by Cat Porter
“Turo!” I hurtled over the edge he’d brought us to.
He kept at me, and I kept my hold on his cock until he finished. My arse cheeks burned from the odd bite he’d delivered. He stroked me and the burn transformed to molten heat. We both dropped onto the bed, and I curled into his chest, his arms sliding around me, keeping me close. I breathed in the warmth of his skin. He never spoke during or after. Unlike me, where a constant ramble of his name flowed from my mouth as he watched me, maneuvered me.
I nestled against him, his heart beating steady and strong in his chest, and I focused on that powerful rhythm. My lips brushed his damp skin; a sweet thank you, a gentle connection I craved whenever we were done.
Done?
Oh, I didn’t want to be done with Turo DeMarco.
36
Turo
Another day.
Another fantastic day, and I’d stopped looking at my watch to assess priorities. My prized Patek Philippe that my grandfather had given me on my twenty-first birthday was no longer a necessary tool to navigate my time.
A sundial better suited my needs.
This evening we’d caught the sunset drinking iced coffees as we strolled along the beach barefoot under a pink and orange streaked sky. Once darkness settled, we headed back to the house to get dressed for a night out. The second we’d entered the house, she’d pushed me onto the sofa, zipped down my pants, and swallowed my cock. Just before I’d come, I had her open her mouth and I sprayed her outstretched tongue with my cum. Right after, she swallowed me in once more, sucking me as I came down. I relented to her insistence, and it had been so fucking good, so fucking beautiful to experience that insistence and feel her drain me.
Her rough tenderness. What violins had once been. Gut deep, soul-rending music. My mind blanked and we’d lain there half on the sofa, on the floor, limbs tangled, sticky and sweaty.
Tonight we were going to a local bar. We’d showered and changed, and I strode down the steps to the foyer where she was applying dark red lipstick in front of the mirror in the credenza. She wore a long, royal blue dress with slits up the sides, and around her neck lay a mass of thin chains with colored crystals and the Greek evil eye charms.
She shot me a grin in the mirror as she twisted the cap back on her lipstick. I stood behind her dragging a hand through my hair, smoothing it back once again with what little hair gel I had left. She turned to me, her gaze traveling up and down my body.
“What? Is this all right?” I asked.
“Gorgeous.” She winked at me, untucking the white linen shirt from my jeans.
“Well, now it’s not.”
“What do you mean?” She smoothed the ends of the shirt down.
“Now it’s wrinkled.”
She ignored my clipped tone. “It’s linen, Turo. And it looks better this way. It’s summer on an island.”
“It’s not summer, Adri. It’s May.”
Her eyes glittered at me. “Turo, this is not Chicago. This is Greece.”
I caught my reflection in the mirror once again. “Hmm.”
“You’re pouting.”
“I am not.”
She tilted her head. “Men are such divas. And, by the way, you take forever to get ready.”
“I do not.”
“Sometimes, yes, you do.“ She got in between me and the mirror and holding my gaze, she smoothed her hands down my shoulders, down my chest, sending zings of heat through my flesh, the thin gold bracelets on her wrist clinking delicately. “But it’s worth the wait.”
My balls tightened at her words, at the spicy warm scent of her perfume enveloping us. Goddammit, I was at her mercy. She could do anything she wanted to me at this very second, and I’d let her.
I’d fucking love it.
“Look at you, white linen on sun-tanned skin,” she murmured.
“Hardly a tan.”
“Golden.” Her gaze tripped south. “Dark indigo jeans. Very nice.” My muscles coiled at her long, slow, appreciative attention, at the low, intimate tone of her voice. It was almost unbearable.
“Are you admiring the goods or finding something lacking, sweetheart?”
“Do you own a pair of faded jeans? Or only these crisp, dark ones?” she asked, a hand on my thigh.
“I don’t do faded or distressed. Ever.”
She laughed. “I’ll have to buy you a pair. They’d look amazing on you.” Her fingers went to the buttons at my shirt. She unbuttoned the second, the third. The fourth.
I lifted an eyebrow. “Have you changed your mind about going out? Are we going for another round?”
Her eyebrows raised. “Your look needs styling. You need a more relaxed, Mediterranean feel about you.” She opened the shirt revealing more of my chest. “All that’s missing is a long gold chain and a medallion.” She drew her nails down my torso.
“Adri,” my voice warned.
“I’m teasing.” She laughed, her fingers circling, burning through my skin. “That was the seventies.” She buttoned the fourth button, leaving open the top three, her eyes holding mine, daring me to protest, her tongue darting over her scarlet lips. Who knew being dressed could be just as much a turn on as getting undressed?
“There.” Her tongue lashed at my chest, and warmth shot through my veins. “That’s indecent enough for you. Otherwise you’d be overwhelming.” Her fingers brushed my jaw. “I like that you didn’t shave today.”
Indecent. Overwhelming. My heart pumped liters of flammable lust and desire through my veins at an insane speed. I put a hand over those fingers, crushing them in mine.
“Scruff.”
She blinked. “Pardon?”
I rubbed her hand against my face and her lips parted. “The stubble, we call it scruff.” I brought her hand to my mouth and kissed and nipped at her flesh.
“Hmm. Is that unusual for you as well, not shaving every day and having this…scruff?” She growled out the word.
I grinned, brushing my nose with hers, rubbing my jaw against her cheek. “Yes. I’ll show you how good scruff can be between your thighs tonight. How does that sound?”
Her face reddened. “You know, I like that you have specific likes and dislikes.”
“It comes with age, baby.”
“Maybe. But it shows your confidence in your tastes and preferences, and I like that.”
“Do you?”
“Very much. It’s distinctive.” She stepped back from me, and I physically felt the absence of her warmth. My slackened muscles tightened once again.
“Shall we go?”
At the crowded bar, Greek music thumping loudly, Adri ordered a Bombay gin and tonic with lime, and I had the same. She recognized a friend and then another. The two girls didn’t seem like the jet set type. Local girls, one of whom had a boyfriend with her. Introductions were made, and I got us all another round of drinks. The music went from Greek pop and dance to a more Middle Eastern beat. The women got excited, and Adri brushed my cheek with her lips as she and her friends jostled to the packed dance floor.
With their hands twisting in the air, their hips gyrating, they flowed to the eastern rhythm. Suggestive, sensual, exotic. The boyfriend, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, left our table and got on one knee before them and clapped to the beat. Was this the Greek way to declare your admiration for a dancer’s expression of her mood? Of her spirit?
Adri’s sensual movements were right under that beat, stroking it, feeling it, flipping it. Her lips moved with the words of the song as she pivoted her gorgeous body. My heart jammed in my chest.
She was so beautiful. No, beautiful wasn’t even the right word. Alluring. She had attitude and elegance in one. A free spirit singing, dancing, laughing. Completely uninhibited. No photographers to pose for, no paparazzi to dodge. No fashion police to impress. Only genuine joy. A tiny part of me, the selfish, egotistical part, hoped that I’d had something to do with freeing her spirit, tapping that joy in her.
Her eyes hooked on mine from the dan
ce floor.
Joy for me.
Beguiling. Bewitching. That magnum of pink champagne had blown and the spray stung my skin. I had seduced her yet she was seducing me on a whole other level hour after hour, day after day, orgasm after orgasm, gentle kiss after hard suck. Adri was a creature of the bright sun and the velvet night. She evoked a new desire I never thought I had in me.
To bond and not let go.
It would end, though, it had to. And soon.
My eyes closed, and I soaked myself in that image of her, that feeling coming off her, off her soul’s pleasure entwining herself in that exotic sensual music. I willed myself to never forget it, searing it on my soul.
I tugged a hand through my hair and took in a breath. The dance floor was filled with gyrating bodies, seats had emptied. The bar was jammed. And at the end of it, reality crashed on my private party. Standing at the bar, brown leather jacket guy sipped on a drink, watching Adri.
A flash went off behind my eyes, adrenaline bursting in my veins, and I charged over to him, cutting through the boisterous crowd. I slid in behind him, wrenching an arm around his neck, pulling him back against me.
“Who the fuck are you?”
His head twisted, eyes flaring, fingers digging into my arm, Greek curses flaring.
“Who sent you?”
“Turo!”
I blinked. Adri stood before us, breathless, hair flying. “Let him go.”
“What? Why?” I gritted out. “He’s been following us for days now.”
“He’s on my mother’s security team. She must have sent him. Eh, Stavro?”
The man muttered in Greek. She put a hand on my arm. “Turo, please.”
I released him from my chokehold and he sputtered, rubbing a hand around his throat, eyes blazing. She spoke to him in Greek, this Stavro of Liana’s, as she wrapped an arm through mine. I tried to catch my breath, I didn’t realize I was out of breath. My skull banged in my head. Adri took my hand in hers, another hand stroked the side of my burning face, and Stavro faded into the din of voices, the pounding music, the smoke.
“It’s all right. It’s all right.” Adri’s arms snaked around my middle and up my back, bringing our bodies together. Her steady heat silenced the drums beating in my head, the violins shrieking, the lights flashing. Those blue gray eyes gleamed back at me, and there was only her. Only her.
I took that beautiful face in my hands and touched my lips to hers.
“Oh, Turo…”
Her voice mirrored my ache, and I deepened the kiss wanting to obliterate it, be consumed by it, by her. She opened her mouth to mine, and we drank. We drank the wine.
Back at the house we settled on the divan on the stone terrace at the back which overlooked the peninsula of the town with the castle ruins at its tip, the small lighthouse beyond in the vast blackness of the sea.
The lit whitewashed surfaces of the houses with their terra-cotta tiled roofs spread out around us like white building blocks. The deftly lit huge arbor of fuchsia bougainvillea, a thick wall of pine and cypress trees, and several lemon trees made this small garden very private. The jasmine had awoken as it did every night and shimmered through the thick air. The heady fragrance of the night flower bush was even more intense. The candle flames flickered pale yellow light from their large lanterns over the gray stone flooring, and the lights we’d switched on in the narrow lap pool, created a liquid aquamarine jewel at our feet.
“I have something special for us tonight.” Adri went into the house and returned moments later with a vintage glass wine decanter filled with a pink red liquor and two glasses. She set the tray down and poured for us.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Taste,” she said, an eyebrow quirking, her tone silky.
Heat filled my chest. My siren offered a gift to tantalize. I took the delicate glass. An intense flowery fragrance filled my nostrils, and I took a sip. Sweet rose filled my mouth.
“Rose liqueur?”
“Yes. A great aunt of mine makes it herself and there is always a bottle here. I like to keep it cold in the refrigerator. Do you like it?” She sucked on a fingertip where the wine had left a drop behind as she’d poured.
“You want me to like it,” I said swirling the liqueur in my glass, mesmerized by its impossible color.
She took a sip of hers. “Hmmm. I do.”
I drank again. “It’s incredible.”
Her face broke into a huge grin.
We were drinking roses. Roses. “Very pure flavor,” I continued, still admiring its color. “Not that I’ve tasted a rose before. I like that it’s not syrupy.”
“I thought you might enjoy it. You’ve not tried anything like it before?”
“No,” I breathed.
No, I’ve never had rose liqueur before.
No, I’ve never been with a woman like you before.
No, I’ve never felt my heart knocking against my ribs the way it is right now, the way it does whenever I’m with you.
No, I’ve never ached this way before. Ached for something else. Like a piece of me, the hard metal part, had melted and the heat turned my blood to liquid fire and that fire had leapt over the high walls of my castle that I’d so proudly built, just like your Venetian conqueror.
I drained the glass and held it out to her and she poured me more, that pleased smile dancing on her lips. We drank, the taste slightly sweet and very elegant, its warmth seeping through me, mellowing my insides.
Mellowing everything.
“Would you prefer it with ice maybe?” she asked.
“What I’d prefer is you without clothes,” I whispered roughly.
She swallowed her drink, put down her empty glass, and slowly slid her dress off, her bare body offering itself to me to do with what I pleased. The blood pounded in my veins.
I kissed her soft, full lips gently and laid her down on the divan. Tilting my glass, I poured a thin stream of rose liqueur over her belly, and she let out a long hiss as we both watched it spill over her skin. I licked the sweet pink liquor from her navel up to the soft, firm swell of her tits, and her hips twisted under me. The rose was a heady perfume on her silky skin.
My tongue chased the liqueur and lavished her scar. A scar that still seemed fresh and irritated like the first time I’d noticed it. Her breath shorted, body tensing, gaze snagging on mine.
“Baby—” I planted a kiss on that wound that I was sure she continued to cut, keeping her guilt alive. “Oh, baby, let it heal. Leave it be and let it finally heal,” I whispered over her skin, my tongue licking over it one last time, and her eyes filled with water.
I surged over her and took her mouth. She let out a gasp, eyes widening.
“What is it?”
“Your shirt, it’s soiled.”
I followed her gaze. Pink stains soaked the white linen. A growl heaved from my throat and I kissed her roughly.
She undid one button after the other, tugging the shirt off me. The cool air prickled my heated skin. Her fingers pressed into the sensitive flesh of my abs, up my sides, searching, her touch searing.
“Sit up on your knees,” I breathed. “Face the sea.”
She scrambled up on her knees, and laying down on the divan, I slid between her legs, wrapping an arm around her waist, bracing her and pulling her down to my mouth. I wanted all of her on me.
Sweet, sweet roses. Secret musk.
“Turo! Oh…né…né…”
Greek, English, her saying yes to me with her body and her mind was everything.
Leaning back, she gripped my raised knees and shuddered, crying out as my mouth possessed her. In a blur I pulled her off me and fitted myself with the goddamn rubber. I brought her body down on top of mine, her back to my chest, the two of us facing the stars, and angling my hips, I entered her.
If there is a heaven, this, this is it.
Panting, she let out a low cry, her face turning into my throat, her lips on my skin.
“Turo, Turo…”
Her fingernails dug into my arms.
Her insides so slick, so firm all around me. Our sweaty, sticky bodies molded together. My face pressed against hers and I found her lips once more. The taste of the rose liqueur stained them still.
She raised herself up, and my cock slid out of her. Pushing me back, she straddled me, her hair a curtain over us. Her hand went between us and fitted me inside her once more.
A slice of velvet in the dark.
“Yes,” heaved from my throat. “Adriana.”
She rocked over me, taking me deeper inside her, her body drawing me in and in and in. We kissed and tumbled in that kiss. I pulled her hair from her face. I had to see her in the candlelight. See that abandon satisfied along with mine.
“Adri—”
Our eyes locked, and her fingernails dug into my arms. She moved faster, her body creating poetry I couldn’t quite decipher. We moved in the rhythm of her verses, their foreign words magic. We were the words, and she strung us together the way she wanted.
She came, grinding over me, and I chased my own end with her body holding me tight. Planting her hands in the cushion on either side of me, her eyes flared, her lips parted with the effort.
My hands slid up her back, a silent pleading. Heart pounding, pulse skidding. Everything hung on a teetering hinge. I needed her mouth, I needed her tongue on mine.
I needed her.
“Kiss me, baby,” I whispered, my voice raw.
She dug her fingers into my hair and devoured my mouth, and I flew.
Not immune.
Not an outsider looking in.
I couldn’t block it, fight it, stop it. Didn’t want to.
I wanted to give in to her, and I had. I wanted more of her, and I got it.
I got her.
All the previous experiences I’d had with women had been characterized by a dual you-get-yours and-I-get-mine self-sufficiency. This with Adri, this was not that. This was messy, this was clear, this was layers of need, connection, raw hunger, sweet heat.