A dim part of Kingsley, the sober part, wanted to say something, wanted to stop himself, but their kiss was quickly becoming something beyond his control. He tightened his hand at the back of her neck and heard himself actually growl when she licked his mouth, her tongue hot and sweet, so damn good that he felt it all the way down to his toes and every spot in between.
Kingsley cursed. “I want you,” he gasped into her mouth. “I want you so damn bad...”
He gripped Adah’s hips to keep her still, the most he could do toward self-control, aware in some part of his mind of Josue’s bar behind them somewhere in the darkness, the constant flow of customers moving to the bar, then away, tourists walking along the beach at a polite distance from the palapas. But Adah still squirmed against him. She rubbed her hard nipples against his chest through the layers of fabric, groaned her pleasure into his mouth.
He felt her hand slide down his chest, aware of every movement of her palm over the thin material of his shirt, nails scratching him through the cotton. His breath sped up, and he pressed even more into their kiss, gripping her tight to him with the spread of his hand at the back of her neck and the other traitorous hand on her hip, guiding her small movements against him. He ripped his mouth from hers, breathing too fast, trying not to embarrass himself in his shorts. But she wouldn’t let him go, and he thanked every deity he could think of when she slid her hot palm under his shirt, over the shifting muscles of his back, then down over the rough denim of his shorts, guiding him in the intimate dance they were doing on the public beach.
“We shouldn’t do this.” Kingsley thought she was the one who spoke. It had to be her because he was beyond speech.
He felt the puff of her breath against his mouth before her tongue licked his teeth and slid against his again. A damp and ecstatic sound gathered lightning at the base of his spine. She must have said it. Or maybe he did. But then hands slipped between them. His or hers. And he felt the rough fabric of her jean shorts, the hard disk of her button, then her zipper. She moaned into his mouth, lips sliding away from his in a pant of hot breath against his ear, his jaw. He yanked down the front of her jeans, fumbled at the edge of the soft fabric of her panties and found—
Adah hissed in his ear, bit down on his shoulder, and that was all the incentive Kingsley needed to continue the creep of his fingers past the edge of her panties, over the coils of her pubic hair to the slickness of her waiting for him.
She sobbed into his throat. Her fingernails scraped down his back and clenched into the muscles of his ass through the rough denim shorts.
It felt so good. It felt so good they had to stop.
“Adah...we should—”
But she opened her legs, and he was lost. Heart stuttering in his chest as she flung her thigh over his and sank her nails deeper into his flesh. He claimed her mouth again, licking its hot interior the way he wanted to lick the womanly softness of her. She was wet and hot around his fingers, swollen with desire for him. He stroked her slickness, and she moaned.
His tongue flicked out and mirrored the motion of his fingers inside her panties and he could hear her panting through the scant space between their mouths when they pulled back from each other, gasping for breath, their mutual eagerness feeding the other, his fingers moving in her slickness, then up to the firm button of her pleasure. She jerked against him, a frantic motion that pushed the cradle of her hips against his hardness and made him even harder. The want throbbed so fiercely in his shorts that it hurt.
He gripped her hips again, this time to press himself even harder against her, the two of them moving in delicious counterpoint to each other, Kingsley high against her hip and Adah against the finger stroking her eager clitoris.
His head swam in the heady scent of their desire and he drank up the sounds she made, sucking her tongue, licking her lips, her teeth, nibbling at her throat, anything he could reach. He’d never tasted anything more tempting. He wanted more.
With a more deliberate and focused motion, Adah bucked against him as her fingers raked his back.
“I’m—”
“—close.”
They bucked against each other in the same moment, her flesh tightening around his fingers. That was all it took to yank him over the threshold with her, a gush of heated wetness in his shorts. Dimly he thought he should be embarrassed, but the feel of his spilled desire only made him want to strip off her panties, her shorts, her little shirt, and lick her entire body until he became hard enough again to slide inside her body and take them both toward pleasure once more. He was nearly mindless with it.
Adah pulled her mouth away from Kingsley’s and pressed her forehead into his throat. He held on to her, curving his palm protectively around her sex while small twitches and pulses moved her against him. His heart pounded in his chest; his breath huffed out of control. The sun had dipped completely behind the horizon and left the sky painted in violets and gray, clouds trailing across the deep bruise of it.
Slowly, as his breath came back to him, Kingsley rubbed the small of Adah’s back while curses and recriminations slowly began to grow from the postorgasmic hush of his mind. Despite the lack of a real commitment to her man, what they’d just done was wrong. He didn’t do this kind of thing. Ever. Kingsley licked his lips to speak.
But she beat him to it. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”
Although he’d wanted it as much as she had—maybe even more—Kingsley had to agree with her. The orgasm helped burn away the last of his alcohol buzz, and the resulting clarity was brutal.
“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let it get this far.”
She was as still as death against him. “Me either.” Adah apologized again, apparently completely sober, too, and began to climb from the hammock. “I should go.”
Although Kingsley thought he was the one who should leave, the filthy state of his shorts stopped him from declaring his own intention. He swayed in the hammock after she climbed from it, feeling cold where her body had pressed so warmly against his before. Even in the dark, he felt the brush of her eyes over his crotch, the hem of his shirt dragged up to his bare chest and the new marks she’d made there.
He cursed again. “I’m sorry.” Because he’d been the one to climb into the hammock with her, to kiss her like the right belonged to him.
“I know,” she said.
Then she was gone.
Chapter 6
Adah made it back to her hotel on shaking legs. The cab ride there had given her enough time to replay every delicious yet horrible moment of her loss of control with Kingsley. She’d only had three drinks, only three, so it wasn’t much of an excuse. Just like the last time she and Kingsley had ended up together. She was weak for him. Inexcusably weak. Well, maybe it had been four drinks.
“Adah, is that you?” Her mother’s voice came through the slightly open door between their rooms.
Who else would it be in my hotel room? She thought the words but did not say them out loud. There was no reason to take out the result of her bad judgment on her mother.
“Yes, Mother.” She sounded like a kid again, vulnerable and guilty, but she didn’t have it in her to disguise her tone.
“Do you want to have dinner soon?” Her mother appeared in the doorway looking like she was on the way to a bridge game with the girls in a pale blue sheath dress and her hair braided in a high Cleopatra crown.
What Adah wanted to do was shower, then crawl into bed and stay there for the rest of her stay in Aruba. But she wasn’t going to be a coward.
“That sounds great. Let me just take care of a few things first.”
From the doorway, Thandie frowned, her eyes picking apart Adah’s expression. “Are you okay, honey?” She started to come closer, bringing with her the powdery scent of her perfume.
But Adah quickly backed away. She
wasn’t sure she wouldn’t collapse under the weight of her mother’s concern and simply confess everything. “I’m fine. I just need a couple of minutes.” She grabbed her phone off the bedside table and escaped into the bathroom.
With the door firmly closed and at her back, she dialed Bennett’s number.
“Hey,” she said when he answered. “Can you talk?”
Adah heard a busy hum in the background, the usual chaos whenever she called him. He never seemed to be alone or unoccupied.
“Not right now. But how about in an hour?”
“Okay. That sounds good.”
“Cool.”
Adah disconnected the call and put the phone on the edge of the sink. She pressed her lips together and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Trembling fingers lifted to touch her bruised-looking lips, the flush she could still feel in her cheeks.
She looked like she’d just climbed from a lover’s bed. Hair messy and wild despite the braid she’d pulled it into only hours before. A bruise forming just under her jaw from the press of Kingsley’s teeth.
Between her legs was slippery and hot, and without closing her eyes she could still feel Kingsley’s touch, firm and insistent, between her thighs. A shivery pleasure undid her. She felt both loose and tight, like he’d sunk into the very being of her, leaving all of her sore and bruised and aching for more. Shame and regret coursed through her. Not because of what she’d done with Kingsley, or at least not completely, but because she wasn’t being honest with herself. Not about what she wanted, not about what she would do.
Damn, she was spending a lot of time staring in the mirror after making a series of bad decisions where Kingsley was concerned.
But was it a bad decision?
The question came out of nowhere and caught her off guard.
You wanted to be with him. He’s a man you’re attracted to and who’s attracted to you. You enjoy him touching you in a way you haven’t been in years.
Adah squirmed at the truth of it. She planned to call Bennett and confess, ask his forgiveness for something that really had nothing to do with him and everything to do with her. He probably wouldn’t care much about what she did with another man before they officially bound their lives together. Bennett was practical. And he was no hypocrite.
Adah bit her lip, then turned away from the mirror. Time to wash the mistakes from her skin and get ready for Bennett’s phone call. In the shower, she scrubbed her body under the near-scalding water, carefully washing between her legs while she tried not to think about Kingsley. She was mostly successful.
After her shower, she was sitting on the bed and about to slip into her sandals when her mother stepped through the door after a quick knock.
“Are you ready, darling?”
“Sure.” Adah sighed, knowing that this wasn’t just going to be dinner. It would be another interrogation. And it would be another disappointment. She couldn’t give her mother the answer she needed, not yet. Not until she confessed what she’d done to Bennett and got her conscience clear so she could start their new life together in a way that made her feel okay about it all. And there was something that had been gnawing at her.
“Mother... Mama...” Adah pressed her lips together as words she wasn’t sure she was ready for built up in her throat. Thinking about this pending marriage to Bennett over the past few months had brought so many things rushing to the front of her consciousness. Things that she’d gone through years of therapy for but still not managed to release.
“What is it, love?” Thandie stepped closer, concern in her face. Her hands fluttered up to gently press into Adah’s cheeks. They both knew it wasn’t every day Adah called her “Mama.”
There was nothing for her to do but say it. “Do you wish it was me instead of Zoe who died?”
“What are you saying?” Her mother flinched back and her hands dropped away from Adah’s face. “Why would I wish something like that?” She drew a trembling breath and took Adah’s hands in hers. Her fingers were ice cold. “What’s wrong, honey?”
“This marriage and the family business. It just seems like it would all be easier if Zoe was the one dealing with them instead of me. She would’ve been so much better at all of this.”
“No, no! We almost lost both of you. You were in the hospital for so long after the accident...” Sudden tears washed down her mother’s cheeks, and Adah felt instantly guilty. More guilt on top of the old. She’d nearly forgotten about her long hospital stay, the weeks she’d missed school. “Your father and I loved Zoe, and we love you, too,” her mother said. “We’d never trade you for her! Never. Don’t say that again, please.” Her voice broke. “Please.”
Once Adah started, though, she couldn’t stop. “I feel so guilty sometimes that I was the one who survived and not Zoe—”
“There’s nothing for you to feel guilty about! You weren’t driving the car that took Zoe away from us. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I can’t help what I feel. You want this marriage so badly and I—”
“You don’t want to go through with it?” Thandie shook her head quickly, not waiting for Adah to finish. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. Any of it.” She squeezed Adah’s hands so hard it hurt. “Your father and I have been proud of you all these years. We love you. If you don’t want this, all you have to do is say so.”
Adah didn’t believe for a moment it was that simple. Palmer-Mitchell Naturals needed rescue. Perhaps not at this moment, but definitely sometime in the very near future. If the merger with Leilani’s Pearls didn’t go through because of Adah, not only would her parents be disappointed; the business they’d nurtured for years would be left in ruins.
“Mama, I don’t—”
A knock on her door cut off the rest of her words. She frowned and exchanged a look with her mother, who squeezed her hands once more before releasing them.
“Are you expecting company?” Her tone was soft, but something in Thandie’s face said who she thought it might be.
“No.” Even though she hadn’t known him long, she was sure Kingsley would never show up at her door unannounced. That was her habit of bad behavior, not his. She went to answer the knock, feeling her mother’s eyes on her with every step. Frowning, she opened the door.
“Has it been an hour yet?”
Adah stared at Bennett. “Hi!”
“I figure a visit is better than a call. What do you say?”
Bennett Randal stood in the doorway, larger than life and smiling with mischief in his cinnamon-brown eyes. He wore blue suede shoes, slim-fitting jeans and a pale blue dress shirt rolled up at the elbows.
Adah blinked at Bennett, unable to get over her shock at seeing him. He didn’t wait for her welcome, or lack thereof. He stepped into the room and greeted Adah’s mother.
“It’s good to see you, Mrs. Palmer-Mitchell,” he said, dropping a kiss on the older woman’s jaw and making the mouthful of a last name sound both elegant and easy.
“What a pleasant surprise.” Her mother welcomed him with a warm hug. “Adah and I were just about to go out for dinner. Would you care to join us?” A smile as wide as all of Aruba lit up her face.
Bennett glanced over his shoulder at Adah, who could do nothing but stare at him. “Well, if you don’t mind, I’d actually like to have some time alone with Adah. It’s been a while since she and I saw each other, and I believe we have a lot to discuss.”
“Of course, of course.” Her mother looked more and more pleased with each passing moment. “I can have room service brought up for myself, or head out to join some new friends who’re dining in town tonight.” She made a shooing motion, like she was passing Adah off to Bennett.
“Thank you.” He kissed her cheek again before making his way to Adah. “Are you ready?”
“Um...yes. Sure. Let
me...let me just grab my bag.” She still didn’t know what to expect from Bennett’s surprise visit. The ground was shifting too quickly under her feet.
“Good,” Bennett said with his trademark dimpled smile.
After she grabbed her purse, clutching the small leather strap like a lifeline, she fell in step with Bennett, who waited in the middle of the room, completely at ease in his designer jeans and platinum watch, looking curiously around the room. If it had been anyone but Bennett, Adah would’ve cringed at the untidiness. But Bennett was familiar enough with how she kept her living space, had visited her in college enough times to see the piles of clothes and books stacked on various surfaces, her laundry basket full with weeks’ worth of laundry.
If it had been Kingsley, on the other hand... She yanked her mind away from Kingsley. There was only one direction things would go from there, and she wasn’t ready to think those thoughts with her mother or Bennett standing right there.
“Let’s go,” she said to Bennett. “I’m ready.”
“Excellent. A buddy of mine told me about this place that’s supposed to have real Aruban food. We’ll head there and see what the rest of the night holds.”
They said good-night to Adah’s ecstatic mother and stepped out into the hallway. Away from her mother’s probing gaze, Adah drew a steadying breath. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in Monaco or Dubai someplace.”
“I was, but I figure I was needed more urgently here. Plus the partying over there gets a little stale after a while.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Adah said with a reluctant smile.
“Please do.”
Despite her feelings on what happened between her and Kingsley, just Bennett’s very presence brought her close enough to a good mood. He loved and lived life with such joie de vivre and passion that being around him was like getting a shot of energy.
She didn’t know where he found the stamina to be all over the world, all over Atlanta, party until dawn, then perform his duties as chief strategy officer for his family’s company. His job was luckily one he could perform remotely, and he did it well if current profitability statistics that her parents routinely shared were anything to go by.
The Pleasure of His Company Page 11