Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Damien slid his tongue from one side of Mandy’s lip to the other and closed his eyes.
Unbelievable. Everything about her and this night was unbelievable.
But Mandy was his box of chocolates. He wanted her and he couldn’t resist her and he was going to eat all of her.
He should be done for the night, depleted and ready to send her on her way back to her room so he could get some work done. But he didn’t give a damn about shit that didn’t work or customer demands or the training he wanted to schedule for June.
All he could think about was that Mandy wasn’t wearing any underwear or a bra under that very thin sundress.
And the way she treated him was so novel, so alluring, that he didn’t want this night to end and he didn’t want to retreat back into himself. Mandy sat with him, talked with him, with a trust and a frankness, her expression honest and open. Yet she expected nothing of him.
No hoops to jump through, no promises to make, no lavish gifts, no handing her his bleeding heart for her to own.
They were almost something like friends.
Except with one key difference.
Damien pushed his tongue between her lips and met the wet heat of her mouth as she sighed with pleasure.
He wanted to capture that sound, keep it, hold it with him to reflect on later, when the world tilted back on its axis and he was alone in his apartment, with his remote control and his rampant destructive thoughts.
Nails moved along his scalp as she tugged him closer, the deep, questing kiss kicking up his need a notch.
He pulled away so he could stand up, take her back into the room where it was private.
He wanted to take that dress off and explore her body all over again.
This time he was going to map her every inch like goddamn Lewis and Clark.
But Mandy had different plans. She was grasping at his fly, making desperate little jerks at the button, her teeth grazing along his shoulder with nips.
Fuck, yeah, that felt good.
But he wanted to take it slow. Explore. Soft, gentle loving to show her he appreciated and respected her. He took her hands.
She ripped them away. “If you want to stop me, you’ll have to tie me up.”
Oh, my God. There was an image. And he really needed to fuck her.
“I want in your trousers. Now.” She tore the button out of the hole so viciously it dangled from its thread, useless.
Okay, then. “That works for me.” He held his hands out in surrender, hoping she didn’t rack him when she tried to unzip over his hard-on. “Go for it, honey.”
He certainly liked a woman who knew what she wanted, even more so when it was him. “But don’t you want to go in the room before we become oceanside entertainment?”
Since her mouth was on his nipple, sucking lightly, and her hand was dragging his zipper down, he was thinking she wasn’t too concerned about getting caught. But what he was feeling, what they were sharing, hell, it was private.
And he was having trouble thinking, breathing, resisting her. Another second and she was going to be dipping her fingers right over his…
Damien groaned. Damn, she had paused with her hand right over his cock. He throbbed, swelling harder into the palm of her hand, and she gave an encouraging squeeze that had him reaching for the chair, her, anything to hold him up and to keep from falling over onto her and begging.
“I suppose we could go inside,” she murmured, letting go of him so suddenly and stepping away, he almost pitched backward over the railing into the bushes below.
He might have moaned louder than he intended.
But before he could even recover his balance, Mandy was passing through the door, her arms twisted behind her back like she had an itch in an unreachable spot.
Damien stepped toward her, his undone pants sliding down his hips, intent on scratching whatever itch she had. With his tongue.
But her arms settled back at her sides, and he realized she had been unzipping her dress. It fell to the floor with a soft thump, and Mandy glanced back at him over her naked shoulder.
Damien’s vision blurred, his tongue suddenly three sizes too big.
Damn, his grandmother was right. She had always told him if he stared at a naked woman, he’d go blind.
At twelve, he’d scoffed, sure she was just trying to scare him off girls.
But now he had to rethink things. Mandy was so astonishingly beautiful it seemed actually possible he could lose his sight if he looked too long.
“Thank you, God,” he said, voice hoarse, throat tight.
She turned, a wicked little smile on her face as she reached for his crotch. “Are you praying?”
“Yes, I think I am.” The swivel she’d done had been too swift, he hadn’t gotten a good view of the front of her, but he was compensated by her sidling right up to him with full skin-on-skin contact.
Her breasts crushed against him as she bent down a little and he shuddered, stealing up to cup the fullness of her flesh, test its weight, stroke over her nipple.
Her flesh was hot, her hair corkscrewing in the ever-present humidity, and she smelled so seductive, like chocolate and desire and coconut sunscreen.
“Oh, babe,” he said on a satisfied sigh, skimming his lips over her shoulder as she edged his pants down his thighs. “You don’t know how good this is for me.”
“Tell me.” Mandy reached into his boxer briefs and cupped his erection.
He sucked in his breath. “Very, very good. Squeeze it. Hard.”
Her hand jerked on him, and when she glanced up at him, her cheeks were pink.
“No? Sorry, do whatever you like.” Just don’t stop, holy hell. She was holding him lightly, almost absentmindedly.
He ground his teeth, part frustration and part excitement that he was going to learn all the things Mandy liked. He looked forward to finding all the ways to arouse her, all the hot spots he could stroke or kiss or suck until she was mindless, screaming his name.
But first she was going to make him scream. Her fingers brushed over him again, a nothing little touch of torture.
“I…” Mandy swallowed hard.
“Tell me what you want, sweetheart.” If she didn’t move her hand or do something with it, he was going to grab and grind it against him, and give away that he was losing control, letting his emotions and needs drive him.
She shook her head, wetting her bottom lip. Then she took a deep breath. “I have a sudden desperate desire to lay you on the bed and climb on you, and do, well, you know, to ...” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Ride you.”
His reaction was instanteous.
“Yee-haw, cowgirl.” Damien’s hand shot out, grabbing hers, and pressed them both against his erection, rocking a little to ease his suffering. “Hell fucking yeah. Do it.”
“But then I started thinking that I’ve never really been the sort who got into that, and it always makes me feel rather like I’m a tightrope walker being gawked at and liable to fall off at any given moment. And really, where do these intrusive thoughts come from? It’s shocking.”
What was shocking was that she could stand there forming complete sentences. He was sure he couldn’t even recite the alphabet anymore.
“Just do it,” he repeated, practically growling.
Their hands were stroking in tandem over him now, and he wasn’t sure who was creating the movement, but he wasn’t going to worry about details.
Mandy nodded. “I had just come to that same conclusion. This holiday is about sensation and freedom and going with instinct. What feels good. And you feel so good, I have to feel you under me.”
Damien exercised the extreme willpower he had learned in the last three years and yanked himself away from her. With one swift motion, he dropped his pants and boxer briefs and stepped toward the bed, groping for the condoms he’d left on the nightstand.
Mandy didn’t wait for him to lie down. She attacked him, hands everywhere, lips racing frantically, legs tripping up with his until he fell flat on his back. Good to see he wasn’t the only one who had utterly lost control of the situation.
He wasn’t thinking, wasn’t even sure he was conscious, afraid that this wasn’t real, yet at the same time steeped in the certainty that this was happening, it existed, and it was fabulous and powerful and the most amazing experience of his life.
Grabbing her waist so she didn’t tumble down onto him, Damien gazed up at her, trying to decide lips or breasts first to take with his mouth, when Mandy sat up, legs on either side of his.
And spread herself with her fingers, aligned herself with his cock, and dropped down onto it.
The girl didn’t mess around.
He’d always known she was efficient.
It was the hormones. It had to be. Mandy shuddered over Damien, afraid to move, shocked at her aggressive neediness, stunned at how swollen she felt, how her body clasped around his hardness and tingled.
Never had she experienced anything like this, a total surrender to anything but how her body felt, a desperate urgent need to take.
Damien thrust up into her, stretching her, and she gripped the bed sheets, swallowing hard. Looking down at him, his pale illusive blue eyes locked on her with agonized pleasure and aching vulnerability, she groaned.
It wasn’t pregnancy hormones—it was Damien. It was the way he looked at her, the way he wanted her, the way he needed her, that had her spreading her knees apart so she could take him in farther.
Normally she didn’t like to be on top—the ballet lessons Mother had forced upon her were useless for the coordination required to move up and down on a man and look sexy at the same time. She figured she usually looked more as if she was born without any sort of rhythm whatsoever.
But Damien was just going to have to get past it.
Mandy wiggled a little to brace herself better, leaned over and kissed Damien, and took a deep breath.
He looked amused, his hands tightening on her bottom. “Show me your stuff, cowgirl.”