He kept up an amusing patter of conversation, distracting her with the unusual things he’d done since they’d seen each other last, the people who’d asked him about her in Atlanta, his plans for his family’s business and the timeline for implementing them. He was so driven, so skilled that she half regretted his loss from her family. He was the perfect son that her parents had never had.
They meandered back the way they had come, passing the same restaurants again, their gelatos long finished. Despite the street lamps, the darkness felt heavy, rich with possibility. And the significance of that, and the fact that it had nothing to do with Bennett, made her fingers twitch where they rested around her purse strap. Bennett was nothing if not observant.
“You ready to get dropped off?” He showed her the glittering face of his watch. Nearly two hours had passed since they’d left the restaurant.
Adah’s fingers tightened on her purse strap. “Sure. Yes.” The word wavered in the air, sounding uncertain. Adah tried again. “Yes, I’m ready.” This time her voice was stronger. But that still didn’t hide how nervous she was.
“We don’t have to go right now if you don’t want to. There’s nothing pressing I need to do either tonight or tomorrow.”
God, she loved this man. “Let’s walk for a little longer. I can pick up a souvenir for Selene.”
“Okay. Let’s do it.”
But the little time she bought herself getting the aloe skin care set for Selene passed all too quickly. Barely an hour later, she stood on the front step of Kingsley’s house while the taillights of Bennett’s car retreated into the distance.
She thought of what she would say to Kingsley, how she would explain herself. The memory of another time she’d tried to do the same thing, and how it had failed, came back to haunt her. But there were no dogs chasing her tonight.
Adah rapped her knuckles against the wooden door.
After two rounds of knocking, though, any confidence she had evaporated when Kingsley didn’t come to the door. She glanced at his truck parked in the drive, walked back to feel the still-warm hood under the tentative touch of her hand. Adah knocked on the door again, then again. No answer.
Was he spending the night with Annika?
Adah breathed deeply to push away the disappointment and dismay crowding into her throat. She took a step back, ready to call for a cab back to her hotel. Her hand fell to the door handle, and she reflexively gripped it. A click and the door eased back on quiet hinges.
Startled, Adah stared at the triangle of darkness just inside the door, then walked in without allowing herself to fully think about what she was doing. Timid footsteps drew her into the shadowed living room, its dimensions gradually becoming clear through the moonlight cascading past open blinds, showing her the sparse furniture, the hallway leading to more private rooms.
Softly, she called out Kingsley’s name, but there was no reply. Her hands clenched at her sides. She took a step back. Then a step forward, then another until the shadows of the hallway brushed her shoulders, her face. All the doors off the hallway were open.
The first room showed the silent silhouette of a powder room, the other a furnished but otherwise empty bedroom, and the last... Adah drew in a deep and steadying breath.
Kingsley slept naked. His screened windows were open and allowed in the coolness of the night breeze. There were no curtains over them to flap, no blinds to tap distractingly to the rhythm of the fierce wind, no papers to flutter madly about the room. Just Kingsley lying heavily in the bed on top of white sheets, his legs splayed wide, arms above his head, his face turned away from the bedroom door.
Adah truly felt like an intruder. She bit her lip and took a step back. But the figure in the bed shifted, legs, hips, chest, arms. A full-body movement that dragged her gaze all over him until at last she was looking at his face and his eyes staring at her. Those eyes widened slightly, but other than that, Kingsley gave no sign of being surprised.
“Another unexpected visit, Doe Eyes?” His voice was sleep roughened and dragged along her sensitive nerves, hot and urgent.
She licked her lips. “I wanted to explain about what you saw at the restaurant.”
“You don’t owe me any sort of explanation.” Kingsley scrubbed a hand over his face, grabbed for his cell phone on the bedside table and glanced at its clock before he put it back and gave her his full attention. “You were having a lovely meal with your fiancé. Nothing any woman should have to explain. Especially not to a man she barely knows.”
She wanted to tell him not to dismiss his importance to her so easily. She wanted to tell him so many things.
“He’s not my fiancé,” she settled on saying.
“Fiancé-to-be, then.”
“Not even that.”
Kingsley sat up in the bed and put his back to the headboard. He drew a deep breath. “What are you saying?” The question sounded weighted, expectant. Or maybe that was just Adah’s foolish hope.
“He and I agreed to call off our potential engagement. It wouldn’t have worked between us. Bennett is a very good friend. Nothing more.”
“From what I’ve seen, good marriages have been based on less,” he said.
Adah didn’t want to talk about marriages. She licked her lips, nervous and on the brink of flight. “Do you want me to leave?”
Kingsley’s gaze moved down her body, then up, a slow drag full of intent and desire. Then he shifted in the bed again, raising the knee closer to her to shield his lap in a way he hadn’t seemed worried about doing before. Instead of replying, he held out his hand.
Adah swallowed. Was this what she wanted? The question seemed foolish enough with the desire pooling like liquid fire in her belly. She was walking across the room to him before she could think anything else. She slid off her sandals and knelt on the bed. His hand closed around hers, warm and firm. He pulled her the rest of the distance across the sheets and against him. With her heart fluttering madly in her chest, she was hyperaware of his nakedness, the press of her clothed body against him, the hot slide of his palm against hers, then his hands along the backs of her hands, up her arms, then higher to clasp just above her elbows.
“I’ve already told you what I want, Doe Eyes. Now it’s your turn.”
She shivered at the intensity in his voice, rough and soft at once, as it rubbed over her sensitive nerves and laid her bare to her own desires.
“I want you,” she said. “I’ve always wanted you.”
He didn’t seem surprised by her confession. If anything, her words seemed to only confirm what he already knew about the flood of desire that took her over whenever she saw him and thought of him.
“Good,” he said. “Now we’re finally on the same page.”
“And in the same bed.”
In the moonlight falling into the room, she saw the corners of his mouth curve up, beautiful and unashamed. No amusement this time, just a predatory certainty.
“Yes,” he said. “Finally.”
His eyes captured and held hers; then his hand crept to the back of her dress and pulled the zipper down. His fingers traced the line of skin the zipper revealed, a light caress until he reached the end of the zipper at her tailbone and Adah was trembling with need.
“Show me what you want,” he said, voice growling, hand on her hip.
She flushed under her open dress while her mind conjured it perfectly. Having him just like this, under her and inside her. Adah crawled over Kingsley, straddled him and pushed him until he lay flat on his back, watching her with his night-dark eyes. He was already hard for her.
Under her flattened palms, his chest rose and fell with steady, even breaths. She raked her fingers over his muscled pecs, through his chest hair. Even in the dark of night, he was unmistakably gorgeous. A hard and virile man willing to please her.
She
slid her parted thighs over his, their flesh brushing with the sound of whispers. “This is what I want,” she said.
The long nights in her lonely bed when she did nothing but think of him despite other things looming on her horizon had prepared her for this moment, his skin under hers, the wetness sticking her underwear to her body, him groaning when she settled her bottom on the hard jut of his desire.
“Then take it,” he said.
The breath shivered out of her. “Do you...do you have anything?”
Without taking his eyes from her, Kingsley reached back for the drawer of his bedside table, hand fumbling inside until it emerged with a six-pack strip of condoms. He pulled one off and dropped the others on top of the table.
“Just in case,” he breathed.
Adah smiled and took the condom from him. “Yeah...?”
He drew in a deep breath when she touched him, his abs tightening, fingers clenching on their tight hold on her hips. He was silk-covered steel in her hand, beautiful and ready for her. With his hardness grasped in her fist, she hovered over him, tugged aside her panties, then slowly lowered herself. Inch by delicious inch.
“Adah...”
She hissed at the stretch of him inside her but didn’t stop until she was fully seated on top of him, their pubic hair a delicious and damp tangle. Her dress hung off one shoulder, just a breath away from falling down and showing Kingsley the eager hardness of her nipples.
“If you don’t... God...if you don’t move soon, you’re going to kill me,” he groaned out, his fingers flexing and curving around her waist, biting into her skin through the dress. His hips bucked up. Once. Kingsley muttered an apology, his face strained with self-control.
“Okay.” She breathed out the word, matched his motion. “Oh!”
The pleasure made her vision go white, and she dug her nails into his chest. He gasped but didn’t move. From the way he lay there, watching her while desire made him wet his lips and caused his breath to come faster, he planned on letting her do exactly what she wanted. Adah moved again, pressing down on him in a slow grind that stroked her deeply and sent fire racing through her. She moved faster. Tangled her fingers in his chest hair.
“God. Damn...” Kingsley bucked up into her and grasped her breasts through her dress, his thumb unerringly finding her nipples poking at the thin cloth.
A bolt of pleasure sizzled between Adah’s nipples and the hot place between her thighs. She arched into his touch, snaked on top of him in search of more of the sweetness pouring through her body. She rode him faster, building the feeling, pushing the harsh sounds of her breath and his into the darkened room. The dress fell completely from her shoulders, and he gripped her exposed breasts, squeezed her nipples to pull her arousal higher and higher. It had been so long. So damn long.
The peak of her pleasure slammed into her, a sudden avalanche of feeling that dropped her down into him, crying out and gasping for breath. Her sweat-slick chest against his. Her heart galloped madly. Kingsley caught her, grabbed the back of her neck and brought her open mouth to his in a desperate and sloppy kiss. Then she was on her back, and he was rising over her, pushing her thighs even wider to expose where they were still joined. He pushed her dress up to her waist.
“My turn!” he breathed into her mouth.
He slammed into her, and she gasped at the sensation of him moving against her still-sensitive flesh, plunging into her again and again while she just held on, gripping his back, her neck arched. Adah cried out Kingsley’s name. The sound of their sex was a liquid syncopation in the room as he took her again and again. And her desire rose again, swimming up to meet his.
“You feel so good,” he groaned into her throat, his thrusts getting more erratic until he froze, buried at the deepest point inside her, spilling himself into the condom. She clenched her thighs against him, rubbing against him, wanting more.
He lifted his head, his eyes glittering and lips parted from his gasping breaths. “More?”
Mindless with want, she reached between them to touch herself. “Yes!”
Kingsley shoved her hand away and replaced it with his own, pulled out of her even though he was still hard. Her eyes rolled back in her head when he stroked her clitoris, slid what felt like three fingers into her clenching wetness.
“I have more,” he growled.
Through the night, he gave and she took, then he took and she gave, an unending ouroboros of sex. When one was exhausted, the other took the reins and yoked pleasure around them again. The sheets dampened. The strip of condoms grew smaller. Every inch of Adah became almost too sensitive to touch, but she didn’t want to stop. It was nearly dawn when Adah fell into an exhausted sleep on top of Kingsley, the two of them tangled together, the pillows tossed on the floor and room heady with the smell of their hard-won satisfaction.
* * *
Adah ached in the most wonderful way. She stretched in the soft sheets and felt the pull of muscles she hadn’t used in years, the throb of bruises on her bare hips and her wrists where he’d held her down as he filled her over and over again with hard proof of his desire.
She rolled over in the bed, smiling around a moan of pleasure that slid past her lips. Faint sunlight from the bare window poured over her, warm and delicious, its tendrils sinking into her body with the sensation of a caress. Adah felt absolutely amazing. This intense physical satisfaction was something she could get used to, no matter how long it lasted. She opened her eyes to share the feeling with Kingsley. But she was alone in the bedroom.
Surprised, she sat up, and the sheets fell away to her waist, leaving her even more exposed to the blossoming sunrise. With her eyes fully open, she saw that her dress had been carefully folded and placed in the chair near the window, her purse on top of them, and her shoes tucked side by side on the floor.
She called Kingsley’s name, once, then twice, but all she received in return was silence. No note rested on the bedside table. No smells of breakfast being made floated in from the kitchen. She frowned. The warmth she’d felt from their night of sensational sex began to fade. Quickly, she left the bed and got dressed.
After a quick exploration of the small house, she found the rest of it empty. No note. No idea of where he’d gone. Her first thought was to find him at the Hi-Winds Tournament. From what she remembered of the schedule, there was a men’s kite-boarding race taking place that day, but it was in the afternoon. With the corner of her lip tucked between her teeth, she replayed the night before. The touches, the things they’d said to each other, what she may have said to him to scare him out of his own house.
All she remembered, though, was a passion-filled night and the hope for more before she went back home. No promises given or asked for. Just really, really good sex.
But on their after-dinner walk, Bennett had said something that haunted Adah now. Men pay for sex with commitment and love, he’d told her. Women pay for love and commitment with sex. If he’s like most guys in his situation, he probably thinks you want some sort of commitment from him to replace the one you’re giving up with me.
Adah had disagreed with him. Kingsley wasn’t stupid enough to think something like that. She blinked and looked around the room, wondering. The longer she stood in the cold silence of the house, the more the words reverberated in her head. Did Kingsley really think she wanted that much more from him? The silence didn’t give her another reason for his absence.
Okay then...
She fought the sharp stab of disappointment that he was the kind of coward to run away instead of telling her he didn’t want more than a vacation screw. After washing her face and brushing her teeth with his toothpaste and her finger, she called a taxi and left his house the way she’d found it.
The taxi came quickly. The ride was unfortunately just long enough for her to replay everything that happened between her and Kingsley. The sex h
ad been nothing short of amazing. The way he touched her, like he thought she was worthy of both lust and tenderness. He met her bite for bite, kiss for kiss, the fires of desire between them rising and falling through the night, only fully extinguishing when they both passed out from exhaustion.
Adah would have gladly loved to repeat the experience. But not if he was too much of a coward to tell her the limits of what he wanted and what he was willing to give.
She asked the driver to drop her off just short of the hotel. She walked the rest of the way and took a detour along the beach. The sun was rising still, and the island was faintly cool from the night’s embrace. She shivered in her sundress and brushed her palms up her arms in a search for warmth.
Farther up the beach and just past her hotel, a group of people gathered in fluttering, semiformal clothes. A wedding. Or at least the end of one. Purple cloth, fine as gossamer, roped off an aisle leading to an arched arbor near the very edge of the beach and a few feet from the rush and retreat of the sea.
Nearly a dozen people gathered around a couple taking photographs while the purple cloth wavered in the early morning breeze. The wedding attendees all wore shades of yellow, and the bride and groom both wore white. The guests lifted full champagne flutes in the air and, after a toast that Adah couldn’t hear, drank from their glasses before raining applause down on the newlyweds. Everyone looked happy.
Chapter 7
“Was it that good, or that bad?” Gage ashed his cigarette in the small saucer by his side.
Kingsley didn’t say anything. He slumped down into the sand beside his friend and almost wished for a cigarette to clench between his teeth. What he really wanted to do was slip back into bed with Adah. It had been hell to leave her in the sheets that smelled like the two of them and were still warm from her body.
“Ah.” Gage’s teeth flashed in the low morning light. “You ran out on her like a little b—”
“No.” Kingsley sighed. “Well, yes.” He wasn’t a strong believer in self-delusion.
The Pleasure of His Company Page 13