hardness of muscle over strong bone. Why did a man’s strength offered to a woman have to be so damn erotic? For two hundred thousand years, she bet women had been falling for that.
Who’s going to look after you, Malorie? If you go through with this.
Nobody, she told herself fiercely. Nobody needs to. I’m tough.
“Tristan,” she said, lifting her head.
“Malorie,” he said again, rough and low, as if she had answered his question.
And he bent his head and kissed her. Slow, leisurely, nibbling, melting her, and determined to eat her all up.
His hand slid up, up, up her back with the kiss, pressing her into all that lean hardness of his body—growing harder—until his palm curved over the nape of her neck and his fingers sank into her hair. His other hand shaped over her hip, then curved over her butt as his kiss didn’t nibble and didn’t test, didn’t invade, didn’t take. It met her own kiss, a perfect fit of energy and hunger, as if their mouths had been made for each other.
It wasn’t like what they said, about yielding to temptation—the first bite is the best, and then it loses its savor.
No. His kisses just got better and better. Until her hands were shaping his face, fingers threading through his hair, palms stroking down over his shoulders and back up. Until he was breathing very hard, and when he finally lifted his head, she thought he looked dazed, but it was dark enough that she couldn’t quite tell.
“Malorie.” The question was back in his voice, and it held a note of wonder. As if he’d spotted a falling star and wanted to know if she’d seen it, too.
She touched his lips. They were soft and parted and moistened from her kisses, and when she touched them, he drew another sharp breath and caught her hand and sucked two of her fingertips into his mouth, nipping and tasting.
Oh.
He reached up suddenly with his other hand, loosing her body, and fisted it around a branch, crushing a flower that released more scent. “Malorie.” His voice was low and tight, that gorgeous timbre it had vibrating against her, on a note of incredulity. “Bon sang.”
He locked both hands above them in the branches as he kissed her again, not holding her at all. She found herself pressing into him, gripping his head to hold him deep in the kiss, missing the pressure of his hands on her body pulling her in still tighter. His hair was just as silky as she had always imagined it. Leaves rustled overhead as his hair slid under her fingers, and a white bud fell in his black hair, another cascading off her shoulder.
What a lovely, lovely offer of his body. She ran her hands down his chest and back up his ribs, unable to resist such a present, and all the way up his arms to his wrists, tugging his hands back down.
He released the branches and pulled her into him again. This time, as he kissed her, his hands stroked all the way down to her thighs, the silk sliding cool against her skin and then warming instantly at the heat of his hands. He pushed it up as he kissed her, until her thighs were bare almost to her panties…and then he caught himself and stroked it down, smoothing it out.
Then, sinking into the kiss, pushed it up again—caught himself and stroked it down. Up, down, a sensuous slide of heat and restraint and desire.
His hands gripped her harder with each passage, lingered longer on the up stroke, kneaded into her butt through the silk. Malorie got lost in the heat of him, in the great, giddy rush of kissing him, of pressing herself into that hot body.
This was a terrible place for staying rational. She should never have let him in here. So what if she knew it would give him pleasure? That was a really stupid path to start down. Once a woman started giving Tristan pleasure, it was a short road to addiction. She’d overdose on being his pleasure.
“And I had all these plans,” Tristan muttered, a faint thread of self-mockery in his voice.
“Plans?” Malorie couldn’t even form the word properly. Don’t stop kissing to talk.
“Fantasies.”
Wait, this didn’t match his fantasies?
“Never mind.” Tristan pushed those fantasies away. “This is beautiful.” He cupped her face in both hands. “You’re beautiful.”
She hesitated, but she felt beautiful, held by him like that, his eyes on her like that. Never in her life had she felt as beautiful as she did right then.
Don’t let a man make you feel beautiful. Don’t need him, some little voice begged in her head.
I know, she lied to herself. I’ll be all right.
Tristan slid down her body. Lips brushing over her chin, under it, down her throat—more intimate and more maddening than the kissing, because she could not kiss him in return. She could only tilt her head back, helpless to that vulnerable pleasure.
His hands slid over her shoulders, down her arms, as he kept dropping, his head rubbing over her silk-clad breasts, down to her belly, until he was kneeling on the cloth stretched under the tree, a scattering of blossoms around him.
“Malorie.” He looked up at her, so gorgeous like that it should be illegal, and his fingers circled her wrists and tugged.
She stared down at him. On the brink of a need for someone else greater than any she’d let herself feel since before her father died.
And yet…she’d let Tristan in here because he should be here. She’d known he would love this place, the most precious memory of her childhood. She’d trusted him with it.
They fit here. Her wrists turned in his hold until their palms met, open. Her hands smaller than his. And yet as their eyes held, as their palms pressed together, their hands seemed perfectly matched.
A bloom loosed from the tree above and drifted down between them.
Malorie’s fingers linked with Tristan’s, and she followed that bloom to the cloth.
Chapter 20
Tristan had fantasized about Malorie in a pencil skirt. He’d imagined her on her desk with her legs apart, moaning and frantic for more. He’d imagined her in his car, parked somewhere private. He’d imagined her in a closet at a party, so overwhelmed by lust for more of what he was doing to her that she didn’t even care where they were and by God wasn’t giving him cool looks anymore.
But this…this was like the dream he should have had. This was the dream a very young man could have had, driving to Malorie’s house determined to ask her out no matter what, just before he found out she’d left and wasn’t coming back.
He stroked her dark hair out on the pale, faintly rough cloth. This dream was almost too beautiful. It betrayed him into intimate hope and belief, the kind he’d had about her as a teenager.
As if he’d found that quiet place with her that had always been so erotically alluring. She understood how beautiful this night was. He couldn’t think of anyone, ever, who had offered him a more perfect gift than this—a moonlit night in this quiet, secret space full of the scent of sensuality, with now and then a white flower drifting down around them. And her body, for his delight.
Her hair was so silky under
his climber’s fingertips, and the faint roughness of the cloth under her hair made him wish he had more silk for her. Silk sheets instead of calluses and ground cloth. He took an orange flower and touched it to her cheek, twirling it between his fingers gently against her skin. There. There’s silk.
Her eyes clung to his, wide and confused and vulnerable.
Yeah, me, too.
“Shh,” he murmured, because he knew it was his job to reassure her. He was bigger and stronger and otherwise she might run away. “It’s okay.” He brushed the flower over her nose, and somehow that one gesture clenched in his gut and squeezed longing right through to the blunt end of his cock. He’d always wanted to touch her nose caressingly. Always wanted to have that teasing, possessive privilege.
That vulnerable set to her mouth trembled into a smile. Her lashes fell against her cheeks.
He teased them with the flower, trailing it over her eyelids, then tracing it over her eyebrows until her eyes had to flutter open again. Propped on one elbow, he smiled down at her and blew her a kiss.
That, too, he’d always wished he had the teasing, possessive right to do. In class. Across the school cafeteria. Across a party full of people. Across that table at the meetings over Fugace, before he’d realized she was the one behind Abbaye’s determination to destroy it.
Fugace brushed across his mind, a wisp of an old ghost now, its power fading away. Weakened by her apology and his, and by this pale cloth, in this sweet-scented night, with her hair spread by his fingers.
“Malorie,” he whispered again, just to make sure it was really her. She’d fooled him that way before. Been other women, who’d never been quite right.
How many mornings had he woken from a night of mutually enjoyable sensuality wondering why he felt so empty inside, why he so desperately needed to go climb a cliff?
Malorie touched his lip. Traced over it, just as he was tracing her with flowers.
And that had never even crossed his dreams at all—that Malorie might treasure him. She’d moaned and responded in his dreams, and, fine, okay, sometimes, especially after she’d given him that librarian’s look while in one of her pencil skirts, she had done some things that in real life she might have slapped him for suggesting. But she’d never treated him as if he was precious, too.
It was wonderful.
He kissed her fingertips, trying to encourage more of it. And it seemed to work, because her fingers spread over his cheek, delicately, shaping his cheekbone as if it was a work of art.
He drew his orange blossom over her temple, twirling it there until her eyes fluttered closed again, then drawing it over her cheek to her lips. He brushed her lips, gently back and forth, while her thumbs traced circles and figure eights over his cheeks and her fingers spread further until she could pet the edges of his hair.
It was so incredible it hurt, to be treated so preciously. She was going to break him like an eggshell and find him all raw and messy inside and wishing he had managed to boil hard before she got to him.
She had all this scented, moonlit night on her side. She’d known when she opened the door to this secret garden—she must have known—how vulnerable he was to a night like this.
Malorie could have seduced him at any time, anywhere—it wasn’t as if he would have said no. She didn’t need all this. She didn’t need to break him wide open.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, because he couldn’t help it. It was true.
She opened her eyes just long enough for this look that was so damn…vulnerable that…
Was she breaking open, too?
Shit, that…
He shifted his body more over her, his thigh pinning her now, possessing her. You can break open. I’ve got you.
His flower trailed over that proud chin of hers. It would never soften, but her lips could—that trembling half-smile.
He caressed the corners of that smile again with his flower. Shh. See? Everything is all right.
Her thumbs tugged gently at the corners of his lips. Caressed and teased those corners. Stroked just the edge of his lower lip, following the line of it to the center, then shaping the bow of his upper lip.
That made him feel so…fuddled. Confused. Happy. Hopeful. Arousal was this leaping, eager thing, trying to surge forward and take all even while it tried to linger in this moment.
He traced the flower up her jaw to her ear, played it over her tiny emerald studs, and then caressed it down her throat.
“Tris—” she started to whisper, but her voice broke off before she even finished his name. Her fingers traced down his throat, shaped the muscles at the back of his neck that were holding his head up at this angle as if those were special, fascinating muscles, then down over the shoulder muscles that were activated by the same position.
He drew his flower to the hollow of her throat and twirled it slowly there, watching. Her pulse was beating visibly near the tip of the petals.
She petted her fingers down to the unbuttoned collar of his shirt, teasing under the edges as if to reach more of his skin. If she started to unbutton it, then that would mean…
Damn, he wanted to unbutton it for her. Just rip the thing off and hunt buttons with her in the grass tomorrow. His heart was thundering too hard. Were they making out, like teenagers on a picnic? Or was she all in?
It would be helpful, right now, to know if she didn’t want to go all the way. So he could rein himself in early, before he over-engaged.
But he knew better than to ask her. She might make up her mind too soon, before he’d had a chance to use all his persuasive tools.
He guessed that was why men had invented pants with buttons. So they’d stay on through all the making out she wanted until she made the choice to take them off.
And he was getting a little ahead of himself. Right now, her fingers were still hesitating above the top button of his shirt.
All the focus of his body seemed to rush up to her fingertips brushing under his collar, as he willed her and willed her and—her fingers stroked back up his throat.
Damn it.
He snuck his hand up and undid another button. Okay, two.
Fine, three.
Then he pulled her hand back down to stroke his chest more fully.
And snuck open button four.
Oh, fine, fuck. He ripped the whole rest of his shirt open, buttons popping. There. Now that was better.
If only he didn’t have this damn T-shirt on under it.
Malorie hesitated just a moment, as if maybe he was rushing her far past the point she wanted to go. But then her fingers spread over his chest through the T-shirt. And then, again as if she was touching something very, very special, she started to spread her stroking over the rest of that revealed T-shirt.
Her hands followed his ribs, slid around to stroke the muscles of his back, exploring all the ways he was shaped. His nose stung at the way she touched him. As if he was…incredible or something.
He kissed her again, trying to take his time, trying to be as tender and sensual as this night.
And she forgot he was so precious, as her body arched into his, as her hands started to drag on him and pull.
Yeah. That worked for him, too.
His hands slid up her silk dress, which was headily addictive against her body, it was impossible to touch her enough. But he tried. He got lost in it all, so much sensation. Silk and lips and the muscles of her thighs—merde, he could not believe that he was finally touching those fantastic legs of hers. And they were even better to touch than in his fantasies.
All of this was better.
Infinitely more dangerous to his happy life, but much more real.
He lost himself completely to it. Stopped thinking, stopped hoping, stopped planning. Just lost himself to the sensation of her body, to the scent in the air, to the glorious delight of something beautiful finally coming true.
***
Tristan broke Malorie’s heart open. As if all the sensations he drank in so greedi
ly from the world, he condensed and poured into her until her carefully tightened heart couldn’t keep itself whole anymore and had to split to hold it. Flowers crushed around them, the scent of orange blossoms mixing with the scent of their greed.
She got his shirt off—oh, wow, the silk smooth skin of his back over those hard muscles. He finally pushed her dress up past her panties. His thumbs hooked under the elastic of the string bikini, and then followed that elastic all, all, all the way down to where his thumbs met.
She shivered and jerked, already melted from all the kissing. Tristan was so damn good at this. His clever, clever fingers didn't hurry. They petted gently through curls, as if venturing into uncharted territory held under the sway of a powerful sorceress. They treated her mound like a chancy hill to be slowly, slowly crept up. They found the lush part and delicately, delicately tested it, as if making sure they had the right to go there. Every centimeter he progressed into her vulnerability, he made her feel so damn powerful.
As if pleasure was the power. The ability to make him want to give it to her was all the power a sorceress could ever need.
Wasn't she supposed to be giving Tristan pleasure? Wasn't that the addictive path she'd started down?
Was she good at it? Would she stand out in his mind later, from all the other encounters he'd had?
Did it matter? She could guarantee that he wasn't thinking about later. He was entirely focused on the now.
The heat of passion.
But she drew her hands down his back as she wondered. Curved over that tight ass of his and pulled him to her, arching up into him. He helped with that—pressed his hips right back down into hers, took part in that grind together. But he didn't unbutton his pants.
Instead, when her hips dropped back to the ground, he ventured more deeply into that uncharted territory. Explored up the lush folds, watching her face, until she jerked and shivered again and maybe even moaned.
He stroked there, never looking away from her face. He looked so utterly disheveled now—hair a tousled mess, lips damp and bruised, eyes black in the dark as he fought to see her as well as he could in the moonlight. Shirts abandoned, all that lean, rippled, muscled torso bare. Black curls there. Her fingers curled into them and then drew down, down, down, grazing over his taut belly, until she hit the waist of his pants.
Crown of Bitter Orange Page 20