Desire: A Contemporary Romance Box Set

by R. R. Banks

  Hunter’s hands pressed to the small of my back and he tilted his head to deepen the kiss. I looped my arms around his neck and pulled myself up closer to him, not wanting any space between our bodies. As we kissed, I started to walk backwards, drawing him with me. I was easing myself down to my knees, trying to bring him down so that we could lie on the pallet that he had rested on as he recovered from the bite, when I felt him ease me away from him again. My stomach sank. This couldn’t be happening again. We had already gone through this and then back around in circles. With the storm raging outside, I didn’t have anywhere to hide and I certainly didn’t have any champagne to drown my embarrassment in.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound anywhere near as shrill as I thought that I might.

  “Nothing,” Hunter said. “It’s not that anything’s wrong, it’s just that…”

  He hesitated and I tilted my head to look into his face better.

  “What?” I asked. “What is it?”

  “What Gavin said.”

  I shook my head.

  “Don’t let him bother you,” I said. “There’s no point in giving him any more puff than he already has. He doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about.”

  “That’s just the thing,” he said. “He wasn’t too far off.”

  I felt my mouth fall open, the surprise at his words palpable. My arms slipped from around his neck and he took a step back.

  “Exactly,” he said, starting to walk around me toward the back of the cave.

  “No,” I said, grabbing his wrist and gently pulling him back toward me so that he didn’t walk away. “Not ‘exactly’. Talk to me.”

  Hunter turned back to look at me and I could see the strain in his expression. This was obviously something that bothered him.

  “What is it that you want to hear? That I’m completely inexperienced with women and he humiliated me?”

  “Is that why you stopped me after the wedding?” I asked.

  My voice sounded weaker and more vulnerable than I would have wanted it to, but I couldn’t help it. I needed to understand what had happened between us, even if that meant putting myself in a position that I shouldn’t be in, that I didn’t want to be in.

  Hunter looked at me quizzically, as if he couldn’t understand why I would even ask that.

  “What else would it be?” he asked.

  “The fact that I’m so much older than you,” I admitted.

  Hunter scoffed and stepped up closer to me.

  “I don’t care how old you are,” he said. “You’re gorgeous. I noticed that the first moment I saw you.”

  “Then what?”

  “You are so beautiful and so confident. I’m intimidated.”

  “There’s no reason to be intimidated.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. I doubt you’ve ever had trouble attracting people.”

  “Hunter, you are beyond sexy. I haven’t been able to control myself since I saw you at the wedding.”

  “You’re the only one.”

  “So, you’ve never…”

  I hesitated, not really knowing how to word the question in such a way that I would get the information that I wanted without embarrassing him any further.

  Because this is just one of those casual questions that everybody asks all the time.

  “Once,” Hunter admitted without me even having to complete my thought. “And my confidence about whether that one time even happened is a little bit shady.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was in college. The one time that I decided to go to a party. I had heard about how much fun they were and that that was all I needed to get settled in and start having a good time in college rather than spending all of my time studying.”

  “And?”

  “Well, I quickly learned why people like me don’t generally go to those parties.”

  “People like you?” I asked.

  “Nerds,” he said without hesitation.

  The word wasn’t an insult or even an evaluation of him. It was just how he perceived himself within the context of the rest of the world.

  “You’re not a nerd,” I said, trying to comfort and reassure him even though he didn’t seem entirely bothered by the idea that he wasn’t one of the cool kids.

  Hunter looked at me with an expression that said that he wasn’t buying it.

  “Is that some of your guidance counselor bullshit coming through?” he asked.

  Guidance counselor? Oh, yeah. Third grade teacher and guidance counselor. Damn. I needed to get it together.

  “It’s just that I don’t think you should be talking about yourself like that.”

  “I was a math and science double major, involved heavily in the chess and astronomy clubs, and the most hotly sought-after Dungeon Master on campus. Among the 12 of us who openly knew what that meant.”

  “Dungeon Master?” I asked somewhat hesitantly.

  Somehow, I don’t think that this story is going to segue into him wearing leather and strapping people to walls.

  “Dungeons and Dragons.”

  Sigh.

  “Today’s episode was brought to us by squares,” I said.

  Hunter gave a short laugh.

  “Tell me about it. So, I agreed to go to this party with my lab partner.”

  “Was your lab partner a blond girl who wore way too much white and pink, and seemed to think that visiting the dining hall was a formal occasion that warranted the wearing of pearls around her neck and diamonds in her ears?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Bitches never change.

  “Was this party a sorority party?”

  “Yeah.”

  Yep.

  “Were you some kind of entry into a contest?”

  Hunter gave a deep sigh.

  “Yeah.”

  Great to know that there are some traditions that just won’t fucking die.

  “What happened?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. I know that they gave me something to drink. A lot of somethings to drink. I loosened my tie. I might have ended up on a table dancing.”

  I had a sudden flash of his dancing from the wedding.

  “What kind of dancing?”

  “Viennese waltz.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh, and to his credit, Hunter did, too.

  “Sexy.”

  “Apparently so because the next thing I knew I was waking up the next morning naked except for my glasses and one sock with the girlfriend of one of the fraternity members in bed with me.”

  “That’s some seriously 80’s teen movie stuff,” I said before it occurred to me that those movies came out when he was a toddler.

  “Well, I probably don’t have to tell you that things didn’t go terribly well for me after that.”

  “And you haven’t dated anyone since?”

  “I don’t think that that really counts as dating,” he pointed out.

  “Probably not.”

  “I’ve dated a couple of women,” he said. “But it never went beyond a few friendly dinners. Maybe a show. I have a hard time attracting women and those who I do aren’t exactly brimming with romance and sexuality. Either that or I just don’t inspire it in them.”

  “You keep saying that you have a hard time attracting women. I don’t believe it.”

  “It’s true. They just seem to kind of look through me. Either I’m the perfect friend material, or I’m wallpaper. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground.”

  “There’s middle ground for me,” I told him. “You are much more than friend material.” I took a step toward him. “And you are definitely not wallpaper.” I closed the space between us and ran my hands down his arms, giving a little moan of appreciation at the feeling of his muscles. “Though I wouldn’t object to having you around to look at.” I got on my toes to draw myself up to whisper in his ear again. “Let me show you what that girl at the party couldn’t.” I brushed my mouth across his neck. “We don�
��t have to rush. We have plenty of time.”

  Without waiting for a response, I rested my mouth to his, rediscovering the kiss from when we were standing in the pool. He accepted it immediately, his mouth opening beneath mine and his tongue slipping past my lips to massage against mine. As our bodies responded to one another, drawing closer until we were pressed together, my wet clothing cooling some of the heat that we were creating, I again started lowering us to the ground. He came with me this time, allowing me to ease him to the floor of the cave and stretch him back against the blankets. Outside the rain was pelting the jungle, filling the cave with the music of the individual droplets hitting the leaves, rocks, ground, and water. It buffered us from the rest of the world, enhancing the space of privacy and luxurious pleasure that we were creating together.

  I wanted to introduce him to everything that he had been missing for so many years. I wanted to indulge his body and show him all that it was capable of receiving, and of giving. For so long sex had been an obligation, something that I did because it was another thing that was expected of me as a wife. This wasn’t about obligation or what either of us required from the other. Instead, this was about listening to our bodies and giving them exactly what they wanted, discovering pleasures within each other and within ourselves that were as wild and natural as the beautiful, if frightening, island around us.

  With Hunter stretched across the pallet, I stood and looked down at him. I ensured that he was watching me as I undressed carefully, gradually revealing myself to him. I didn’t know how far the night would take us, but I wanted nothing between us and nothing to stop us from whatever exploration we desired. There were no limitations tonight. There was nothing that was going to stop us.

  When I was finally completely naked, I knelt down and reached for the button on the front of Hunter’s pants. I released it and eased his zipper down slowly, wanting to continue to build the delicious tension that had been burning between us. Finally, they were open and I grasped the sides to start pulling them down. Hunter lifted his hips to make it easier for me to remove them completely and drop them to the side. There was nothing left concealing him now and I was able to let my eyes travel along his body, taking him in in all of his exquisitely crafted beauty. I forced my gaze to move slowly, scanning every inch of him, rather than rushing to what I had been waiting so long to see. When I had paid the proper respects to the curves of his shoulders, the deep cut of his chest, the plane of his belly, and the tantalizing trail of dark hair from his navel, it was finally time to see the erection that had been straining toward me through his pants as we kissed.

  It was even more incredible than I had envisioned when I was in the water. Long, perfectly straight, and deeply veined, it was so hard and thick that it looked as though my fingers wouldn’t touch when I wrapped my hand around it. I was very willing to try though. I leaned forward and touched a soft kiss to his lips, then brought my mouth to the side of his neck. I could feel him trembling slightly as I kissed my way down his neck and onto his collarbone. I brushed my lips along each bone and then pressed them into the soft dip between them. The rhythm of his pulse was there, telling me that I was coaxing him forward, bringing his arousal higher with every touch of my lips.

  Taking my time, I kissed my way over to one of his shoulders and then down his arm, following the curve of each of his muscles until I reached his hand. I lifted his arm and turned his hand over so that it rested in my palm. I kissed his palm and then slipped each finger into my mouth in turn, sucking my way down them and then drawing my tongue up the inside of his arm until I reached his shoulder again. I continued this exploration over the other arm and down his body, lavishing his nipples, the taut muscles of his chest, the ripples of his stomach, and the muscular V at his hips with the attention that I had been wanting to give him since the first moment that I saw him. I wanted to go further, but I forced myself to stop. There was still more that I wanted him to feel. Knowing that he was so inexperienced made me feel as though I had been given not a tremendous obligation, but a privilege. I got to be the one who awakened him to the delicious capabilities of his body and to welcome the blissful attention that I would teach him to give.

  Swinging one leg over his hips, I positioned myself so that I looked down into Hunter’s eyes. He gazed up at me, his eyes slumbering slightly. I knew that I was bringing him to an edge and I wanted to urge him further. I flattened my hands on his chest and ran them up to his shoulders and then down both arms so that my body gradually lowered down toward his. My hands reaching his and intertwining our fingers, I allowed my breasts to brush his chest. The sensation traveled through my sensitive, hardened nipples and I lowered myself just enough that my breasts crushed lightly against his chest. My angle allowed me to feel his surging erection against my thigh and I nestled back against it so that it nudged my wet, waiting petals.

  Holding my hips in place, I brought my mouth back to his. Hunter kissed me with both tenderness and passion. His hands ran along my back softly, then slid up to my shoulders and squeezed as though reassuring himself that I was truly there. After a few moments of just enjoying the feeling and taste of his mouth on mine, I pulled away from the kiss and eased myself down Hunter’s body so that I knelt between his thighs. Resting a hand on the inside of both legs, I pressed them apart so that I could gain greater access. Finally indulging the fantasy that I had been harboring, I wrapped my hand around the base of his erection and finally felt the warmth of his skin against my palm. I could feel the blood continuing to flow into his shaft, making it even harder. My other hand cupped his balls, gently massaging them. They hung away from his body with the intensity of his arousal and I manipulated them carefully while stroking my other hand along his shaft.

  Slick fluid had gathered at the tip of his cock and I swirled my palm over it to allow my hand to move more easily along his skin. My hand ran along his erection in long strokes, twisting slightly when I reached the head to stimulate the tight bundles of nerves under the head. I looked at Hunter’s face and saw that his eyes were closed, his expression one of concentration and pleasure. He was racing toward climax, drawing closer to the oblivion that I wanted to give to him, when a screaming wind from outside broke the peaceful, transcendent bliss between us.

  I snapped my eyes to the entrance of the cave just in time to see a large tree sail past, the roots torn up from the ground. The effect was violent enough that I could feel the sting of water against my face and Hunter sat up sharply. He reached out and wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me back with him deeper into the cave as he dragged the pallet along behind us. We huddled together against the far wall of the chamber, bracing ourselves against the most intense moments of the storm. When it finally ended, the adrenaline slid from my body and I felt exhaustion take over. Hunter seemed to feel the same, and though I longed for more of the exploration, I allowed him to draw me down onto the blankets with him and curl around me. His hand trailed lazily along the center of my stomach and brushed along the bottom swells of my breasts.

  I hadn’t even realized that I had fallen asleep in Hunter’s arms until I felt him shift behind me. I opened my eyes slowly and saw the glow of morning sunlight outside of the cavern. Despite its beauty, I didn’t want to get up. I rolled over and nuzzled closer to Hunter again. He leaned down and kissed the top of my head.

  “Did you sleep well?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Better than I have in a long time.”

  “Me, too,” he said. He sighed and I saw him look toward the entrance to the cave. “Do you think that Gavin made it into the cabin of the boat before the storm hit?” he asked. “He might be an ass, but I wouldn’t want to think that he was out there in all of that by himself.”

  Those words brought me back to harsh reality. The fantasy of the night before had kept me from thinking about the storm when I first woke, but now I felt worry sink heavily into my belly, making me feel sick. I could remember weathering storms when I was younger and camped
with my father, but none had been as intense as that one. Even so, some of them caused truly horrific damage.

  I got up and scrambled into the clothing I was wearing the night before. It was still damp and I shivered as the cold fabric touched my skin. Hunter stepped into a pair of pants that had been in the pile of blankets and clothes we were using for his bed. We stepped out of the cave and I immediately noticed the ground was strewn with pieces of branches, leaves, and other remnants of the island that the storm had thrown around. I took a deep breath and looked back at Hunter. He was staring around like I had, shaking his head.

  “Where could he be?” he asked. “I would have thought that he would come back to the cave as soon as the weather cleared up if he hadn’t been able to make it when the raining started, even if it was just to gloat that he had been right about the storm.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I hope that he’s alright.”

  I still didn’t trust Gavin, but just like Hunter had said, that didn’t mean that I wanted something horrible to have happened to him. I was going through enough. The last thing that I needed was a storm-battered body to deal with when I couldn’t get off of this stupid island.

  “I’m sure he’s fine,” Hunter said. “Remember, he’s trained in wilderness survival.”

  There was a hint of sarcasm in his voice and I couldn’t help but chuckle at the memory of Gavin’s bravado about his training and how it would help them to get through this time on the island. As funny as it seemed, however, it did make me wonder what kind of experience this man had that had allowed him to spring into action the way that he had. I wanted to think that it all came from some kind of exclusive military training that had taught him to paint himself camouflage, roll around in the woods, and survive off of tree bark and moth wings, but in the back of my mind I knew that that wasn’t the case. There was something about Gavin that put me on edge and made me wary of him. He had helped us from the beginning, but there had always been an underlying sense of obligation, as though there was another reason that he was there with us, and now that he was missing I was starting to question everything about him.