He wrapped his hands under her thighs and pulled her toward him with a rough jerk. And before she could protest any further, he was sucking the bud between her legs into his mouth liked he’d sucked on her breast just moments earlier.
Only this time he tugged harder. A shock wave of concentrated pleasure zapped her so hard that her hips bucked underneath his face.
“Shh…” he said, his mouth staying on her despite her sudden movement. He placed a heavy arm over her pelvis, effectively pinning her there while his tongue assaulted her with pleasure. For several minutes there was nothing but the sound of him sucking on her most sensitive part, of his tongue lapping the insides of her wet folds.
“Stop! Stop!” she called out, her hands fisting in the sheets as the top half of her body rolled and twisted on top of the comforter. “I can’t take any more. It feels too good—”
The orgasm split her in two, and this time even Mick couldn’t hold her down when she arched off the bed. But he didn’t seem to mind. He kept his mouth on her, following her into the air and delving even deeper into her core. He plunged his tongue in and out of her, prolonging the orgasm until every nerve in her entire body was lit up with the sensation of coming.
Tears sprang to Kayla’s eyes. She had never felt anything like this in her entire life. Not with Marcus. Not with anybody, and it was hard to believe that she had gone her entire boring life without knowing this feeling. The tears took on a new dimension then, and no matter how hard she bit down on her lip, she couldn’t stop the sob that escaped. Or the complete collapse into tears that came after that.
That was when Mick finally stopped. He set her down carefully, and she rolled onto her side.
“Please stop crying,” she heard him say above her. He sounded both distressed and angry.
“I’m trying to. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice breaking on the apology.
She curled into a fetal position and tried to quell her emotions. But she just couldn’t stop crying, no matter how embarrassing it was to be doing so in the bed of a sexy stranger who had just given her more pleasure than she ever thought possible.
The bed depressed beside her. “Seriously, baby, I can’t…”
“I’m trying to stop,” she nearly yelled, she was so upset about the situation and utterly embarrassed.
The next thing she knew, she was being pulled out of the fetal position and into Mick’s strong arms. He lay down with her on the overly pillowed bed and held her tight against him, stroking the back of her head as she sobbed. And for minutes on end she continued to cry, her tears falling onto his bare chest.
“I tell you what—this does not make a lad feel great about his performance,” he said when she finally calmed down.
She shook her head against his chest. “It wasn’t you. I mean it was you. You made me feel good. Too good. I’ve never… Marcus only ever did that for me on my birthday, and even then he was reluctant. I thought maybe I tasted bad—I actually went to the doctor a few of months ago just to make sure I didn’t have anything.”
“That’s his name, is it? Marcus?”
She nodded against his chest.
“Sounds like a wanker.”
“I’m not sure what that is, but if it means asshole, then yes, he was one of those and a liar. I was an idiot for staying with him as long as I did.”
“Tell you what, I’ll come to the States and take him out for you. Punch to the nose, kick in the goolies, head butt. You name it, and I’ll do it to this wanker right good. But just so you know, I’ve been told my head butts are particularly impressive.”
A soft laugh escaped her throat then.
“Why are you laughing? I’m serious.”
“Electrician from London, and you want to take your first trip to America just to beat up my ex and probably get arrested right after that?”
“I could find the dosh somewhere, and I’m good at talking the other guy into hitting first. If he hits first, it’s self-defense—saw that on an old episode of that Law & Order show.”
Earlier it had been tears, but now she couldn’t control her laughter.
“I’m sorry,” she said when she finally got over her fit of giggles. “For crying. But thanks for making me laugh. I needed that.”
“It would probably only make you laugh harder if I told you at no point today have I actually tried to make you laugh.”
He let her go and reached over to the nightstand to turn off the lights. She watched his sinewy body framed against the Eiffel Tower’s light as he threw what had to be at least a dozen pillows off the bed before tucking a medium-size white one beneath his head. “I’m knocking off.”
Her laughter instantly subsided. Was he going to kick her out? But before she could contemplate leaving, he hauled her right back up against him again. They both settled into a new position—him on his back, her tucked against his left side, her head lying on his chest.
They lay there like that in the silent room, the sound of Mick’s heartbeat, calm and steady against her ear, for a long while. So long she thought he had fallen asleep.
“How long?” His voice was quiet and more subdued now.
She didn’t pretend that she didn’t know what he was talking about. “Four years,” she answered. “We were together for four years.”
“That’s a long time,” he said. His voice was monotone and she wished she could see his face to observe how he felt.
“Yeah, I know. It’s a long time to go out with someone without getting married.”
“Long time for any kind of relationship. Don’t even have mates I held on to that long.”
“Maybe because you keep head-butting them.”
He laughed. “Yeah, maybe. Truth is I do have a few fights on my record, but the boys in the big offices had me do one of ’em anger-management courses.”
“And that worked?” she asked, thinking of the many Suns football players who’d been forced to take a few classes after game fights or charges had been filed. Nearly all of them had gone on to rack up even more game fights, criminal charges or both.
“Sure,” he answered. “Maybe because I wanted it, too, though. After a while all the fighting’s not so fun anymore. Now I got mantras and such to keep me from blowing the lid of m’ pot. But still don’t have many mates. Guess I got used to going about in the world on my own.”
“Seriously?” she asked, thinking of Suzie and all of her friends and family back in Inglewood. “I’ve known some of my friends since before kindergarten. My boss went to high school with me. She was president of the math club and I was the treasurer. And our moms have been friends since they were in high school.”
“That’s nice.” His voice seemed a little distant now. “You have roots.”
“Nice and not nice,” she said, stroking his chest. “They were more than a little impressed about me dating a football player. The Suns are a big deal in Los Angeles, and my boy cousins think Marcus hung the moon just because he gets to wear the uniform on game day. I’m sure they think he cheated on me because I wasn’t sexy enough and didn’t dress like all the other football player’s girlfriends. A lot of them were TV stars and models, and I tried, but at the end of the day, I was just…well, me.”
He sighed and shifted her off of his chest. She immediately realized her mistake. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she said for the umpteenth time that night. “I shouldn’t have brought him up again.”
He turned on his side toward her, his hands finding her shoulders. “Listen, I’ve run into people like Marcus. I know the deal with them. The crowds build them up, right? Make them think they’re better than everyone else, yeah, just ’cos they can handle a ball. They start to think they’re the soddin’ queen of England. But I tell you what, at the end of day, it’s people like them who’re the idiots and people like you who…”
He stopped.
But she had to know. “People like me who what?”
“Never mind,” he answered, turning back over on his back. “Let’s knock off.”
“No, I want to know.”
“Conversation over, Kayla.” He seemed almost angry with himself as he folded his arms over his chest.
Kayla sighed and settled in on her own side of the bed, feeling a chill pass over her now that she didn’t have his body heat to keep her warm.
She sat up and to her surprise, he sat up, too. “What you doing?” he asked.
“I’m cold.”
“And…”
“And so I’m getting under the comforter,” she answered carefully. “Which is what people do when they’re cold, especially when they’re not wearing any clothes.”
He seemed to consider that. “I’m not wearing any clothes either. How about if I get cold? I’m a big guy but I’m just as susceptible to a middle-of-the-night chill as the next bloke. Nobody likes to wake up freezing, but it feels like you’re setting me up for just that scenario, don’t it? So, Kayla, what if I wake up freezing. What then?”
She bit her lip, determined not to start laughing again. “Then you get under the covers, just like I’m about to do.”
“Or…”
Even in the dark, she could make out that he was beckoning her to lay back down with him.
She happily came back to his side of the bed and settled into the position they’d been in before. For a little bit.
“Or maybe we should both get under the covers.”
“Shh!” he answered.
“I mean, it’s the most practical thing to do.”
“Trying to sleep here,” he said, drawing her in even closer.
So that’s what they did, as Kayla thought that she would have never guessed that the dangerous-looking, sexy man she met on the plane that afternoon would be such an avid fan of cuddling.
Chapter Six
For as long as he could remember Mick had had trouble sleeping. When he was young, it was the raging arguments his parents would get into, often right after he’d put himself to bed. He’d wake up in the middle of the night to absolute quiet and become convinced that his parents had killed each other in an alcoholic rage, as they’d both been threatening to do while he’d drifted off to sleep.
He’d go downstairs, find them both passed out like boxers after a knockout fight and go back up to his room. Then he’d be unable to get back to sleep, and so it went—until he got signed for Bristol United’s Youth Training Scheme. He had been able to leave his parents behind at the age of seventeen.
But he still hadn’t been able to sleep all that well after that. At first there had been parties, living it up, enjoying the life of a young footballer. Then when he got older, sick of the parties and the never-ending stream of women willing to go off with him because of who he was, he’d wake up in the middle of the night feeling lonely.
He’d find himself seething with jealousy toward the guys who had married their secondary school sweethearts. The ones with kids, the ones who didn’t have to come home to a gorgeous but empty multimillion dollar home every night.
The truth was that more than a decade after escaping his parents’ house he still yearned for the same thing he had wanted when he’d lived there. A normal life, a normal family. But normal girls didn’t exactly run in his circles.
Even the ones he encountered, the ones from upstanding families, the ones who had no idea what it felt like to have the police come round to your house at three in the morning and congratulate you on your last game as they took your father away to sleep off his drink in the local hold-up. Even those good girls turned out to be more interested in the flash life he could provide them than the star player, who used to average at least five fights a season and had never managed to posh up his accent.
So no, sleep had continued to be something he struggled with every night. Until he had managed to fall asleep easily with Kayla in his arms. That night he slept better than he could remember without the aid of the pills the football club’s doctor had prescribed him. But this had been better than that drug-induced blackness. This had been a peaceful, deep sleep, one accompanied by dreams of the sexy American riding on top of him, her hips undulating as he played with her heavy breasts.
He hadn’t been surprised to wake up from that dream with a tent in the sheet, which she’d apparently put over him some time during the night. But he had been surprised by the time—it was after nine in the morning. Even when he took an Ambien, his body usually jerked awake before six.
He checked his phone. Three missed calls from an unknown number with a French country code and six from Gerald, probably wondering why he hadn’t shown up at the French team’s practice facilities yet. They could wait he decided, dropping the phone back on the nightstand.
First, he wanted to see about making that dream come true with the woman who had been responsible for his first good night of sleep in years. But he rolled over to find nothing but white bed linens. He sat up in bed, his eyes immediately going to the corner where he’d left her suitcase. It was gone.
He cursed. She’d done a runner, and he couldn’t blame her. All that pillow talk last night, him confessing his fight history and that he had no real mates right before he insisted on snuggling with her because he liked the feel of her body and also because he didn’t want her to cover it up—he must have come off like a right mad nutter. No wonder she’d run the first chance she got.
Just then the door flew open, and Kayla came through, carrying a cardboard cup holder with two coffees and a bag with the name of a patisserie written on it in refined blue letters.
“Sorry for the door bang,” she said. “I got us some
croissants—or I guess I’m supposed to say croissant. Then it took forever to find coffee because every place I went acted like they didn’t even understand the concept of a to-go cup. Then I could barely get to the front lobby because there were all these men with cameras outside.” She set the coffee and croissants down on a nearby table. “Can you believe they started taking my picture and asking me all these questions in French? Only thing I understood was ‘What’s your name’ and that’s because it’s all over my French phrase book.”
His heart froze. “What did you say?”
She grinned as she tore the tops off two packets of sugar and poured them in one of the cups of coffee. “I told them my name was Beyoncé. I mean, obviously they’re not used to seeing black people go into an expensive hotel, so they’d probably thought I just had to be famous.”
Relief coursed through Mick’s entire body. “Maybe next time you leave, you should go through the garage entrance. Jacques, the concierge, said that’s what all the famous people do.”
“The real famous people? Not the ones just claiming they’re Beyoncé?” she clarified with an impish smile.
He couldn’t help but smile back, albeit weakly. “Fake famous people can use that entrance, too. ’Cording to Jacques, a lot of paparazzi hang around this place, so sometimes it’s the only way to avoid them.”
It was true that a lot of paparazzi hung out outside the Paris Grand, but it was also true that if there were really as many as she’d described, they were most likely here because they knew he was staying here, and she’d probably caused a frenzy when she’d come in the hotel with breakfast.
Though he was having a hard time getting overly worried about that because the fact was she’d left, but she’d come back. And to him, that was all that mattered at that moment.
“Are you okay?” she asked, probably a little perturbed by the stupid grin on his face. Her eyes then went down to the sheet she’d thrown over him and her full lips formed into an O in surprise.
“I’m sorry—I didn’t realize you…” She stammered some more, but she d
idn’t take her eyes off the tent in the sheet. Finally she bit her lip and asked tentatively, “Do you need help with that?”
His erection pulsed underneath the sheet. “Know what,” he said. “I’ll take any help you’re willing to give.”
She put down the coffee she’d been about to sip. And he watched as she pulled off her Suns tank top, uncovering a cherry-red bra with pink piping around its edges. Next came her Bermuda shorts, which revealed a matching pair of bikini briefs. She looked like a boring girl with a boring job through and through on the outside, but she knew very well how to dress underneath. The cherry-and-pink ensemble displayed her heavily rounded breasts and ample backside perfectly, like dessert.
A dessert he wanted to lick all over.
He liked watching her, wanted to see what she would do next. So he leaned back on his forearms and forced himself to wait for her to come to him.
She walked to the bed and removed the sheet. Then her eyes widened when she saw his erection, standing straight up and throbbing like a wild thing. A wild thing only she could tame.
She studied it like a math problem that needed solving. “I could…”
She took him in her hand and worked it up and down a few times before she shook her head and said, “But no, I already did that.”
Truth was, he wouldn’t have minded another hand job. His body had thrilled at her touch, then ached when she’d stopped. But that was before she crawled onto the bed and positioned herself between his legs.
He drew in his breath with a sharp hiss when she took him in her mouth. And a bolt of red-hot pleasure pulsed through his shaft as she worked her lips down it.
Usually this was the part where he closed his eyes and concentrated on the sensations of being attended to in this way by whoever was down there. But this time he couldn’t take his eyes off of Kayla. Her gorgeous ass in the air, her eyes looking up at him while her head bobbed up and down on his manhood.
“Baby…” he said. Mesmerized by the delicious picture she was making, he reached down to grasp the back of her head, guiding her into a nice rhythm.
Dim the Lights: Islands of DesireLiquid ChocolateHer Wild and Sexy Nights Page 20
