Both her moans and the way her fingernails bit into his shoulders, told him she was enjoying the exploration as much as he was. She was beautifully wet for him and he loved how she quivered beneath the strokes of his tongue.
“Damien, I…” She gasped. “I’m going to…”
He pushed two fingers inside her and she shuddered around his hand. A moment later, she grabbed his head and hung on, crying out as waves of pleasure ripped through her.
Damien lapped her until she was spent, then moved up to cradle her. She heaved a deep breath. He could feel her heart beating so hard it was as though it had risen to rest directly against his skin.
Brushing her hair back from her face so he could gently kiss her, their eyes met. They’d left the light in the hall on, and the glow was enough to see her eyes glistening. Was she crying? The thought bought with it a tenderness so strong it was almost unbearable.
“Okay?” he whispered.
“Yes. Very okay. It’s just…” She hesitated. “It sounds crazy, I know, but I haven’t done this for a while. Not since my ex.” She took another deep breath and gave a little laugh. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this now. Crazy. But he left me for someone else, and I suppose it must have affected me more than I thought.” Another short laugh, this one heavy with unshed tears. “Maybe I thought I wouldn’t ever get to do this again. Or something. I don’t know.” She shook her head, obviously embarrassed, and moved her hand down to caress his hardness. “Anyway, we have unfinished business.”
He stroked her hair, stifling a moan at her touch. He was so hard his balls were starting to ache. But he would be patient, for her. “We don’t have to…”
“Are you kidding?” She threw her leg across him so his length pressed against her sex. “My moment of weird introspection is passing quickly. I want to know what else you’ve got for me.”
Fuck. With her opening so close, so warm and wet and tempting, it was all he could do not to slide into her. “Condom,” he managed.
She moved off so he could grab a condom from his nightstand and roll it on. Looking into her eyes, he moved over her, and into her. The feeling was incredible. The hours – if not days – of anticipation heightened his awareness, made every cell in his body hum with sensation. He’d never felt anything like it. Like her.
He thrust in slowly, savoring the intensity of it, wanting it to last forever. But Geena had other ideas. She drove up to meet him, her need urgent. She grabbed his butt, pulling him in harder. Deeper. Her fingernails dug into him and she cried out so loudly he thought Isobelle might hear.
He went with it. Hell, he loved that about her. The way she took what she wanted. Her passion and intensity. The way her mouth made that sexy shape. The noise she made in the back of her throat. She was close again, he could tell, so no matter how incredible it felt, he’d do whatever it took not to come before she did.
Balancing on one elbow, he pushed his arm underneath her to draw her up towards him. Closer. Tighter. Harder. Her skin hot on his, their movements accelerating together, her lips forming the shape of his name.
And then she was clenching around him, crying out with the pleasure of her release. The feeling of it – of her – drove him over the edge, and he shuddered into her. His mouth on hers, his breath part of hers. Their bodies joined so tightly they felt like one.
Afterwards he pulled her against him, breathing hard with her, chest against chest, and her face nuzzled under his chin. They laughed a little, for no reason except it felt good. It felt right.
He couldn’t deny that had been more than just casual sex. They’d shared something special together, something that had felt a lot more important than he’d expected. Maybe that should have scared him, but he felt too damn relaxed to be worried about it. That’s one hell of an afterglow.
Thinking of how she’d been a little teary after her first orgasm, he kissed her forehead. Her eyes were closed.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Her eyes flicked open and she smiled. “Yes. I guess I needed that more than I knew. It’s not good to go for so long without, ah, clearing the pipes.”
He chuckled. “Is ‘clearing the pipes’ a technical term? Or have you been watching too many x-rated films that feature visits from plumbers?”
She ran her finger down his bicep, making his skin tingle pleasantly with her soft touch.
“Problem with porn these days.” She grinned. “Watching it will give you a totally unrealistic expectation of how long it actually takes a plumber to turn up.”
He snorted. “That’s probably why young guys decide to be plumbers. They think they’re going to be called in to fix the pipes of lusty young women.”
“It must be horribly disappointing for them when they start work and realize they actually have to deal with shit.”
The way she said ‘shit’ made him laugh. It was the first time he’d heard her curse, and the word sounded awkward. Totally at odds with the swear-like-a-sailor impression he’d got from her mermaid tattoo.
He rubbed his hands down her back, enjoying the feel of her. Even more than the amazing sex, the feeling he had right now was one he never wanted to let go of.
If making love with her had felt important, then this moment talking – literally – about shit, seemed even more so. What other woman could he ever have a conversation like this with?
“Aside from the tickler, we didn’t use any of the toys I brought with me,” she murmured.
“There’s still plenty of time.”
She lifted her head to gaze at him and her eyes sparkled. “The Vibra?”
“I’m not convinced I’d fit.”
“I guess there’s only one way to find out.” When she kissed him, it felt like a promise. As hot as they’d burned, there were still flames under his skin. Still more fires to come.
But when he shifted his hand towards the curve of her butt, his belly rumbled so loud she burst out laughing.
“Shall we eat first?” she asked.
At the mention of the dish waiting for them, his stomach rumbled again. “Let’s do that.” There would be plenty of time to rekindle the fire later. They had a long, hot night ahead.
11
They sat on the couch in the living room with drinks and two steaming plates of food. Geena wore an oversized t-shirt of Damien’s that held a faint lingering aroma of his cologne and she could hardly stop herself from pulling it up over her nose to drag in his scent.
She felt a lot more comfortable than when she’d arrived. Not as though she belonged in these rich surroundings, but less self-conscious than before. Sex had helped. And Rocky was sleeping beside her, his paws twitching. The old dog was seriously cute.
Almost as cute as Damien. He’d pulled on jeans and a t-shirt and settled in next to her with a beer.
Geena took a bite of coq au vin. Delicious.
“How long have you lived here?” she asked.
“I split my time between a number of places. But I built this one about five years ago.”
“Did you grow up in Sydney?”
“In Melbourne.”
“And do you have any brothers or sisters?”
He chewed a bite of his dinner thoughtfully and swallowed before he answered. “I have a close friend who I think of as my brother, but Zac’s become a bit of a hermit. He lives in the craziest house you’ve ever seen, perched on top of a sheer cliff north of Sydney. It’s beautiful, but you wouldn’t want to be afraid of heights.”
“I’m not. And I’d like to see it. It sounds like my kind of place.”
“Yeah, I can see you there. It’s wild like you. And dangerous.”
Funny, dangerous was exactly the word she’d use to describe Damien. “I’m anything but dangerous,” she protested. “A little impulsive, sure. But other than that, I’m positively wholesome.” Except that you also make me incredibly horny. So maybe ‘wholesome’ isn’t the right word.
“You take risks.” His dark eyes were serious. “What the
hell made you buy a sex store in King’s Cross anyway?”
“It was definitely impulsive. The store looked awful, and the business was going cheap. I thought it had potential. Besides, it was something different.” She shrugged. “I guess I like doing things most people wouldn’t dream of.”
“But in King’s Cross of all places. Do you have a death wish?”
She laughed. “Come on, the Cross isn’t that bad.”
“Tell that to my friend who lost her life there.”
“She went to the Kingston to buy drugs,” she pointed out, before realizing that was probably a sensitive subject. Well, it was no secret. It had been all over the news.
“And the Kingston’s only a few blocks from your store.”
“Was she an addict?” asked Geena curiously.
Damien’s face hardened. “No. But she liked to party, and that night she was… well, she was looking for an escape.” He heaved a breath. “She was impulsive and wild, like you are. And like you, she never imagined that reckless streak could get her killed.”
“That’s not fair. I don’t take drugs. And if I did, there’s no way I would have gone to the Kingston to buy them. It’s pretty rough around there after dark.”
“You do equally foolish things.”
She tried not to let her voice rise, but it did anyway. “Like what?”
“Like working alone in your store all day, and leaving by yourself at night.”
“Self-defense course, remember? What do you want me to do, carry a gun?” Carrying any sort of weapon in Sydney was illegal. Before taking her self-defense course she’d thought about getting some pepper spray to keep in her handbag. And changed her mind when she found out she could get jail time if she was caught with it.
“Be more sensible. Take precautions.”
She rolled her eyes. After what had happened to his friend, she could understand him being overprotective, but she did everything she reasonably could to stay safe. “I carry a whistle in my handbag. And I’m not against hiring someone to help out when it’s busy. When I can afford it, that is.”
“You don’t have any family who could help you in the meantime?”
“My parents live up north near Darwin, and Ally’s too busy with her blog. And with the wedding. She’s getting married in a couple of weeks.” Geena caught her breath as a thought struck her. “Hey, would you come to the wedding with me? I told my mother I was going to bring someone, to stop her from forcing me onto one of Max’s friends.”
He didn’t say anything for several moments, and she immediately regretted asking him. Dammit, when was she going to learn to think before she spoke and not blurt stuff out? He’d already made his ‘I don’t want a relationship’ speech, and his hesitation before asking her over had made it clear he was wary of her thinking otherwise.
“It’d be a favor,” she added quickly. “Just to keep my mother at bay, nothing more.”
“When is the wedding?”
“The twenty fourth. It’s a Friday.”
He shook his head. “That’s when the council meet to decide which option they’ll go with for the entertainment center, and my team will be presenting our final bid. It’ll be my last chance to convince them that Courtney Construction is the best choice.”
“Oh. Well, never mind.” She forced a smile. “I’ll find someone else to go with me. Or put up with my mother’s match making, painful as it is.”
“I’d go, if I could.”
“Thank you.” She took a sip of her drink to hide her disappointment.
He wasn’t the kind of guy who’d lie because he thought it was what she wanted to hear, so she believed him when he said he would have gone if he wasn’t busy. In fact, that was one of the things she admired most him — the way he wasn’t afraid to say exactly what he thought. Brutal honesty might not come across well on camera, but she found it refreshing. Maybe he couldn’t trust her enough to open up, but she felt like she could trust him.
“Wouldn’t it be much easier for the council to pick you if you made a public apology and said you were willing to rebuild the Kingston?”
He put his fork down and sat back, his body visibly tensing. “Probably. And the apology part I could do, I suppose, if I had to. But I won’t rebuild.”
“Why not? I mean, leaving a pile of rubble there won’t bring your friend’s sister back.”
“I don’t care what else goes up there, as long as it’s not the same building, built from the same bricks.” His mouth twisted. “I paid a fortune for that property, and if it would make this problem go away I’d happily build something else and even give the whole lot to the council. But because it was a heritage building, the law’s overriding common sense.”
“A lot of people are angry about the people you evicted so you could demolish it in the first place. It didn’t look good when the TV cameras showed them in the street with nowhere to go.”
The building had been run as a budget boarding house, and the footage had showed mostly bewildered-looking men with rough clothing and faces. Follow-up stories had interviewed some who were sleeping rough, bemoaning the loss of the one place they’d called home.
His jaw clenched. “You think I care about them? It’s a shame the demolition crew refused to knock it down with them still inside.”
She felt her jaw drop. In interviews she’d heard him say terrible things about the people living in the boarding house, and about King’s Cross in general, but hearing it in person was a shock. How could he blame the whole suburb for the death of his friend?
“Just because your friend’s sister died in the Kingston, surely you can’t blame all the residents for her death? Ninety-nine percent of them had to have been innocent.”
He sat back in his chair, clenching his beer bottle in both hands. “Cilla was just twenty-one, did you know that?” When he looked at her, his eyes were dark with pain. Geena’s outrage faded, and she nodded, resisting the urge to touch him, or offer comfort. She had the feeling he kept his friend’s death close to him, a poison he never acknowledged. Better to let him talk, to let the toxin out if he could.
“Everyone knows she went to buy drugs, and she was found a few hours later. The friends she was partying with got worried when she didn’t come back.” His mouth twisted. “The rest of the details were kept from the press. Her family didn’t want what had happened to her made public, and I would have paid every cent I had to keep it from being splashed over the tabloids.” He was squeezing his beer bottle so hard, his knuckles were white. “Those men didn’t just take her life, they did their best to strip away her dignity. None of us could bear the thought of her suffering being turned into headlines.”
He paused, but she didn’t say anything. She waited, careful to keep her face blank of pity, and he took a deep breath before he went on.
“In the end, it didn’t take much money. Just a little pressure in the right place. The police decided the family’s right to privacy overrode the public interest.” His voice was a little scratchy. “Nobody but those closest to her know that they found semen from four different men, or that as well as carving up her stomach and breasts with a knife, they’d burned her with cigarettes. Or that they estimated she suffered at least two hours of rape and torture before her throat was finally cut.”
He turned those dark eyes on Geena and she felt the horror of his words settle deep inside her. “The outer walls of the building were solid brick and timber, but the interior walls were paper thin. So how many of the sixty people living there do you think might have heard her screaming? And why did not one of them call the police?”
“That’s horrible,” she whispered. “I had no idea.”
He lifted his bottle to his lips, but instead of drinking he just held it there a moment before dropping it again. “They didn’t arrest anyone for her murder. That much is public knowledge.”
“Yes, but surely they had DNA evidence to help them find the men responsible?”
“A lot of the people living t
here were transients. Many disappeared before they could be questioned. Vanished into the streets of King’s Cross.” He frowned. “So now do you understand why you can’t be reckless with your safety? The men who killed her are still out there, prowling the streets around your store.”
“I’m sorry.” She reached out to rest her hand on his leg.
“Do you still blame me for refusing to rebuild it? Seeing it standing again…” He broke off, shaking his head. “I can’t stand the thought of those men going back to the scene of their crime, to gloat over what they got away with.”
He dropped his hand over hers and squeezed. His skin felt cold, and she thought that wasn’t just from holding his beer. Hearing the full story had chilled her too, but it was obvious from the tight lines drawn around his mouth that he’d cared for his friend’s sister very deeply. How would it feel to know someone you loved had died so badly? She couldn’t imagine it.
“No,” she said. “I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t rebuild it either.”
He stared at her for a long moment while the hard lines in his face slowly softened.
She should probably change the subject, but she couldn’t let the opportunity pass. “You do need to come up with something to say when reporters ask you about it. Stop just insisting you’re not willing to rebuild.”
“I’m not going to lie.”
“Yeah, I get it. But you’re open to discussing other options with the council. Next time someone asks you about it, why not talk about that in a positive way instead?”
“I can’t see anything positive about it.”
“You said you’d build anything else the council want. Isn’t that a great opportunity for King’s Cross? If the council can’t see that, you should point it out.”
“I said as much in the hearing, so it should already be public knowledge.”
“Should it? I didn’t know until now.”
He inclined his head, accepting the point. “Anyway, I’m done talking about the Kingston. Let’s lighten the mood.”
“Okay. Tell me about the entertainment center you want to build.”
The Rich List Series: Contemporary Romance Box Set (Millionaire, Billionaire, CEO) Page 28