Starfire (Erotic Romance) (Peaches Monroe)

by Strong, Mimi

  He released my skin and nudged his way back to the center, the stubble of his chin poking, but not painful. He didn’t lick me just yet. He held very still, breathing in and out of his mouth, nearly touching, but not touching.

  I pulled up my skirt, worried for a second that he didn’t have enough oxygen. He raised an eyebrow in my direction, then opened his mouth wide and dove at me, as though consuming a peach whole. Lips and tongue and pleasure. I rolled my head back and gazed up at the pink sky, and at the highest point—midnight blue with stars.

  His tongue moved tirelessly, sweeping pleasure over and over my clit.

  He brought me to the edge of coming, then moved back to my thighs, biting and sucking.

  The horizon around us turned red.

  He pulled his face away and I looked down into his eyes.

  His beautiful eyes were dark now, almost black in the light.

  He straightened up, on his knees. With a quick turn of his hands, his jeans were unfastened and dropped. His cock rose up stiffly from his dark curls and sinewy muscles. The tip gleamed.

  Before I could reach for him, he plunged inside me half-way. My skirt bunched up in the frenzy and the hem tried to follow his cock inside me. He pulled the skirt away and plunged deeper, his powerful thrusts sliding me back on my wooden bench seat.

  He noticed my shifting body and growled something about me not getting away so easily. He grabbed me around my lower back and slid me toward him, burying his sword to the hilt.

  His hands moved to the back of my neck, and he pulled me in for a powerful kiss, his tongue and cock trying to touch tips inside me.

  As he thrust rhythmically, his cock getting even harder and pulsing in warning, I started to climax. The canoe rocked, the water splashing around us. I gasped and looked around for the life jackets, making mental note of their locations.

  He thrust deeper and deeper, rocking every inch of me with desire.

  The pressure increased, the desire to come, and there was no stopping now. I held on tight to the edge of the seat as he drove himself into me, harder and harder, faster and faster.

  I tried to hold my breath, in anticipation of being dunked in the water, but the shortage of oxygen only made me come harder, letting out an animal groan to match his as he unleashed inside me.

  The stars were so bright, but they paled next to the fireworks. I blinked in disbelief as my body shook with pleasure, my skin sizzling with steam. The fireworks were noiseless, and they disappeared. Just a hallucination. Bright lights flaring to the beat of our hearts.

  He kissed me roughly, drove into me a final time, and stayed.

  We held each other tightly as the canoe stopped rocking and settled once more, everything still on the glass-smooth lake. Frogs and crickets hummed with activity on the nearby shore. A breeze ruffled the left-hand side of my hair, and then came around to the right, like magic.

  Dalton slowly withdrew, gasping with sensitivity when my muscles clutched at him on the way out.

  He nodded down and quietly did up his jeans. The sun had set, and locating my underwear was difficult in the thin blue light, but he finally found them bunched in his back pocket.

  “Careful,” he said as I wriggled around to put my panties back on.

  My jaw dropped in mock disgust. “You’re telling me to be careful? Me? Um, excuse me. You’re the one out here in the middle of a lake, drilling me like you’re a greedy mining corporation and I’m a mountain full of diamonds.”

  “Yes, but I was moving front to back. You can rock a canoe safely from stern to, um, the other part.”

  “You mean starboard?”

  “No, this is starboard.” He jerked his body to rock the canoe to one side. The midnight blue water around us splashed a warning.

  I raised a finger. “Don’t.”

  He rocked the boat again. “Starboard.”

  This time, the canoe rocked far enough to the side that a wave of lake water splashed over the edge to pool at our feet.

  I gasped and lifted my feet.

  CHAPTER 29

  I’ll never know why I was so concerned about getting my blue sneakers wet. They weren’t suede, after all.

  Something about water splashing into the vessel—the vessel that was supposed to keep the water on the outside—made me freak out.

  I lifted my feet and leaned back, forgetting that I wasn’t sitting on a chair, but on a bench, with no back. Once I’d tipped the point of no return, I was going down. I landed on my back in the hull of the boat.

  I wasn’t hurt so much as I was shocked, and the wind knocked out of me. Wheezing, I struggled to get over the shock and catch my breath.

  Dalton chose this moment to be heroic, which, in this instance, involved standing up. He was, unfortunately, well to the starboard side of the boat, and I think you can figure out the rest.

  Everything flipped, and keeping my blue sneakers dry was no longer a concern.

  Into the cold water we plunged.

  I surfaced in the dark, gasping for air and flailing around for something to hold me up. The bright yellow life jacket bobbed up right beside me. I grabbed the jacket and clutched it tightly to my chest as I got my bearings.

  “Dalton?”

  Only frogs answered.

  I told myself not to panic, but you can imagine how well that worked.

  “Dalton!” I yelled.

  From the darkness came his reply. “On a scale of one to ten, how upset are you?”

  “I don’t know.” I kicked my feet and twirled myself around in the water until I spotted him, treading water with one hand on the overturned canoe. “This water is warmer than I expected.”

  “It’s a nice night for a swim.”

  “Dalton… I don’t mean to alarm you, but where the FUCK IS THE DOCK?!”

  “Right behind you,” he said calmly.

  “Oh.” I looked, and saw lights on by the dock.

  He explained, “I turned the lights on at the shed, remember. I’ve had my eye on it the whole time. You don’t think I’d take you out on a lake at sunset with no exit strategy, do you?”

  I splashed a wave of water his way. “You’re a disaster.”

  Even in the dark, I could tell he was smirking as he replied, “No, you’re the disaster. My life wasn’t like this before I met you, Peaches Monroe.”

  Grumbling a few choice words, I joined him at the canoe and helped him right the thing.

  If you’ve been on a canoe a time or two, you’ll know that getting back in after you’ve been capsized is not the easiest operation. In fact, if it ever happens to you, I recommend getting in a time machine, going back in time, and warning yourself against renting a canoe.

  After no small amount of humiliation getting my body back into the canoe, Dalton shot himself in like a trained dolphin at Sea World, and we were paddling back to shore.

  We got the canoe and everything put away, then walked back up the hill, which was much steeper and longer than when we walked down or came up in the golf cart.

  Back at the resort, Dalton stopped by the front desk and notified the woman working there that we’d accidentally broken the canoe’s padlock, but to charge the repair to his room.

  The woman looked at me, sopping wet and doing the Dripping Walk of Shame, then over at Dalton, equally waterlogged. Without a doubt, she knew exactly what had happened, more or less.

  “The hot tub is open until midnight,” she said cheerily. “Please note that there is no lifeguard on duty.”

  He gave her a wink, then strode over to me and wrapped his soggy arm across my soggy shoulders.

  “What do you say, dear? A little hot tub party?”

  “Sure! But if you don’t mind, I’ll just pop by the room to get my swimsuit this time.”

  We proceeded to our room, my wet shoes making those squippy-squippy noises that only wet shoes can.

  ~

  Lucky for us, we’d left our phones and wallets back in the hotel room, so nothing was drenched in the lake exc
ept my pride and last shreds of dignity.

  I checked my messages while I got into my bathing suit and a robe. I had the usual assortment of messages from Shayla, not about anything in particular, plus one from Mitchell. He was pretending to be just saying hi, but betraying his excitement about his upcoming visit to Washington State.

  Mitchell: What’s up, Peach-a-bootylicious? We have to hang out soon! I should plan a road trip.

  Me: Dalton told me about the surprise! I know you’re coming up to help with the wedding!

  Mitchell: What wedding?

  Me: Don’t make me beg!

  Mitchell: The secret’s out? What do you know?

  Me: That you’re coming up!

  Mitchell: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! I’m so excited! Can you tell?

  Me: Dalton is trying to get my phone from me. We went for a canoe paddle and he tipped me over. He’s a disaster!

  Mitchell: You love him!

  Me: Maybe.

  Mitchell: I’m going to cry like a hooker at your wedding.

  Me: Like a hooker?

  Mitchell: Like a hooker in church on Christmas morning.

  Me:…

  I couldn’t respond, because Dalton tried again to take my phone from me again.

  “Who the hell is making you giggle like that?” he demanded.

  “Calm down, it’s just Mitchell. Jealous much?”

  His chest puffed up. “I don’t get jealous.”

  Right, I thought. So, I just imagined all those times he got jealous about me being with other guys.

  I opened my mouth to respond, but then decided I would let him believe what he wanted to believe. He’d had a rough day, but we were enjoying a romantic evening. I don’t allow other people to shush me, but, from time to time, I’m capable of shushing myself.

  We grabbed some towels from the bathroom to take to the steam room and hot tub, and ventured out of our room for more excitement.

  CHAPTER 30

  Sunday morning.

  How had the window gotten on the wrong side of the room? Who was that snoring? Why was I in bed wearing my one-piece swimsuit and a flip-flop on one foot?

  It dawned on me that I wasn’t at home in my own bed.

  I opened my eyes and took in the unfamiliar but not unpleasant surroundings of the winery resort’s second-best room. My parents were down the hall in the luxury suite. Sleeping next to me was TV’s Drake Cheshire.

  Hmm.

  No, this wasn’t my usual Sunday morning.

  My bladder had a mission for me, though, so I bravely swung my legs out from under the covers. My bare foot landed on something warm and soft. I recoiled and huddled back on the bed.

  There on the carpet, spread-eagle on his back, was Dalton’s father, Jake “Big Dick” Blake. I covered my mouth to keep from screaming.

  Jake wasn’t naked, exactly. He was technically in a pair of boxers, but not all of him was in his boxers.

  The boxers were the kind with a loose split down the front. A very loose split.

  That’s right.

  The porn star’s one-eyed trouser snake was wide awake and catching a little morning sun.

  Keeping my eyes carefully averted, I shimmied over to the foot of the bed and slowly climbed off. I slipped off the one flip-flop, which I didn’t recognize as my own, and went into the bathroom.

  I locked the door, turned on the shower and fan for privacy, and sat down with my face in my hands as flashes of the previous evening came back to me.

  Putting the pieces together took some time.

  I got into the shower in a daze.

  As I finished my shower and got dried off, I had most of the events sorted out.

  We’d gone to the hot tub the night before, where we had the steamy room to ourselves. We’d been sitting in the hot tub for about five minutes’ worth of kissing when Dalton’s father came into the room. He had a woman on either arm and a bottle of liquor in one hand.

  Although I knew better than to drink in a hot tub, I figured a few shots* wouldn’t kill me, but would help with the tension in the steamy, cedar-paneled room.

  Dalton and his father had barely seen each other over the past eight years, but they both seemed to want to mend their relationship.

  The two men made uneasy small talk, trying to out-grin each other. The two women climbed into the hot tub with me, and started chatting like my new best friends.

  *Public service announcement: hot tubs make you sweat, and booze makes you stupid. The result is extreme dehydration, heart failure, and worse. By worse, I mean when you’re drinking with a bunch of dudes and realize there’s one guy who doesn’t bother getting out to empty his bladder. End of PSA.

  Jake climbed into the hot tub and started passing around the bottle. Pretty soon, the five of us were all singing We Are Family by Sister Sledge. Acapella.

  Long story short, after the staff kicked us out at midnight to lock up, Jake walked us back to our room to make sure we got in safely. He sampled some items from the mini-bar, then passed out on the floor, wearing the same boxer shorts he’d been using as his swimming trunks* at the hot tub.

  *The boxer shorts were in violation of posted hotel policies, which also included strict rules against drinking in the hot tub.

  Refreshed from my shower and several glasses of water, I came out of the bathroom with a fluffy robe wrapped tightly around me.

  The guys were both awake now, and Jake appeared to be wearing a pair of Dalton’s jeans, which fit perfectly. They both sat shirtless at the small table, laughing over the events of the previous night.

  “Why aren’t you in your room with your new girlfriends?” Dalton asked his father.

  “I called the room and told them to get started without me. Sharon’s going to motorboat Karen for a while.”

  “What’s the motorboat again?”

  “Just my general term for everything you can do without a dick.”

  Did they not see me, standing right there? Apparently not.

  They both laughed about motorboating, and for an instant, I wanted to return to a more innocent time, when the idea of seeing his father caused Dalton to have panic attacks.

  Jake launched into a graphic description of giving oral sex to two women at once. “The trick is stacking them right,” he said. “Front to front. Never back to back, or you’ve got too far to go, unless you like ass-munching, which is—”

  I didn’t hear the rest, because I’d grabbed some nearby clothes and snuck out of the room.

  Now I was in the hallway wearing nothing but a robe, my clothes in one hand.

  You know that expression, about how when one door closes, another opens? The door directly in front of me swung open, as though someone else had been expecting me.

  A man stepped through the doorway and startled when he saw me.

  CHAPTER 31

  “Connor!” I said.

  Standing in front of me was the other sexy actor from One Vamp to Love. For those of you who aren’t fans, Connor is the angsty, brooding, do-gooder vampire brother to Drake Cheshire. While Drake goes around bedding hotties and biting them on the inner thighs, Connor is always finding new potions and elixirs to lessen their vampire powers, because he feels they are abominations of nature and blah-blah self-loathing boring crap.

  “It’s really you, Connor.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Connor said, extending his hand. “I’m Connor Adair, the actor, not Connor Cheshire, the vampire. I won’t bite.”

  “And what brings you to this winery? Are you here on some mission to give your brother an elixir to slow him down? I’m afraid you’re a bit late for that.” I let a nervous laugh escape my dry mouth. I’d gotten used to staring at Drake/Dalton’s face, but seeing Connor in the flesh was a whole new level of surreal. Was I still drunk from the previous night?

  “He’s my cousin,” Connor said. “In real life, by real human blood. Didn’t my uncle Jake tell you?”

  “Derr.” (Yes, I actually said that, as I looked down at my toes.)<
br />
  My toes didn’t have any answers, so I looked up to see Connor nodding, a troubled expression on his handsome face. He did have similar features to Dalton, which I’d always assumed was good casting. His dark hair was cut shorter than Dalton’s, and his nose was thinner and longer, giving him a look I associated with sophistication. His eyes weren’t green, but a bright blue, also rimmed with thick, dark lashes.

  “You really are his cousin,” I said, astonished that I hadn’t known sooner.

  “If you didn’t know that, I’m guessing he doesn’t, either. I only found out on Friday, when my mother told me. She hadn’t told Dalton yet, because she wanted to speak to his father first.”

  “Jake? I’m so confused. Why didn’t he tell Dalton?”

  “He didn’t know. My mother works under her married name, and it was a long time ago that her family, meaning my family, disowned Aunt Lyra.”

  I just couldn’t stop staring at Connor’s face, noticing the similarities. “Wow. You’re cousins.”

  “I just hope he can forgive his aunt for not telling him.”

  I waved to the door behind me. “Get in there and join the reunion. I’ll warn you, though. It’s a shirts-optional family gathering, and you can only talk about sex.”

  Connor wrinkled his nose with distaste, which was a common expression of his character on the show. Shayla and I called it the who-tooted face.

  “I’d rather meet them at breakfast, as planned. Maybe you’d like to put some of those clothes on and come down with me to the dining room?”

  I agreed to the plan, and he let me into his room to get dressed while he waited out in the hall. I’d managed to grab a not-bad outfit in my haste: a plum-colored dress with a paisley tie belt, and pink ballet flat shoes. I left the robe in Connor’s room and joined him to walk to the dining room.