Tempted (Redemption Harbor Book 1)

by Brandi Evans

  Seth took immediate advantage of the situation and captured her lips with his. He slipped his tongue leisurely inside her mouth, as if he had all eternity to explore her and was determined to take every second of that eternity. He savored her like she was the first woman he’d ever kissed, and he wanted to enjoy and elongate every sensation.

  Like it had on the front porch, heat radiated off him in waves. He was physically hot to the touch, a sexual nuclear reactor, and she was in grave danger of the fallout. With every nanosecond his bare skin touched hers, her intoxication grew, and she never made good decisions when she was drunk—but good decisions were laters problem.

  Burying her fingers in his hair, she stopped thinking and just rode on the sensations.

  “I love the way you smell,” he whispered into her mouth, sliding his hands up and over her breasts as he reached for her jacket’s zipper—and tugged. “Vanilla honeysuckle. It’s fucking intoxicating, and I can’t think straight.”

  Her traitorous zipper surrendered, inch by inch, until he was free to slide his hands inside her coat. He hooked an arm around her waist as his opposite hand eased aside the low-dipping “V” of her dress and exposed a naked breast to the cold air. And to his hot gaze. Her nipple hardened instantly, although she wasn’t sure if the cold or anticipation was the real culprit.

  “We can’t do this here, Seth. My family—oh God.”

  He traced his thumb over the erect nipple and derailed rational thought. She sucked in a breath and bit down on her bottom lip as hundreds of electric pinpricks shot from the peak. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t stop him as he leaned in and laid his scratchy cheek against her breast.

  “I love the feel of your skin,” he murmured. “So soft. So pliant.”

  His breath filtered over her nipple. His mouth was so close to the bud that if she shifted just the slightest bit, if she tightened her fingers in his hair and turned toward him, his mouth would be on her—but she couldn’t. Not like this.

  “Seth, we can’t do this here.”

  He teased just the tip of his tongue over her nipple, too much and not nearly enough. “Yes, we most certainly can, and we most certainly will.”

  He clamped his lips onto her nipple and drew her deep into his mouth.

  Oh sweet, beautiful fuck.

  He sucked her as if starving for something only her body could provide, and damn if she didn’t want to give him everything. All of her body. All of her heart. Just all. And it made no damn sense. She didn’t even know him, and yet, she couldn’t have stopped the intense connection between them even if she wanted to.

  And she didn’t want to.

  He slipped his hand below the hem of her dress and, starting at the inside of her knee, teased upward. He glided fingertips over her skin with spiderweb softness. Heat shot up her leg and straight into her pussy, flooding her body with needs and wants too powerful to quench, but she had to quench them. Her family was—

  But rational thought was taking a backseat to lust, and she pushed her legs as wide as possible, giving Seth the access she knew he wanted. And shit, shit, shit! The man didn’t hesitate.

  He cupped her panty-covered sex. “Heaven, Lyn, you’re so fucking wet. I need…can’t wait.”

  With jerky movements, as if he were losing control even faster than she, he forced his other hand up her skirt and ripped away her favorite barely-there thong, and then, his fingers were on her, in her. He eased apart her folds, smeared her juices along the length of her pussy in slow, thorough swirls, stopping only to give special attention to the super-swollen nub at the apex of her slit.

  She jumped, her hips moving instinctually against his hand, seeking more contact. She planted both hands on the railing to keep from falling. Pleasure was surging like a riptide, and if she wasn’t careful, she’d be pulled under.

  “So wet,” he mumbled into her mouth, his tongue as explorative as his probing fingers.

  Before she could so much as moan an agreement, his lips recaptured hers, and he drank in her cries of pleasure. She’d never felt so much so fast, but this was only the beginning. She wasn’t in free-fall yet, but she was close.

  The first eddies of her climax swirled in her womb, and heat rose from where his fingers fucked her, rising higher, burning hotter, coiling her tighter until she was hovering at near breaking point. Her toes were curling, her fingers clamping around the railing.

  Like a blowtorch to a rain-starved wheat field, she went up in flames.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” She shouted the words into his mouth, and he devoured them.

  When the climax finally ebbed, air huffed in and out of her lungs as she fought to regain control. Her too many months without sex acted like a powerful accelerant to the sensations Seth’s experienced hands created. Strike that, not experienced—incredible hands.

  The sound of a clasp unbuckling had her wrenching open her eyes. Seth had his belt undone, and he was working on his pants. She reached out to help him speed the process along just as a high-pitched scream cut through the night.

  Three

  Seth had never been so thankful for a catastrophe in his life.

  If Traci’s little dog hadn’t made a run for it and sent the residence into a panic, he was certain—absolutely, positively, without-a-doubt certain—he would have fucked Lyndi right there on the deck. In her parents’ backyard. He’d been so caught up in the pure physicality of sensations that he’d lost the ability to think straight.

  Her scent, her skin, her purrs of pleasure. The hot, wet heat of her pussy spasming around his fingers. The way her climax had radiated into him and filled him with a rapture he’d never known. But all of it paled to the avalanche of sensation he’d felt when she’d touched him.

  Just touched.

  From the moment she’d pressed her hand to his cheek on the front porch, he’d been damned. So yeah, he was super-thankful for Jo-Jo’s escape.

  Now, everyone except super-pregnant Traci was pounding the cobblestone on puppy patrol. Maybe, if he were lucky, he’d be able to regain some of his teetering control.

  He looked to Heaven. For longer than he could remember now, he’d devoted himself to his goal of returning home. There was no deviation. Tonight, however, being with Lyndi and her family, he’d forgotten about his quest and how much this one night could cost him. Showing himself to a single human, let alone an entire family, could sabotage everything he’d worked toward. If anyone ever found out, he would literally be damned.

  Again.

  And he doubted there would be a reprieve for a transgression so heinous. Angels—Archangels, Seraphs, Guardians, even the Fallen—were forbidden to reveal themselves unless instructed otherwise by the Divine. But when he pictured Lyndi, her face flushed on the railing beside the ocean, he couldn’t regret the choice that had brought him there.

  Yet anyway.

  He glanced at Lyndi as she walked beside him. Romantic relationships between angels were different than those between humans—less physical and more emotional. More like communing rather than raw, sweaty bodies locked together, an act he knew but didn’t know.

  What would it feel like to lose himself in Lyndi’s softness, in the slight vanilla and honeysuckle scent of her body as he sank balls-deep into—

  Heaven, what was wrong with him? If he kept having thoughts like this, his cock would take control, just like it had on the deck. He was a cart rolling downhill and nothing short of his sheer destruction could stop him now. He should be stronger than this. But how strong could he truly be if a single, incredible woman could bring him to his knees?

  Again.

  Lyndi turned to him, her voice hesitant. “What happened earlier on the deck…that wasn’t part of some insidious plan to make my family think—”

  “No,” he said, realizing what she was asking. “My actions weren’t some ploy to assure your family we were an actual couple. None of it, Lyn. I mean…I didn’t expect for it to happen, but I don’t regret it either.”

&nb
sp; She stopped suddenly and turned fully toward him. The overhead streetlight illuminated the seriousness in the blue of her eyes. “You’re gonna break my heart, aren’t you, Seth Jones?”

  Her directness stabbed him in the chest. He didn’t want to break her heart but how could he not? He wasn’t even human.

  “I don’t want to, Lyn, but—”

  “How long are you planning on being in town?”

  I shouldn’t be here at all…

  He looked away from her examining stare. Her emotion-filled eyes were too intense, as if she could look into his soul and see the entire pathetic truth, that he was a fallen angel destined to spend eternity trying to find redemption for a past he’d never be able to change.

  “I don’t know,” he finally answered.

  “Give me a ballpark. A couple days. A week.”

  “This vacation was…impromptu, so I honestly have no idea how long I’ll be here in town.”

  “Fair enough.” She turned and started walking.

  Seth’s chest ached, a dark, foreign sensation he didn’t like. He’d upset her, and her pain was the last thing he wanted. But maybe it was for the best. Hurt her now, before things went too far, before he caused her a much greater heartache. If he were a better angel, he would go…

  But he wasn’t an angel anymore.

  “Lyn, wait.” The words were out before he could put them back.

  She stopped and looked at him over her shoulder, and he nearly dissolved, unable to hold this physical body together. Heaven, what a sight. Shadows played over her features like dark fairies, and he didn’t think he’d ever seen anything so sad—and for a being as long-lived as he, that said more than he wanted to dissect.

  “The first time we kissed, it was like you jump-started something inside me,” he said. “All the other stuff I said about not knowing how long I’ll be here is still true, but so is that. I just wanted you to know.”

  Slowly, she returned to him, the shadows dancing over her face a moment before fluttering away as she stepped back under the streetlight and took both his hands in hers. “Here’s the thing, Seth. I like you. I think the orgasm on the deck pretty much made that clear. But I don’t want to move forward thinking we have a future when, in reality, we only have one night or one week or one month or whatever. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  He thought so, so he nodded. “And I want you to understand that my being noncommittal has nothing to do with my desire for you. It’s just…I have obligations that dictate my life and—”

  “Are you married?” Her face remained neutral.

  He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the question, but to her, the concern was legit.

  “No,” he answered. “There’s no one else, Lyn.”

  “But there was, wasn’t there? And she hurt you. Badly.”

  “Yes,” he answered honestly. “I lost everything because of her.”

  “Tell me about it, about her. Share your pain with me.”

  “I want to.” And he did, he realized, but he could only tell her so much.

  “Then, I guess that’s good enough for now.” Like she had on the porch, she laid a hand over his cheek. “Kiss me, Seth Jones, and for the rest of the night, let’s not think about tomorrow, okay? Let’s just stay in the now and let whatever we feel be our guide.”

  But he didn’t move. Even just this one night with her could doom him. Then again, maybe it already had. Setting aside thoughts of being caught and punished for being here, if they shared more than just a kiss, did he really think he could ever walk away? He hadn’t lied when he’d said she jump-started something inside him, but continuing to amp things up with her was a recipe for disaster.

  He gathered her close even as his mind screamed for him to run. Run away and don’t look back. It was the safe thing to do, the right thing. He’d worked too hard to achieve his goals. He was the first of the Fallen to ever receive employ by any angel. And yes, the Angels of Death might be their own sect of angelic beings, but they were still angels. Staying with Lyndi, starting anything with her could only end badly.

  She tightened her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her even as she pushed to her full height. “You jump-started something in me, too, Seth.”

  Oh, hell.

  He pressed his lips to hers. The yielding softness of her mouth flash-boiled the tiny amount of control he had left, and he melted into her. Melted. Damn good way to describe this. He could hardly discern where he ended and Lyndi began.

  He traced his tongue along the swell of her bottom lip, nipped it, and her mouth opened in immediate surrender. No hesitation. And so he claimed what he wanted.

  He claimed Lyndi Garrison.

  She tasted of unrestrained desire, dark and powerful. Her kiss had the power to destroy him, and he had no one to blame but himself. Her tongue slid along his, as if she wanted to crawl inside him, and his need to possess her had his cock throbbing, something he wasn’t afraid to let her feel.

  He ran a hand along the length of her back, cupped her ass through her jacket, and pressed her against his straining cock. Shit. He was about to explode.

  She moaned into his mouth. “We need to, to go some place private. Follow me.”

  He nodded.

  Hand in hand, Lyndi tugged him away from the road, away from all its evenly spaced lights, and toward the dark space between the two nearest houses. Too bad he couldn’t poof them somewhere secluded. The Eiffel Tower. A mountain resort in the Andes. Lyndi’s bed. Hell, he would have if his mode of transport didn’t have one lethal drawback: Lyndi wouldn’t survive the molecular reintegration process. Human bodies were too damn fragile.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “The house to our left. That’s the Maybrooks’. Every August they leave for Ireland for two months.” She stopped next to a shed that was a miniature replica of the main house. Cute but with one big problem for them.

  “It’s locked, Lyn,” he felt compelled to point out, as if she hadn’t noticed the—

  His spine tingled, and his mind hummed with the warmth that betrayed the presence of another immortal. Like earlier, the sensations fled at almost the same instant he’d experienced them, as if someone were purposely getting just close enough for him to sense their presence, which was crazy.

  He shook his mind clear. What was up with his senses tonight? Oh, yeah, the beautiful brunette in front of him.

  Lyndi’s voice brought him back to the moment. “And the Maybrooks used to hire me and other neighborhood kids to tend their yard while they were gone. They’d clean their shed out, leaving only the bare essentials for lawn care and change the lock combo so we could get in.”

  She punched the numbers one, two, three, four, five, and six into the digital keypad. The lock flashed green and the door opened. The tiny room was nearly pitch-black, but he was able to make out a workbench to the left, empty shelves along the far wall, a lawnmower, and a couple rakes. Bare essentials had been an apt description.

  “I know this isn’t exactly romantic but…” Her smile was pure sin as she tugged him inside. “I don’t want to wait.”

  “Me either.”

  “Good.”

  She kicked the door shut, and they leaped on each other as absolute darkness encased them. Not even one sliver of light slipped through around the door or the base of the shed. Good thing she was already in his arms, or it might have taken him a moment to find her, a few precious seconds that would have kept him from touching her the way he hadn’t earlier.

  The way he shouldn’t now.

  But he was tired, and he was lonely. Tonight, he just wanted to be a man—figuratively, at least—with a woman he couldn’t resist. What the fuck was wrong with that?

  “Lyn,” he breathed, pinning her against the door. His impatient fingers found the zipper of her jacket, tugged the hook free, and she rolled her shoulders, letting the coat fall away.

  “Oh my God!” she gasped. “It’s f-f-fucking freezing in here!”<
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  He grinned, his lips against her neck. “Tell me. How is it such a beautiful woman has such a dirty mouth?”

  She laughed, the sound almost as beautiful as she was. “The short version? I grew up on Marine bases.”

  “Ah. You’ll have to tell me about that. Later.”

  “Much later,” she agreed.

  Her dress fell away. She pushed off his jacket, pulled at his shirt. His hands explored her body as she undressed him, “seeing” her through the tactile contact. Greedy palms slid over the curves of her hips, her waist, the firm swell of her ass, and when he’d looked his fill, he pulled her against him, his throbbing cock caught between them.

  Oh yeah.

  He found the shredded remains of the underwear he’d ripped apart earlier and grinned. “Sorry about this,” he lied.

  She giggled, a heady amount of sinful mischief saturating the sound and making him wish he could see the expression on her face; it was, no doubt, as wicked as the laugh.

  “This was my lucky thong too, but seeing as I’m about to get lucky, I’d have to say it served its purpose.”

  “What do you mean about to get lucky? So the orgasm on the deck was what…?”

  “In this particular instance, lucky only happens with penetration.” She reached between them and stroked his erection through his pants. “For me to get properly lucky, I’m gonna need your cock inside me, and earlier, there was no cock.”

  Holy heaven, that dirty mouth of hers drove him nuts. “I guess I’ll have to remedy that.”

  “I fucking hope so. And fast.”

  Dropping to his knees, he slid his hands down her body, keeping her close in the darkness. Since her panties were already trashed, he ripped them free of her body—a body he wished he could see right now. Especially from this position, with her pussy inches from his face.

  He stuck the slinky underwear in his pants pocket, a little memento of the night since it would probably be the only one they could ever have. It would be if he were smart, but considering where he was right now, his higher brain functions were obviously malfunctioning.