CHAPTER 16
Starlit Tryst
Gabriela
Hunter didn’t need to be told twice.
Swimming with thick lust, his half-mast eyes closed right before his mouth latched onto mine with the hottest groan ever.
The sound of nature echoed around us—the whistling wind, the rustling trees, the volatile waves—as we kissed with an aggressive quality stemming from weeks’ worth of pent-up sexual frustration.
His tantalizing cologne and taste kept my senses company like a newly acclimated lover.
My fingers left his stubbled cheeks and delved into his long hair, removing the band holding it together so I could knuckle fistfuls of his black strands.
I held him to me as we made out hungrily. The moans that left me when his tongue twined with mine should have embarrassed me, but I was far too turned on to care.
Hunter’s big palms travelled south to grip my writhing hips, helping me grind against him, rewarding me with the kind of auditory experience filled with delicious pleas and groans that I would remember the next time I was alone and naked in my bed, playing with myself to the thought of him.
Hunter emitted a soft, hoarse noise when I tugged his bottom lip between my teeth before we went back to kissing like the world around us was ending.
I seemed to affect this man on a cellular level, the same way he seemed to affect me like no one in my past ever had. I practically vibrated the second he entered my orbit, helplessly drawn to him.
He was my moon and I was his tides.
This night was magical and our kisses cathartic, erasing all the lines I drew around me like a protective circle. My walls down and my emotions bare for him.
If Hunter looked into my eyes right now, he’d see inside my soul.
He’d see everything that I wanted and everything that stopped me from going all the way with him. And yet, against my better judgement, here I was, allowing myself to be gathered in the cradle of his strong arms like I was the cynosure of his world.
“Gabriela.” He panted ever so lightly when we pulled away to breathe, our mouths joined by a ribbon of saliva. The tip of his tongue flicked over the tiny gem on my canine and I gasped, my own breathing laboured. “Is a kiss all you want?”
I couldn’t even lie if I wanted to. “No, I want…more.”
“Be specific.”
He was going to make me spell it out.
Damn me if I didn’t love it when he got demanding.
“I want you to touch me.” My arms tightened their hold around his shoulders as I ground our cores together to make him understand what I meant. The gesture elicited a rough grunt from his throat. “Please. Even if it’s only for tonight.”
The hand holding and stolen glances weren’t enough to tide me over until the next sunrise. I needed this—him—so badly.
If Hunter was bothered by the fact that I said only for tonight, he didn’t comment on it. Though the slight narrowing of his eyes spoke volumes. My heart and soul were no longer a currency I bartered with, unfortunately.
My body was the only thing I was willing to give.
If Hunter wanted it, he could have it.
Against my lips, he murmured, “Why, baby?”
God, the word baby in his deep, husky voice was so perfect. I could listen to it on an endless loop. That and sweetheart and doll and every other term of endearment he bestowed upon me.
“You know why,” I mumbled, my face flushed with warmth.
He’d already given me so much tonight with the picturesque date, plucked straight from my dreams. The picnic, the presents, the stars.
It was everything to me. I’d cherish this night even when I was old and grey, remembering that there was someone, once in my life, who’d given me something so monumental.
This beautiful man had treated me so kindly and I was still processing the magnitude of this action. I would probably continue to do so for days to come.
Ending the night by giving in to this insane attraction that had been budding since the moment on the terrace many moons ago would be the cherry on top of the cake.
And maybe it was selfish of me to ask for a little bit more, but I couldn’t help it.
Especially when I knew Hunter was on the same page as me. I could feel the evidence of his growing arousal between the juncture of my thighs. It was thick, hard, and from what I felt, so fucking big.
He wanted this just as bad as I did.
“Tell me.” He dropped pecks along my jawline until he reached the skin behind my ear, where the cursive R tattoo for my queen moniker was inked. He kissed it and whispered in my ear, “I want to hear you say it, Gabriela.”
I was unravelling at the ends like a loose ribbon. I wanted him. I needed him. There was no more lying, no more hiding. He had to know the truth.
“Because”—I choked on a moan when he bit the skin at the underside of my jaw and tilted my head back, granting him access to my neck so he could continue showering me with his intoxicating kisses—“when I’m lying in my sheets at night, it’s you I think about as I touch myself.
” He froze and I grasped his face, letting him see the sincerity in my expression.
“And I always come so hard, Hunter.” I brushed his lips with mine. “Every. Single. Time.”
The atmosphere shifted with something utterly carnal.
I had a split second to witness the darkening in Hunter’s eyes and the clenching of his jaw before he flipped us over in a smooth movement. I landed on my back and he hovered on top of me, pinning me under the weight of his muscles.
“Fuck, baby,” he growled, drinking my gasp with a hot kiss. “You want to hear a secret?”
I wanted to hear all his secrets. “Y-yes.”
His stubble tickled my cheek as he dragged his lips across my skin before positioning them at my ear to avow, “I do the same every night, fucking myself to your memory before falling asleep and dreaming of you.”
My head spun with the imagery of Hunter’s naked, mouth-watering body stretched in his bed, the sheets bunched around his waist, his cock wrapped in his fist as he fucked himself earnestly.
I yanked on his hair until his face rose above mine once more, his barrel chest bowing with his inhales and exhales.
“Show me,” I said. “I want to see.”
The glow from the citronella candles eliminated some of the shadows on his face, and his eyes widened at my request. A feral quality overtook his features right before he kissed me hard like a man who’d reached the end of his rope.
His deep groans and my soft moans melted together in a chorus that rivalled the song of the crashing waves beyond us.
I felt like I was drowning underwater with only Hunter as my lifeline.
I held him tight, my legs wrapped around his waist and my heels crossing over his back.
His hands twisted in my hair as he sipped from my mouth greedily, his hips rocking between mine in a motion that made me see stars behind my closed lids, my very own constellation ignited by this extraordinary man.
My body was on fire and my clit throbbed, every thrust of his bulge against my thong-covered pussy pushing me to a new precipice. My restless fingers dove for the buttons of his shirt, undoing them in record time.
Hunter pushed away enough to allow me to rip his black dress shirt down his arms, his muscles flexing with the motion. When he sat back on his knees, the candles momentarily flickered as a light breeze sailed past before they settled into their full flame and allowed me to stare my fill.
I raised myself on my elbows and blinked a few times, my jaw falling slack.
Oh. My. God.
Tan skin stretched across thick and defined muscles formed from years of athletic training.
That silver barbell nipple piercing was the hottest thing I’d ever seen.
It was begging to be licked and sucked by yours truly.
My eyes continued tracing the creases of his six-pack, ignoring the urge to map the indentations with my tongue before honing in on his brawny arms. Specifically the left one, tatted with the realistic-looking snake wrapping from his wrist all the way to his broad shoulder.
It was so vivid, beautiful, and otherworldly.
And then my eyes strayed down to the prominent V of his hip bones, remembering he mentioned having a thigh tat.
My heart pounded at the beginning peeks of dark ink disappearing into his low-slung pants.
I had to physically hold back from undoing his button and zipper to unveil the rest…
and finally have my first look at his cock too, which I had no doubt was just as wonderful as the rest of him.
With his desire-fueled eyes fanned by long lashes, his black hair falling down to his shoulders in thick waves, and his herculean body kneeling before me, he oozed sheer animal magnetism and appeared larger than life.
Like a sex god crafted straight from my romantic tales, he overshadowed everything in our surroundings until all I saw was him.
Hunter was a masterpiece.
Never in my life had I come across a man of this calibre, his physicality only a shard composing his overall magnificence. Though I’d only been acquainted with small parts of it, I knew it was his heart that made him all the more beautiful to me.
“Like what you see?” he murmured after a few seconds of me ogling him.
I sighed and mapped my hands over his chest, relishing the shiver coursing through his frame. “Yes. You’re the most perfect thing to ever exist, Hunter.”
“No.” He grabbed my hands with both of his and brought my knuckles to his lips for a kiss filled with gratitude and longing. “You are the most perfect thing to ever exist.”
It was a shame I’d lived two whole decades before stumbling across a man who was a combination of genuinely sweet, thoroughly mindful, and filthy hot.
Now I had this need to wrap Hunter up in my arms and never let him go…
And it sucked because he wasn’t mine to begin with.
Still, I pretended he was for tonight and bantered back, “Guess we’ll just have to agree that we’re both perfect and call it a truce, huh? ”