His hold on her wrists loosened as he focused on the movement of his other hand, of his thumb, his mouth utterly ruthless. Oh, thank God, he was going to let her come.
He was going—
She was—
The waves were—
She grabbed him hard as they crashed in on her, managing three final coherent words. “Damien. Fuck me.”
And then her body jerked, taking her past thought or speech, into this realm of moaning, whimpering pleasure. Which he rode and rode. He kept her coming, the shocks of it running through her over and over, almost like a punishment, until she truly couldn’t bear it anymore and twisted half off the trunk to knock his hand away. He pulled her back, coaxing one last shudder out of her. Until she curled around his hand, pressing it against her and tightening her thighs around it, panting and still shaking with aftershocks, slowly falling, falling, falling back.
To the grain of a tree’s bark under her skin. To the dark face of a man who looked ready to bite her.
Her muscles all felt limp as she turned into him, trying with weak, soft holds to grab for him, to pull herself into him. She twined around his hard, braced body.
He pulled her into him and held her still, but he didn’t bring his thumb back to her over-sensitized sex, letting her shuddering subside at last, her body slick with sweat, until she was limp and exhausted.
Then he picked her up. “My turn.”
Chapter 17
Damien knew he was a bastard. Scores of people had told him so. But he’d never gloried in it quite so much as right then, with Jess’s pliant, sweat-gleaming body in his hands, yielding to his every command.
He’d reduced her to this with that first extended orgasm, and the memory of her shuddering, helpless body filled him with a plundering satisfaction. Now she wanted nothing more from him, she only wanted to give. And he kept her in this dazed, docile arousal, stroking breasts and back and thighs gently as he pulled her astride him on the tree trunk.
He took a hard, luxurious grip on her bottom and thrust her down on him, just exactly as hard as he wanted to so he could feel that first fierce plunge of his dick—his cock, damn her dirty, dirty mouth—into her body. Merde. That felt so good. So glorious. So victorious. He wanted it to last for fucking ever, and he knew it wouldn’t. He was too damn aroused. It might last for five seconds.
But he thrust her down on him hard again, pulled her up, pulled her back down, grinding her hips against his, angling his body as deep up into her as he could. Her lips were puffy and parted, her hair hanging all about her face, her breasts full and still begging for more attention, but he couldn’t give them more attention and keep this thrust of her body onto his, and damn but he wanted the thrust. He caught her mouth with his, kissing her, biting at her lips, using his tongue like he would use his dick. You said you wanted to fuck my mouth. I wonder if your cock tastes good.
Oh, hot hell yeah that—her mouth—her on her knees as he gripped her hair as he—oh hell yes and he—
He pulled her off him. “Kneel down.” His voice must have sounded like something dragged out of hell.
She shivered all over, this visible shudder of her body, the moisture gleaming down her thighs, her eyes huge.
“Here.” He picked her up and carried her back to the tiny beach. “On the sand.” She’d asked for this. It was her fault, not his. A woman couldn’t talk like that to a man and expect him to keep any shred of decency in his body.
She stared up at him, entirely naked but for the panties, which she was still wearing because he had only shoved them to the side before. And then, oh God, God, she closed her eyes and tilted her head back, her lips parted.
Fuck. Hell.
What a bastard. What a fucking bastard he was. She was his sweet wish. She was his romantic promise. And arousal blinded him, so that his hands shook as he wrapped both fists in her hair so that she couldn’t yank her head away and guided his cock between her lips.
She gasped. He knew immediately that she’d never done it, and it filled him with this savage triumph, like a ravaging soldier. God, he could be. He could be a Roman soldier taking his tribute from some roadside woman who needed his money, only, only—
She did something with her tongue. Clumsy and elusive. She was trying to figure out how to do it. His brain fused. His mind could hold nothing, nothing but the need to push his cock deeper into her mouth, to flex his hands in her hair and hold her for it.
“Good.” He panted, his breath seeming to fill his body from his heart to his dick, shattering and hard. “That’s right, sweetheart. Just…easy. Just let me…” He pushed deeper into her… “Just…you don’t have to do anything, just relax your—oh, God, can you suck? Just a little? Please?”
She brought her hands up to cup his balls and circle around the base of his penis, like she needed something to hold onto, and oh God she tried. A careful, sucking pressure as he pulled himself back. His brain seared.
He literally had no thoughts at all. Just this flame-streaked blackness, and her willingness, and clumsiness, and still trying, and he thrust slowly back into her as deep as she could let him go before her eyes widened in panic, and out, and—shit.
He yanked out of her mouth just in time, twisting away from her, as he shuddered and shuddered again in one hot, glorious blindness of pleasure.
***
Shame attacked within minutes. He couldn’t look at her as he came back from washing in the stream, and when he did…oh, fuck. She was naked except for panties on the sand, her arms wrapped around her knees, and a couple of pink marks from the bark on her back.
“Here,” he said roughly, spreading out his T-shirt. “Sit on this. You’ll get sand—” in uncomfortable places.
“I might mess it up,” she said of the T-shirt, her flush deepening. She ducked her head. She might—oh.
Oh, yeah. Because she was so wet between her legs.
And some of his shame retreated before a thick, sticky, greedy pride. That wet was all him.
He picked her up and set her on the T-shirt. Damn it, her back. His fingers grazed over the pink traces the bark had left where it had rubbed her skin. He didn’t know what to do about them. He’d rubbed and scraped his skin much more as a child climbing trees and never thought twice about it—no one in the world, not even his mother, would ever have even noticed—and yet those tiny pink marks still made him feel an utter bastard.
So finally he bent and kissed the uppermost one, on her shoulder blade. And then he just knelt there, with his forehead against her nape. A much safer position to be than facing her.
Bordel de…he had fucked her mouth. Damn it. All that effort in New York, to be her prince, all the beauty of being thought a prince. And he’d just put his dick in her mouth.
He’d just been as crude as it was possible to be.
(And his brain sparked awake with a few cruder things he could do to her. Shut the hell up, he told it.
But what if she likes those, too? his brain taunted. Maybe that wasn’t his brain. Maybe his dick had gained sentience. Just revolted against its overlord and taken control, like it had tried to do when he was thirteen.)
“I’m sorry,” he said, and it was an absolute lie. He wasn’t sorry. He was just ashamed. Give him a half hour and another proof of her low opinion of him to flick his temper, and he might do it again. (Deep in his body, greed re-awoke, intrigued at the possibility of a repeat. Or maybe one of those other raw visions of sex…)
Jess ducked her head into her arms, but not before he saw how deep her blush was. “Quit apologizing,” she said, muffled. “You’re kind of Machiavellian in your apologies.”
He sat back, raising his eyebrows a little. That didn’t sound angry. It sounded as if…she had a very good understanding of his character.
Damn it. And it was his own damn fault, too.
He shifted to sit beside her, bracing his hand behind her back. “I shouldn’t have—” He broke off, gesturing rather helplessly toward his nether regions.
/>
“You’re sorry for that?” She twisted her head to rest her cheek on her arms and raise her eyebrows at him, still blushing but entirely willing to challenge through a blush. “I thought most men would rather have a blow job than go to heaven.”
Okay, now she was making him sound…ordinary. Like most men.
He lay back on the sand and put an arm over his forehead, frowning in the shelter of it up at the fig tree. Which gloated in a supremely phallic manner just above him. The whole damn bush was dangling testicles at him.
And if he bit into any of that brown fruit he’d find flesh that reminded him very much of…he slid a glance sideways at Jess. His gaze lingered at the curve of her butt and thigh, which currently shielded from view that lush pink flesh. He suddenly could imagine a very good way of making up for his little finale there with his damn dick.
And there was that tree trunk.
And she could just lie back down, and he would push open her thighs, and he wouldn’t bite but…
“Ha,” she said. “You’re smiling. See? You did like it.”
“Shut up.” He shifted his arm to hide his smile. And then realizing what he’d just said, “Sorry.”
She made a little noise that sounded inexplicably like laughter, given that there was no way she could find this situation funny. “I told you. No more apologies from you. I don’t trust them.”
“Did you?” he said suddenly. “Like it?”
Color flooded his face at such a stupid question. As if she could like having his—but she was blushing, too. This deep pink that rose right to her hairline. She turned her head away.
Merde, that made his dick start to stir. Behave, he told it. Too soon. But he liked that hint of soiled innocence, he liked being the source of all her dirtiness, the man who had driven her to it. He’d fallen fast and hard from that man who had loved being her prince, hadn’t he?
Well, said his shameless, egotistical dick. You did promise an afternoon of orgasms. Wouldn’t want that to be just a boast.
“Are you still mad?” she asked.
His eyebrows drew sharply together. “Did you—are you—was that some kind of appeasement gesture? You didn’t want to, but you let me, because—” He sat up, glaring at her.
Her stare suggested he was a raving lunatic. “You flatter yourself,” she said dryly. “If you think your sulks are worth my body.”
Okay, well that…kind of put things in perspective. In a very reassuring perspective. He managed to lift an eyebrow. “Sulks?”
She gave a little snort of laughter. It was the most delightful sound he had heard in at least six months. A laugh. At him. “You don’t realize you sulk?”
He narrowed his eyes at her.
She suddenly laughed out loud.
It was the most incredible thing. Jess, whom he’d known in various moods of romantic wistfulness and cynical flippancy and deep grief, laughed as if she was just happy. Happy and alive, with him. Like he was an essential element in that happiness.
Damn, this little fig tree cave was beautiful. He might just stay here the rest of his life. Eating figs and drinking stream water and having lots of sex. Maybe he could sex his way back to the beginning, to that dream on a terrace again. And this time make it come true.
“I most definitely do not sulk.” He pushed her back on the sand, bracing himself above her on both hands. “Small, powerless boys sulk. Men, we do something ruthless when we don’t get our way.”
His gaze caught on her lips. Those lips that had closed around his…ruthlessness and…he kissed her, before he even realized he was going to, kissed her long and deep and sweet, and then kept kissing her, unable to stop telling that mouth thank you. You are beautiful. I love your shape, your texture, the way you close around me right this second and kiss me back…
Oh, yeah, let’s just keep kissing.
He rolled them over, to spare her from the sand, but it was too late, and grains of sand fell from her body onto his. He ran his hands down her back, brushing more sand away as he smiled up at her. Her light brown hair fell in those loose waves and curls down around her face, as if reaching for him. She flushed a little—was it the things that touched closest to her heart that made her shy?—and lowered her head to hide her face under his chin. But then she kissed his collarbone.
He smiled, arms closing around her as he gazed up at those figs.
If he hadn’t promised to force her to two more orgasms as revenge earlier, he might have just dozed off there, contented. But…his hand curled lazily over her bottom, which he still had not entirely bared to him. He didn’t believe in empty threats. A man lost all credibility that way.
And he wanted her to believe him.
Oh, he definitely wanted her to believe in his ability to give her all the orgasms a woman could possibly stand. He smiled and slid his hand under her panties to trail his fingers down that sensitive line between her butt cheeks until he just barely brushed the open lushness of her sex. She jerked a little. Oh, she was still highly sensitized there, wasn’t she? It wouldn’t take much at all. In fact, she would need just this slow, gentle, lazy stroking, something she could stand, a tender orgasm that lapped softly through her. A long, slow, easy orgasm.
He might be able to give it to her here. Turn her over, so that her back was against his chest, hold her firm with one arm, and just gently, gently stroke her, ignoring protests, until she grew lax, until she came. But he wanted to get his own back.
So he lifted her and carried her to that tree trunk.
Her eyes came open as her butt touched its trunk and then widened in alarm. “Damien—”
“It’s so cute how you say my name. As if I’m going to listen to it. I warned you, didn’t I? This afternoon is mine now. You don’t get to take it back.”
She stared at him, eyes very wide.
He smiled. “Shh. You’re feeling sleepy, aren’t you?”
“I was.”
“Just lie back.” He pushed her gently back onto it.
God, he liked that view. He pushed her legs apart. Oh, yeah. Better and better. He leaned forward and blew a long slow breath against her still-exposed clit. She jerked, and his mean streak woke up alive and hungry. Oh, yes, he liked the idea of doing whatever he wanted to her. And of making her like it.
“Shhhhh.” He leaned forward and touched her very lightly, teasingly with his tongue.
She jerked, her thighs trying to clamp around his shoulders. He pushed them firmly back. “There you go, chérie. You can be as sleepy and dreamy as you want. I’ll take care of this one.”
“Damien—” Wondering and nervous and, yes, a little dreamy. What a beautiful mix of emotions. Especially when he caused them.
“Relax, chérie. I’m just playing down here. I’ve got all the time in the world.”
And he took it, playing with her with fingers and tongue and lips, this slow, long, luxurious build as she moaned and shivered and gradually, oh so gradually, started to come, in long, shallow waves, like the kind that rolled up a flat beach that stretched out forever, gentle, not deep, but taking forever to leave. He made sure they took a long time to leave. Coaxing her to just one more ripple, and just one more, and just one more.
Until finally, finally, they all subsided away. And she covered her face with her hands and actually started to cry.
Oh, that—that hadn’t been his intention. Torment, yes, and an exercise of his power, but not one that hurt.
He pulled her into his arms. “Shh. Shh. Okay?”
She pushed his shoulder, which he recognized as a much gentler version of his cousins’ thumps of half-reproach. But she curled into him, burying her face in his shoulder. Not pushing him away, but finding refuge in him. Oh. These were different tears. Not grief or pain, but more like some women at a wedding, maybe? Just too much emotion.
He petted her, loving exactly how limp she was in his arms, as if all her will had abandoned her. And he really was a bastard, because even the way she rubbed her wet face into his
shoulder made his own arousal press at him more and more insistently. He could control it, of course. But God, he didn’t want to.
He stood with her in his arms. “Do you think you’d mind me taking another turn, too?”
She curled into his body and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. “Oh, God, you can do whatever you want. I think you’ve just made my body utterly yours.”
He grinned, his arms tightening around her like his own personal pirate booty. Yes. He definitely liked the sound of that.
Chapter 18
“I’m sorry about your back.” Damien’s fingers brushed the naked curve of it, gentle over what must be scratches from the bark. His voice was deep and quiet.
Jess wrapped her arms around her knees, still naked except for panties, back on his T-shirt on the sand. Sore, tired, satiated, not at all interested in making that hike back to his car. “There you go again. Apologizing.”
And you never apologize to me at all. But she had. Were they at peace now? Post-catharsis?
He sat beside her and pressed a kiss to a sting on her shoulder blade. “Your skin has marks on it from that bark. I should have made you wear a shirt for the second time.”
A vision of herself as she must have looked to him, spread over that tree trunk. Adding a T-shirt to her upper body in the vision only made her sex look ten times as exposed. She flushed from her toes to her forehead again as she thought about it.
“It can’t be that bad.” She could only feel the brush of his fingers. They touched her left shoulder blade, then drifted to a couple of other spots on her back, the brush of those calluses making pleasure shiver through her like a sleepy smile. “I liked it,” she said. “The texture. I liked all the textures.”
She’d never felt so much texture in her life. So many senses, all at once.
Damien looked still undecided, guilty.
She shook her head a little. “You’re just coasting on that reputation for meanness, aren’t you?”
A Wish Upon Jasmine Page 19
