Chapter 8 – Sara
The leather slipped from the banister with a vicious hiss, and I bolted.
I shouldn’t be doing this. I really shouldn’t be chasing him through the house. But…I knew him. This was my date from the ball. The one with the freckle mole on the shell of his left ear. I’d recognized that mark before I kissed the devil. He wasn’t a stranger.
He was a ghost from the past.
And my body was alive with the possibilities.
“Hey! Where do you think you’re going?” I demanded.
The leather belt snapped through the air. The metal tip clipped his backside with a delicious crack.
The specter turned. Slowly. His fingers tightened around the baseball cap, squishing it in his fist. There was enough light from the window that I could have made out his face, but he didn’t cant his head into the glow.
Heat shivered through me. Cavolo, he was magnificent. An Adonis in the flesh. I wet my lips and took a steadying breath.
I cleared my throat. “You followed me here. Broke into my cabin— How did you get past the chain? Wait. Not important! Where was I?”
Damn my squirrel brain! It was my secret weapon for writing, but it was really a mood killer and moment breaker.
I planted my hands on my hips. “You followed me here, got into the cabin, and read my rough draft.” Shit? Where was I going with that? Oh, who cared! “I don’t do this. Sleep around, I mean. Sex is for a serious relationship.”
And yet this enigma had given me the best orgasm of my life.
“But now you’ve started something.” I took a step forward. “And you’re just…leaving?”
This wasn’t fiction. We didn’t need pages and pages of tension coupled with subplots before our next encounter.
He was right here. Right now! Standing in front of me as I closed the distance.
I knew this man. He’d grown up next door, haunting every chapter of my childhood.
I’d recognized him at the ball and let him kiss me, so freaking excited that he actually wanted me after all this time.
And now he was here.
I wasn’t letting him go.
I reached out and spread my palms over his chest. Earlier, if I’d asked him to leave, he would have.
I wasn’t asking.
“Finish this,” I breathed. His breath stilted under my touch.
He shook his head as he crouched to pick up the belt. When he rose, he made to step back, but I fisted his shirt.
Damn him, he was back to not talking. I almost used his name.
I wanted to call him out, tell him that this was my personal fantasy come to life.
Not only had he tracked me down, but he’d been here these past few days.
The extra glasses of water I didn’t remember filling.
The sandwiches, waiting for me in the fridge. It was him.
Cam…. Heat pulsed between my legs.
“You’re just going to sit outside?” I dared him. “Watching over me until morning?”
He nodded once. Lifting his knuckle, his touch brushed down my cheek again.
“I know you’ve been looking out for me,” I whispered.
A short laugh huffed from his nostrils.
That was the confirmation I needed that I wasn’t going crazy.
Was it creepy he’d haunted the lake house?
To normal people, sure. But it was quite possibly the sweetest thing I’d ever heard outside a book.
I absolutely should not make a move. A sane person would tell him to get packing. But I zeroed in on his lips.
I wet mine again. “Okay, don’t kill me then.”
Reaching to the back of his head, I tugged his neck until my lips reached his. The contact was electric.
He was stiff against me, holding himself back.
I slid my tongue against the seam of his mouth. I pushed for entrance.
With a shudder, he caved.
The kiss was hungry. Hard. Carnal. Our hot breath plumed between us as our tongues clashed.
I whimpered against his mouth, crushing myself to his body.
He lifted me in one smooth sweep. Somewhere beside us, the belt clunked against the floor.
My glasses tumbled off next. I clamped my thighs around his waist, not seeing where we went.
I was too busy kissing him as if my life depended on it.
He’s here.
He held me tightly.
I pushed my hands through his hair. The short strands pricked my fingers. A moment later, the world tilted, and then my back hit something soft. I barely registered the bed beneath me, because his hard frame pressed against mine.
I was trapped.
This was better than being bound to the banister—but that had been good too!
I rocked against him, rubbing myself against the thick bulge between his legs. With a groan, he broke the kiss. His mouth carved a path down my throat, tongue laving my pulse, until his teeth scored my collarbone.
“Mine.” The possessive word was rough against my skin.
I tugged his shirt, pulling it over his head.
He moved slightly to let it slip free, and then he was on me again.
He tore the straps of my camisole, shoving the material down so that my breasts spilled free.
He cupped the right in his hand, thumb stroking the stiff nipple, while his mouth closed over the left.
The contact made me arch off the bed with a cry.
I writhed against him. My body was desperate.
I could be his. If there was more of this, I would be! Come to think of it, I probably didn’t have a choice in the matter. Which, in this moment, seemed pretty damn perfect.
He sucked hard. His teeth sank into the tender flesh and the flat of his tongue stroked my aching nipple, all while his thumb and finger worked the other breast.
Crap…I was going to come again. Just from his touch and dry humping his body.
But that wasn’t good enough.
I reached between us, fumbling for the button and zipper.
His growl of warning didn’t stop me.
I was desperate to feel the velvet of his shaft.
The inner muscles of my pussy needed to clench around him more than I needed to breathe!
While there was something flickering in the back of my mind, some warning or caution about sex safety, my squirrel brain was finally silent.
I was focused on having him. Right the hell now!
Tearing away, he rose above me. His touch skimmed my naked chest, catching the material of my top and pulling it down my waist where he caught my sleeper shorts and panties. They all came off in a vicious tug. I reached for his jeans, but he captured my wrists.
Bringing them to his mouth, he bit the inside of the right, catching my pulse between his lips.
“Angel,” he groaned.
“Please!” I whimpered. Couldn’t he see that I was going to explode if he didn’t get inside me?
He must have sensed it, because he released me.
I tore at his jeans, yanking them down. A rough chuckle escaped his lips, and he moved his body to help me.
Since I was basically blind without my glasses, and the shadowy room was no help, his cock was blurred.
Only the subtle swing of it, heavy and full between his thighs, was visible. Which was a damn shame.
Next time, I wouldn’t lose my glasses. I needed a proper look.
He pressed against my entrance, circling the thick head against my heat. “This binds you to me, angel.”
Fine. Great! I wasn’t going to pause to read the fine print. I was ready to make a deal with this devil. Consequences be damned.
My response was a guttural rasp. “Please! I need you.”
A roar choked in his throat, and he sank into me. One hard thrust filled me.
Air left my lungs in a strangled cry. I scrambled to grasp his shoulders, needing the anchor. He stayed still, braced above me, as I adjusted to the invasion. The stretch of my muscles was nearly painful. I was so freaking full!
Taking a deep breath, I squeezed his shaft. The feel of my inner muscles made the monster shudder. He pulled back, and then, with a flex of his hips, thrust deep.
Time blurred after that.
The devil was relentless.
My nails scored his back as I clung for dear life. I wrapped my legs around the back of his thighs, meeting his hard, driving thrusts.
He was slick with heat. I felt like I was burning from the inside out. The noises between us were obscene, but there was no room for embarrassment in the dark.
“I’m going to need you to come now, angel.”
As he spoke, he shifted his weight and clasped my nipple in his mouth. The warmth…the pressure! It was too much. I dropped my head against the bed, back arching violently, and cried out.
He grasped my right leg, hitching it higher. He continued to suck my breast, movements ragged. The pulse of my muscles around his shaft sent him into a spiral. His body jerked. His teeth sank into the soft mound of my flesh! Gagged, he strangled a groan.
And then, his body went still.
Hot ropes of cum shot inside me. I felt his cock pulse as he emptied himself.
Reality shifted after that. I was numb, floating on a sea of contentment.
The pleasure pulled at my muscles, and I relaxed into the duvet.
Somewhere, in the distance, the man who’d stalked me to the lake moved off me.
It was terribly cold. But I was rolled to my side.
My head was lifted, and a pillow tucked under it.
Warmth settled around me as I was tucked into the duvet that wrapped over me.
“Stay,” I mumbled.
Hot breath fanned my ear. “Sleep now. I’ve got you.”
I wriggled against the hard mass at my back and drifted into the realm of sleep as Camillo Ravello held me tight.
***
When I woke, daylight streamed through the window. I sat up quickly but groaned. Muscles I hadn’t used in ages protested the sudden movement. Hell, my body had never been taken so roughly. I skimmed my hands over my naked flesh, looking for bruises.
There were none.
Huh?
I could have sworn I had wicked hot sex with a monster. But there wasn’t even evidence on the duvet, and the place between my legs was clean.
“Oh, dio!” I gasped.
My squirrel brain leapt about, calculating what had happened. Unprotected sex. With a stranger. In the middle of the night. After he broke in.
“He’s not a stranger,” I muttered to myself. I recognized him at the ball. Cam had a dark freckle mole on his left earlobe, which I hadn’t seen until he bent to kiss me and that side of his face tipped into the light. “He’s Cam. And he was interested enough to escort me to the ball.”
And kiss me senseless.
And follow me to the cabin.
That line of reasoning didn’t lull the logical side of my brain.
“I don’t know if he was even here last night.”
It had been years since I sleepwalked. Dreams were sometimes so vivid that I mistook them for reality. And since I couldn’t find any physical evidence, I was inclined to think I wasn’t crazy enough to have mind-blowing sex with the masked man.
Not that he’d worn a mask last night.
I wanted Cam. Badly enough that I could have made the whole thing up.
Once I used the bathroom and slipped into a robe, I trotted downstairs. My glasses had been on the nightstand where I usually kept them. So that piece of evidence didn’t line up with the dream. I distinctly remembered them falling on the living room rug.
I was about to dismiss the whole event as a crazy, wine-induced fantasy, when I pulled up short in the kitchen.
The black roses were real enough.
I blinked hard, willing them away.
But there they were.
And I knew without a shadow of a doubt who’d left them.
“Well, if he wants to visit me without revealing himself, I won’t call him out,” I said lamely. There was no point “unmasking” him. I was curious to see where this thing went, because…I knew it was far from over.