Within twelve seconds he had located the condoms in his bag and was on top of me.
“You’re sure?” he asked again, a lock of his sexy dark hair falling carelessly across his forehead. Oh, my God, he was gorgeous.
I nodded and wrapped my legs around his pelvis, pushing up into him. “Very sure.”
His grin stole my breath. “Well, in that case.” He quickly sat up on his knees, pulled off his boxer briefs, oh mama! And rolled on the rubber.
I licked my bottom lip again and swallowed. The sight of a man touching himself, right before he touched me, was a weakness of mine. So primal, so hedonistic. He covered me again, his biceps and delts flexing next to my shoulders as he hovered above me, carrying all of his weight. I ached to have him inside me, ached to feel the touch of a man again, to be consumed and filled again. It’d been too long.
Our eyes locked, and I thought for sure he was going to rear up and slam home, but instead he dipped his head and brushed his lips against mine. Sweet and light and not at all what I wanted. I needed hard and fast. It’d been too long for my dry spell to be quelled with gentle and kind. I needed nasty. I needed dirty.
I jerked my head up and nipped his chin, laughing low in my chest at his startled gasp. But then he picked up on my vibe and nipped back. His teeth began grazing down my jaw and neck and shoulder, moving over to my nipple. He took the hard, crimson bud greedily into his mouth and sucked, pulling with his teeth and flicking with his tongue. I arched into him.
“More,” I hummed, letting my head tilt back into the pillows and my eyes close. “More.”
He smiled against my chest, and then moved over to the other nipple, delivering the same exquisite torture as before, pulling just enough to garner a feline mewl from my parted lips.
“You’re so fucking hot,” he said with a snarl, lifting his head to look me in the eye again, our hips churning against one another, both of us desperate for the same thing. For the connection.
“Fuck me! Fuck me hard and fast…please.”
Gray eyes flared back at me, and he lifted his hips, set his face into a determined scowl and finally, finally, drove home, sheathing himself to the hilt in one solid thrust. I let out an involuntary grunt from the impact. He was big. Not monster big, but it’d been a while since I’d been with any man at all, and this man was well-endowed to boot.
“You okay?” His pelvis paused mid-thrust. Meanwhile, all I wanted was for him to pick up the speed and hammer me into the mattress until I was putty.
I nodded and bucked up into him. “Yeah…it’s just…it’s been a while. Don’t stop…please don’t stop.”
That smile. And then he did as he was told and went to task. I ground myself against him, frantic for more friction, to feel that sweet little brush of his pelvic bone against my clit, the intermittent rubbing and teasing, lulling my whole body and every nerve ending into eager submission until all I felt was good. With each dirty thrust, he split me open wider, his body claiming mine, dominating mine, possessing mine.
Within moments I was already close, my pussy trembling with every pull and gripping him with every push. I let my hands travel down his back and ribs, exploring his body, his smooth skin, toned muscles, faint scars. I couldn’t help myself, and I let my fingers fall to his clenching butt. The taut muscle flexed and tightened with every measured thrust. I dug my nails in, and he hissed and then chuckled low and menacing against my shoulder.
“Naughty girl… you’ll pay for that.”
My eyes flashed wide. Would I really? Yes, please.
He chomped down hard on my nipple in revenge, so I dug my fingers in more. He bit down again, this time nearly piercing the skin, all the while the thrusting, the hammering, the plundering never stopped. The man was a machine. Gone was the nerd spewing out facts like an encyclopedia. All that was left was a beast, a savage sex beast ravishing my body until I could no longer think about anything but how good he felt inside me.
He chuckled low and then picked up speed, while his hand came around behind me and reached for mine, lacing our fingers together. He brought them above my head, and then did the same with the other hand, pinning me beneath him, holding onto me for dear life.
I writhed against him, arched my back and then let go. That sweet and rhythmic brush of his pelvic bone against my clit was what did it, what pushed me over the edge into decadent oblivion.
Bright lights flashed behind my closed lids, while his teeth found my shoulder, stifling the groans of his own release. I clenched around him, tight and hot and eager for more of him, for all of him as he pulsed inside of me.
We lay there for a few moments, sweaty and panting, letting our brains find some semblance of equanimity again before we separated and faced reality.
Despite the weight of him on me, pressing my pliant and satiated body into the bed, I felt lighter and more at ease than I had in nearly two years. My head was clear, and finally, my heart felt open again.
CHAPTER 3
“What do you think?” I asked as we stood in line at the bank ATM. Neither of us had very many Peruvian Sols, so we both had to pull out some cash. “Do you think they’re going to get the bathroom fixed tonight? Or should we just cut our losses and go try to find somewhere else to stay?”
He lifted one shoulder, having not bothered to do up all the buttons on his baby blue linen shirt. His chest was exposed, and I found it sexy as hell. “We’ll see what they say when we get back in an hour or so, and if they’re not overly confident, or make us go and use one of the communal bathrooms, then we’ll leave. But I’m starving, so let’s find a grocery store and grab some food.”
I grinned up at him, and then took another leap, one of my many leaps for the day, and linked my fingers with his. He smiled down at me, pulled me close and kissed the top of my head. I untangled our hands and wrapped my arm around his waist. What the heck was going on? I’d just met this man, yet I’d already had sex with him, and we were already acting like boyfriend and girlfriend. It was so weird, and yet it felt good.
He let me go first, and I went and pulled out three hundred dollars’ worth of Sols, preferring to take out larger sums of money and just split it up between my bags and on my person, rather than do multiple small transactions. The international banking fees and currency exchange were atrocious, so the less often I had to pay the charges, the better. I still had four hundred U.S. stashed back in my backpack inside the locked valuables cabinet in our room, but that was emergency money in case I lost my debit or credit card, and I wouldn’t touch it unless I absolutely had to.
I waited for Derrick to do the same, and then he grabbed my hand again, and the two of us took off back outside, wandering around beautiful, modern, clean Miraflores.
“Stop here.” His voice was commanding as he let go of my hand and took a step back, reaching into his shoulder bag and bringing out his camera.
“Why?”
He quirked an eyebrow at me. Was the man not accustomed to being questioned? A wry smile tugged at his lips. “Because this view is beautiful, and it’s even more beautiful with you in front of it. Smile.”
We’d managed to find ourselves down along the water. Throngs of locals and tourists alike lined the path that ran along the edge of a giant cliff. Surfers and paragliders dotted the glittering water against the pale blue sky and children ran around half-naked on the sand down below. It was a stunning setting, welcoming and relaxing, and for the first time in my trip, I was happy I had someone to share the moment with. I had been content traveling alone this far, knowing that the only person I should have been experiencing it all with was no longer here and feeling that if I couldn’t share it with him, I shouldn’t share it with anyone.
I wasn’t paying attention to Derrick, but he was busy snapping photos, some of me, some of the brick-colored statues in the giant circular courtyard where we’d stopped, some of children and families playing and chatting. The sun was hot; the breeze was mighty, and when a sudden gust picked up the end of my
dress and my hair, sending it into a maelstrom around me, I couldn’t help but burst out laughing.
I turned back to face him, and his nose was back in the book.
“It says here, the Miraflores central plaza has flea markets and art exhibitions. Those could be cool.”
I nodded, stopping next to a small bronze plaque and reading it. We were on the Costa Verde (green coast), and it was positively breathtaking. I inhaled the freshness of the sea air and let my shoulders relax. Even if this was just a one-time, or maybe two-times (hopefully) fling, it was freeing, and I felt the heavy weight that had been stacked on my shoulders since Ray’s death finally start to slide off. I’d always love him, always mourn him and think of him, and even though the book my mother had given me was loaded with complete bullshit, it was right about one thing, I needed to heal and move on. Ray would want me to be happy.
“Piper?”
I shook my head, joining reality once again.
Derrick stared at me. He cocked his head like a curious but menacingly sexy puppy. “You okay?”
I nodded and brushed my hair from my eyes. “Just peachy. You got all the photos you wanted to take?”
“Come on.” There it was again, that authoritative tone. But just like before, there was a hint of a smile in his voice and a sparkle of amusement in his eyes. He stowed his camera and reached for my hand again, pulling me close and planting another affectionate kiss on my forehead. “Let’s go buy some food, head back and see how our bathroom is doing and whether it’s still a pool or not.”
I beamed up at him. “Okay.”
“I’M GOING to run up and check on our room; you want to put the food in the communal fridge?” he asked as we made our way back through the hostel doors, saying a quick hello to Gladys at the front and accepting our key back from her.
They had a weird policy where we relinquished our room key to the front desk before we left, and then they’d give it back to us when we returned. I understood why, so that we didn’t lose it out in the city, but it’d still sent a giant ice pick down my spine when I’d had to turn the key over. I felt like I was handing over my privacy. But then again, the maintenance guy was going to be going in and out of there, so I had to suck it up and secure all my valuables in the small lockable chest inside the room.
Derrick took off upstairs, making the four-story climb, while I wiped my wrist across my brow, nodded shyly at the two guys playing pool in the lounge room and opened the fridge. We hadn’t bought much — some apples and oranges, a small block of cheese and some bread, and a container of yogurt.
The hostel advertised a free breakfast, but after having traveled through Central America, staying only in hostels, the term “complimentary breakfast” was really open to interpretation by each hostel. Some places put out big spreads with toast and eggs, sausages and pancakes, whereas others gave each person a child-size box of Frosted Flakes, a cafeteria-size carton of milk, and a couple of slices of pineapple. I wasn’t nearly as big as Derrick, but even I needed a bigger meal than that to get me through to lunch.
“Piper!” He came back down the stairs in a red-faced panic. “It’s gone!”
I shut the fridge. “What’s gone?”
“Everything! It’s all gone. We’ve been robbed. Everything, your camera, my laptop, all my money, your money, my passport. Everything that we’d put in the cabinet. They busted off the lock.”
If I hadn’t already experienced extreme devastation in my short adult life, I would have thought I was having a heart attack. The whole world became very fuzzy, color dulled, all the sound in the place quickly morphed into a harsh and unidentifiable buzzing sound, and my entire body began to shake.
I took the stairs two—sometimes three—at a time and was in our room in seconds. The place looked like it had been ransacked. Clothes everywhere. The entire contents of our backpacks strewn about, my toiletries bag opened and dumped all over the bed, while my bras and underwear, clean and dirty, lay in a heap on the floor. The combination lock I’d used on the cabinet had been cut with a bolt cutter and hung off the loop like a defeated soldier.
With a small shred of hope, I fell to my knees and peered beneath the bed. Maybe something of value had fallen and rolled underneath. Derrick was behind me in the doorway, along with Gladys, who just stood there with a stupid and surprised look on her face.
I rounded on her. “You did this!”
She shook her head vehemently. “No, Senora, no not me.”
“You had our key. You let maintenance into our room. It had to have been them. Where are they now?”
She shook her head again, pure fear on her face. I probably looked like I was going to kill her. “Gone, Miss. They gone.”
Derrick had started packing. “We need to leave.”
“No fuck!” I snapped, but instead of packing I took off back downstairs. Gladys followed me. “You need to call the police.”
“N-no…no policia,” she stammered.
“Why?”
“N-no policia.” All of a sudden, the woman had lost her grasp of the English language. How convenient.
I grabbed her by the lapel of her peach blouse. “Fucking call the police.” And then without looking back, I took off out of the hostel and started running. Within two minutes I was bursting through the doors of the police station. I doubled over and put my hands on my thighs, my chest heaving from having sprinted the entire way, while warm tears stung the corner of my eyes. A hand fell on my back, and shiny black dress shoes came into view.
“Senora?”
“Help!” Was all I could say. Tasting vomit at the back of my throat and doing everything I could to push it back down. “Help.”
Somehow, I’m not quite sure how, given that I knew all of twenty words in Spanish, and ten of those were numbers, but I managed to get the gist of my point across to the seven police officers whose attention I managed to attract. In another five minutes three of them, all dressed in tan pants and navy shirts, were accompanying me back down the road to the hostel.
We burst through the door, and Gladys’ face fell the moment she saw them. Her eyes went wide while I just gave her a smug smile. Fuck you, bitch. If you’re not going to call the cops, I’ll get them myself.
She started prattling to them in Spanish, wringing her hands together in worry, while the older and more authoritative-looking officer whipped out a pencil and a pad of paper and began furiously scribbling notes. I just stood there glaring at her.
“No, no.” Gladys kept saying, shaking her head while her eyes flew to mine, pleading with me. For what? Compassion? Help? Ha! Fat chance of that, sister.
She led them upstairs, and I followed, where we ran into Derrick. He was just finishing up packing both of our bags and was getting ready to sling both his bag and mine on to his body to head downstairs. But the man was going to trip and fall to his death if he did. I took my backpack from him, waiting for him to pass me my camera bag, but a sob caught in my throat at the realization that I no longer had a camera bag. I no longer had a camera. What else did I no longer have?
“Piper, we’re leaving. Let’s go.”
“No!” I threw my hands on my hips. “I went and got the police. They can help.”
He shook his head and reached for my elbow to turn me around. “No, they can’t. The police here are corrupt. They won’t help. They came because you’re white and a woman. They followed you, not your problem. They don’t care. Let’s go.”
I dug in my heels. “No. They might be able to find the maintenance guys.”
He rolled his eyes in impatience. “Even if they do, we’re not going to get our stuff back. We’re white. To them, we are millionaires, even if we’re not. They think that what they took is just a drop in the bucket to us. The maintenance guys don’t care. Gladys doesn’t care, and the police don’t care. We need to get out of here before they decide to hold us and demand a bribe for us to leave.”
I gawked at him. What the hell was he talking about?
&nbs
p; He swallowed and pulled me to a corner, his eyes quickly flying to the two police officers who were “investigating” the crime scene. The more I watched them, the more I realized they were just acting. Boredom paraded across both their faces while their eyes kept drifting back to me and my chest.
When I’d given a quick account at the police station of what had been taken, all the cops had gone walleyed, practically licking their lips at the sound of such wealth. But I wasn’t rich. The camera had been a graduation present from my parents, and all the other things they’d taken — my underwater camera, my phone, my makeup, my credit cards, my money — they only really added up to a little over a thousand dollars. And I’d cancel my credit cards immediately. But Derrick, they’d taken his laptop, his money, his passport. How was he not more furious?
“We need to be very careful here. We’ll go to the embassy tomorrow. But we can’t make a scene. Any opportunity to demand a bribe, and they’ll take it. We need to get out of here before the police get any ideas and don’t let us leave.” He grabbed me by the bicep and began to usher me down the stairs.
We walked aimlessly down the road, loaded down with backpacks and bags, no idea where we were headed but desperate to get away as fast as we could. Derrick’s grip on my arm was still tight, as though he was worried I might run back there and start kicking ass and taking names. Because, Lord knows, I wanted to.
We came to a building marked “Tourist Police,” and he ushered me inside.
“We’d like to report a robbery, please,” he said to the military attire-clad man behind the desk. The guy looked no older than eighteen, while a patchy scruff speckled his jaw and upper lip, making him look like he’d washed his face with coffee grounds and hadn’t quite wiped it all off.
We sat there for nearly two hours waiting to give our statement, and even then, all we’d done was sit at a computer and report the incident. The tourist police officer we’d been issued spoke about as much English as I knew Spanish. What kind of tourist officer doesn’t speak English?
Tropical Tryst: 25 All New and Exclusive Sexy Reads Page 166