She slid up the length of his shaft and farther, until her knees were on either side of his torso and her hands were braced on his chest. Slowly, deliberately, she lifted her hands to skim her own belly, drawing them up her body to cup her breasts. She lifted the heavy tips toward him like an offering, then dropped one of her hands to her sex again, involuntarily shuddering as she pressed her fingers against her own swollen skin.
Dimitri looked stricken, and another surge of power curled within her, certain and true.
“You mind if I play for a while?”
Dimitri couldn’t have spoken if he’d had a gun to his head. And he definitely didn’t have a gun. Instead, he had an armful of Lauren Grant, her blue eyes flashing with desire, her golden hair now tumbled over her shoulders, her lithe body writhing on his abs as if she was some sort of porn star dream come true. She swayed down toward him, dropping one hand from her breast and lifting the other from where she’d been teasing him with her slick little clit and braced both of her palms on his chest. She kissed him, hungrily, thoroughly, hard enough to bruise her mouth, and he kept completely still, not wanting to do anything to hurt her. Not wanting to do anything to stop her either.
Beneath her ass, his cock throbbed, its prize so near that it had to know how close it was to ultimate salvation, but Lauren acted as if the evidence of his arousal was not so painfully obvious, that she had to somehow incite, excite him more, tempt him further, drive him fully insane.
“You’re so big,” she murmured, and he didn’t know what she was referencing—his chest, his cock, his head—he didn’t care either, because she was shimmying around until she faced away from him, her perfect ass in front of his face as she bent her head and—
Dimitri’s brain almost exploded as Lauren’s mouth closed around his shaft. Her body was open, completely vulnerable to his gaze, but his eyes rolled back in his head as she moved her mouth down his length, taking all of him in her mouth before drawing back in one long slide, then plunging down again. His hands fell to either side of his body, limp and unresisting, as he gave himself over to the incredible pleasure of her mouth fully covering him. She moved, and he could no more stop her than he could talk, but suddenly, the pressure of her body was off his chest and to the side, and he cracked his gaze open to take in her profile—the curve of her ass, the long sweet line of her thighs, the dips and swells of her belly and breast. She circled his shaft with her fingers and dipped her head yet farther, drawing her tongue along his balls until they bunched up in tight expectation of imminent release. And then, as if knowing exactly how far she could push him, Lauren shifted again, positioning herself between his legs, one hand cupping his balls, the other tight on his shaft, as she watched him with heavy-lidded satisfaction, completely in control of his pleasure.
And damn him, he was happy to let that situation ride.
“You want only this?” she murmured, swaying forward to take the tip of his cock in her mouth, barely enough to give him a hint of the pleasure to come before rocking back again. “Or do you want to be inside me?”
Dimitri groaned. It was an impossible choice. But he’d sworn to himself that he would do whatever she wanted, do this completely her way, and so he forced himself not to grab her but instead stared back at her, trying to gauge her moods, her desire. She leaned over and plucked the condom from the rug and waved it at him. “Because I gotta tell you, I want you to fill me up.”
Dimitri’s sight went white again, and by the time he recovered, Lauren was ripping open the foil packet, positioning the condom over his shaft. “You’ve apparently done this before,” he managed tightly as she expertly sheathed him in one long, smooth motion, the immediate constriction made infinitely more pleasurable by the fact that her hands were the ones smoothing the latex against him, her fingers were the ones that had slipped beneath once more to cup his balls with a cool, fluttering touch.
“Once or twice,” she murmured. She shifted forward, and his mouth went dry as she draped her legs along his thighs, dragging herself up until her knees touched down on the outside of his hips.
“Are you sure this is the way you want to do this?” Being on top would give her the most control, he knew, but it also provided him the most amazing view. His hands finally seemed to recover their ability to move, and he lifted them to skim along her thighs, trying not so much to anchor her to him as brace her.
“You think you’ll be too much for me?” She slid her body along his sheathed cock until he was positioned at the vee of her legs, nudging into her as his shaft instinctively swelled to seat itself within her. “Because I think that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
“Good,” he gritted out, as Lauren pushed over him, enough that he fully appreciated how tight she was before she eased back, then moved forward again. The sinuous rocking motion of her body seemed as right and natural as the tides of the ocean, and when she finally allowed him to sink into her, he let out his breath in a long, ragged gasp. He’d not been aware he was holding it.
Lauren also released a soft moan. “My God, you’re amazing.”
“Mmm…” He sensed her gaze on him and flickered his eyes open, surprised by the raw curiosity in her expression. “Let me guess, I’m the first man who’s ever satisfied you?”
She laughed, squeezing him so hard his mouth watered. “The first man from Garronia, anyway. You’re a credit to your country.”
“We aim to please.”
“I’ll have to put it in my TripAdvisor review.” She smiled with such carefree abandon that he was struck by how different it made her look. Now, focusing only on the pleasure of sensual give and take, with a man she felt safe with, a man who was not a threat to either her body or her schedule, she could fully relax and simply be. The pressure within him built as much for how beautiful she was as the sensations she was generating in his body, the fierce, primal desire to make her his rocketing through him. She couldn’t be, wouldn’t be his. But he could bring her pleasure. That he could and would willingly do.
He slid his hands up her body until they reached the crease of her hips and, when she didn’t reach out a hand to stop him, edged his fingers toward her sex. Her gaze challenged him. “I think you’ve already done your duty there, soldier.”
“My work is never done in this regard.” To punctuate his words, he brushed against the tight nub of nerves he’d found a few short minutes earlier, gratified when Lauren’s amused glance turned to startled reaction.
“You don’t—”
“Let me,” he urged, and once again felt a surge of triumph as she capitulated, her body going loose and lax as he massaged her clit, her eyes drifting shut even as she tightened her hold on his shaft and moved with greater urgency. He fell easily into step with her rhythm, his own need surging higher and higher until finally it was cresting too high to ignore.
At that moment, Lauren cried out, a soft gasp of surrender as her body convulsed against his, shattering anew as she gripped his shoulders and called out his name. The sound of his name wrenched from her lips gave him the strength to hold on for a few more precious seconds as he watched and reveled in her carefree abandon, her hair wild around her shoulders, her lips parted, her head thrown back—
Then he was lost as well, and a release as powerful as he’d felt in years surged through him, pounding in his muscles, his brain, his blood vessels as he growled out his own cry of surrender. Lauren collapsed on top of him, totally boneless, and he hugged her to him fiercely, fighting against the possessive force coursing through him. They stayed that way for only a few moments, however, before Lauren shifted against him, sighing with feminine languor.
“Please tell me you have a working shower,” she murmured. “We’re supposed to be at your family’s house thirty minutes from now.”
Dimitri’s military mind went instantly to the phone in Lauren’s purse, though his body cried out in protest. He shifted away from her, dropping a light kiss on her forehead before he stood. “It’s small, but it works,” he
said, hoping his voice didn’t sound too gruff. “Anything you need, though, let me know. I’ll bring it to you.”
Her laughter followed him into the next room. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Chapter Twelve
Lauren hugged her purse to her side almost like a shield. She felt awkward, uneasy, and she never felt that. She and Dimitri had had sex—but that was all it was. People had sex all the time. That was what two consenting, uncommitted adults did when they were attracted to each other. They got naked, and they had sex.
And my God, getting naked with Dimitri had been so much more everything than she’d expected it would be. Even now, with him walking beside her so confidently, so casually, she was pretty sure he was drawing all the wrong conclusions about why she was reacting so lamely. He undoubtedly thought he’d blown her away sexually, and he wasn’t completely wrong there. But he also presented a danger to her that no guy had in far longer than she cared to consider.
He was strong, stubborn, competent, capable.
And she could almost see him holding his own against Henry. Almost. The possibility of it, though, was heady stuff, filling her with ideas of a life of freedom, of normalcy. A life she knew she couldn’t have. Not until she’d solved the Henry puzzle once and for all.
Until then¸ there would be nothing normal about her life.
And yet…
“Lauren! You are here. Dimitri, go help your mother. We must talk.”
Dimitri’s grandmother took her by the arm and hustled her around the villa to where a clearing opened out onto a bold promontory. The view was spectacular. Had it been daylight, she would have been able to see for miles out to sea, and now, in the darkness, there was a canopy of stars that blanketed the earth, an awesome counterpoint to the few winking lights of yachts far out in the water. It was breathtaking.
“He is treating you well? He is being good to you?”
“What?” Lauren looked down, surprised, at the old woman who was now poking her in the arm. “Oh. Yes, yes, of course. Dimitri is very good to me.” She realized a second later what the woman meant and tempered her smile. “We’re not dating, though. You should know that.”
“Oh, he says the same thing. You are tiresome with your youth and your words.” She waved her hands. “He is a good man, but he needs a strong woman. You are that.”
Lauren smiled too widely, not her typical practiced expression at all. She didn’t care. “Well, thank you, but we’ve only recently met. I’m in Garronia on vacation.”
“Then you must come back when you are ready to live here. You see this house? Dimitri built this house. With his hands, and his father’s hands, and his grandfather’s hands. It is a good house, and it will be his one day.”
Her affection for Dimitri was fierce, and Lauren was suddenly at a loss for words. She looked up to the sturdy whitewashed house, lit up with torches and laughter, and tried for a moment to picture herself there, instead of in her apartment in New York City or her flat in London, or her cute little pied-à-terre in Paris.
She couldn’t.
Dimitri was a gorgeous hunk of man, but he wasn’t her “forever after.” He wasn’t even her “for very long.” He was a distraction at a time when she needed it, nothing more.
Right?
“Ah, ah, ah! You are thinking about it. Thinking is good.” The woman squeezed her arm and grinned at her. “But don’t think too much, eh? Too much thinking is useless when action would do.”
“Grandmother, you’re scaring her.” Alexi appeared beside them with two familiar drinks in her hand. She gave one to the old woman, the other to Lauren. “I’ll be right back,” she winked, then steered her grandmother around. “Your friend Mina is here. Don’t you want to say hello?”
Their laughter dwindled into the background as Lauren took a sip of her drink, allowing the tsipouro to burn down her throat. She glanced at the glass in surprise. She was now becoming somewhat of a connoisseur of the drink, but this seemed—stronger. Smoother too.
“You like it, I can tell. Which means mostly that you have good taste. But then, we knew that.”
Dimitri’s rich voice rolled over her, triggering a response she could no more ignore than mask. Luckily, she didn’t have to hide it—the heavy night around them did that for her. “It’s my family’s recipe,” he continued. They should bottle and sell it, but they do not have the time with the work they do fishing.” He sighed ruefully. “And I have neither the time nor the head for business it requires.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Humility isn’t your strong suit.”
“It’s not a question of humility.” He shrugged. “It’s more a strategic pursuit. If I know what I am good at, which is many things. I am more happy to let go what I am not good at, so as to spend more time on the things that I enjoy. You see?”
She couldn’t gainsay his logic, and instead turned to look at the ocean. The sounds of the party seemed too far away, with him this close. As if he could blot out the world with his presence, creating a tiny circle of calm in the middle of a brewing storm. She could get used to that illusion, she realized. So she went on the offensive again.
“That promontory, with the beacon.” She pointed to the west with the hand that held the tsipouro. “Your sister was telling me about it today.”
As she’d planned, Dimitri’s manner immediately sobered. She couldn’t help but feel sorry for that, but she barreled on anyway. “She said that wreckage washes up on shore there sometimes.”
“My sister, she talks too much,” Dimitri said. But he was looking out at the promontory now as well. “She told you I am sure of the wreckage in particular I am searching for.”
“From Ari’s plane.” She tried to pick out his expression in the darkness, couldn’t. “Have you ever found anything?”
“Not enough to matter. The royal plane had many distinguishing characteristics and many identifying marks against such a tragedy. But when a plane crashes, it doesn’t always fall into the ocean in one piece. An explosion could have disintegrated it. The engine could have kept working for a short while even if other systems failed, dropping in a different location from the rest of the plane. There are too many possibilities to fathom.”
“Yet you keep looking.”
He nodded. “I keep looking.”
“What will you do if you find something, though—a scrap of metal that, what—tells you that Ari crashed near here and not near Thassos? How will that help you?”
Dimitri took another long pull of his drink. “It’s a good question. Perhaps I will convince myself that he has died, once and for all. Perhaps I will have the closure that the few bits and scraps of metal that have turned up have not given me. Perhaps I will have someone—or something—to blame, at long last. When you have no answers, you have too many possibilities. I would prefer those possibilities to be fewer.” He shrugged. “I suppose I won’t know until I see it, eh?”
“Could we go down there?” Sensing immediately that she’d asked the wrong thing, Lauren hastened on. “If we’ll be here that long. We may not be, which is fine. Never mind. We don’t have to go.” Shut up, shut up! It wasn’t the tsipouro, but the blood rushed to her face as she tried to quiet her unruly tongue. Beside her, Dimitri had fallen silent. Not the silence of someone who was angry either.
The silence of someone who was curious.
A curious Dimitri was really not a good idea.
He verified that with his next words. “Why do you want to see the cove? I intrigue you this much, princess?”
She gave him her haughtiest look, pretty sure the effect was lost in the gloom. “I’m stuck on this rock for, what, another day—day and a half? We have to do something.”
He didn’t hesitate. “It seems that we found a worthwhile distraction already.”
“Well, we’ve done that already, so it’s time for something new.”
Laughter rumbled deep in his voice. “And you don’t think you would be interested in a second opportunity?” he
asked quietly. “I could change your mind.”
Her scoffing reply sounded impressively derisive, at least. “Doubtful.” She turned away from him so he couldn’t read anything in her expression. “I would be far more interested in learning more about this cove that has fascinated you so. You’ve certainly found a few things, yes? Do you keep them in your house?”
He shifted beside her. “The ones that seemed relevant, sure. The others I left along the shoreline or gave to the local bar owner down there. There is a secondary dock near the promontory, where the boats bring in their weekly hauls—more frequently if they are overloaded, but they are rarely overloaded early. It is not an easy life, fishing. But it’s a good one.”
“Well, it can’t be all that great. You left it for the military.”
He shrugged. “I know what I excel at. Or maybe you’ve forgotten that already.”
Stop baiting the woman.
But Dimitri couldn’t help himself. He leaned closer to Lauren as she gave another short laugh, reveling in the heat of her, exactly what he’d sworn he would not do when he’d gotten here this evening. Tonight was supposed to be about rebuilding the emotional distance between them, and giving her the illusion of freer rein. He had a completely unreasonable desire to build a cage around her, protect her, but she wasn’t his property, she was his assignment.
And then there was the sex. Which had definitely not been a part of the assignment. But damn, it should have been. Nevertheless, he knew without being ordered that he had no right nor place to have any real interest in Lauren.
But he did. Good God, he did.
The idea of holding her in his arms once more, tasting her skin, reveling in the sheer perfection of her body was enough to drive him mad. If he didn’t maintain his distance, he was going to cripple the woman before he got her safely back to Garronia. And that would serve none of their purposes.
Captured (Gowns & Crowns #2) Page 12
