It felt like he was looking for a girlfriend. No, he wasn’t, was he? He just wanted an evening with someone who didn’t spend hours talking about the highlights in her hair and the wild parties she’d attended during her latest trip to Ibiza. If that evening came with chemistry and passion, all the better. Jeanette had also shared that many couples hooked up for the long haul after meeting through her.
He didn’t necessarily want that. He just wanted to be. . . what did he want to be?
Surprised.
He drove to a dead end and turned left toward Mgarr, and a little ways further, right onto a country road. About fifty meters onward he came upon the gated entrance to a private property. The gate was open so he entered the long driveway. The tyres kicked gravel and dust in the pitch dark that led to a converted farmhouse where the email instructions specified he’d meet his company for the night.
He noticed no other cars were parked there when he switched off the engine. Perhaps she hadn’t arrived yet.
What did she look like? According to the custom profile he was forwarded, this was a very particular lady and he needed to go slow with her. That may mean one of two things—she either wasn’t used to meeting men this way, or she was as unsure about this as he was.
The solid wood front door was slightly ajar so he didn’t have to use his key. He discarded it on the inlaid wood console table by the entrance and walked into a welcoming, classic modern sitting room steeped in earth tones. His feet stepped on an expensive-looking brown and beige Persian rug that covered most of the floor.
Someone had put money into this place. After looking at the outside, one wouldn’t think that such luxury and comfort waited inside. It was a two hundred year old structure, painstakingly renovated with a welcoming, state-of-the-art interior.
The large room flowed into an L-shape that carried beyond a large teak dining table with seating for six.
“You can close the door behind you,” said a lilting voice from the back of the L-shape.
His stomach made a flip like that of a schoolboy’s with a budding first crush. Laughing inwardly at the thought, he clicked the door shut and walked past the chocolate leather couch, around the table, toward the beautiful voice.
He found her sitting on a bar stool at the kitchen counter. A couple of large trays laden with cold meats, cheeses, and assorted appetizers sat untouched in front of her.
She turned toward him and looked straight into his eyes. Her eyebrows drew together.
“You must be starving,” she said.
Upon meeting her gaze, his belly did a bigger flip and he had difficulty swallowing a big lump that lodged in his throat.
God, she was beautiful.
He stared at her. Soft burnished locks flowed richly around her oval face to just below her collarbone. Tall and trim, she wore a simple silk green sheath dress that stopped above the knee and unpretentious flat gold sandals.
An artist’s muse.
The best part of her, though, were her eyes. Fine jade eyes that looked at him, into him, through him. There was something infinitely alluring about that light green gaze. It was unique, and frightening. It was… intense. Would any man be able to keep secrets from this woman?
A deeper frown creased her brow. “Is something wrong?”
His gaze fell to her full lower lip that she was now biting on. “No.”
Boy, was he charming tonight. If he went on this way, she would think him a dunderhead and call off the whole thing.
“I was saying that you must be hungry,” she tried again, while she extended a hand toward him.
“As a matter of fact, I am.” He was at her side in two strides and took her offered hand as he sat on the stool next to her. It was supple and warm against his. He briefly rubbed his thumb above her knuckles and raised her hand to his mouth to drop a light kiss on it.
She laughed, a sweet, musical sound. “Men haven’t done that in centuries.”
“Does it matter?”
“No, but you don’t need to seduce me. We both know why we’re here.”
“It doesn’t mean I should take you for granted,” he argued.
“Touché,” she replied with a grin. “So let me say ‘hi’ in my own way,” she added, before she picked a stuffed olive from the tray and slid it between his lips.
He should have told her what that erotic gesture did to him, to his base lust. But instead he crushed those words underneath the bitter flesh of the fruit. It tasted like hot chillies going down, set him alight.
She studied him with narrowed eyes, as though she struggled to focus on his face. His hand cupped her cheek, because he found himself unable to keep from touching her.
“Something the matter?”
“Just trying to see you better,” she said, while emphasizing the word “see”.
He laughed. “I am right in front of you.”
“I suppose you weren’t told that I’m fairly blind. Not totally, but I can’t see well, either,” she admitted matter-of-factly.
Now serious, he had both hands around her cheeks. His thumb traced the bottom contours of her eyes, precious like rare gems.
That’s what it was then, that special something about them. That intense gaze…
“Tonight you don’t need to see,” he said, his voice raspy. “All you need to do is feel.”
He kissed her, not like a gentleman, not gently and with care, but with an alien need that assailed all his senses. It upset him at some deep, elemental level.
Why?
That was one thing he shouldn’t have done. If this woman managed to get under his skin so fast, what would happen by the end of the night?
He’d be utterly lost.
Chapter Two
The contact of his lips with hers prompted an instinctual groan. Melita realized, however, that the groan didn’t only come from her. His mouth felt warm and coaxing as he parted hers for a penetrating kiss.
The instant she saw him attraction arrowed through her. Illogical, irrational, undeniably real.
She grabbed on to the hem of his blue t-shirt sleeves and hung on for dear life, while the play of his tongue against hers provoked a concerted sexual response that took over all of her body. Her wrists and forearms pressed against the powerful, taut muscles of his arm, and she wantonly leaned into his chest.
She had never felt so good about kissing a stranger. Come to think of it, she’d never kissed a stranger. His mouth tasted of savoury olive and he smelled of fresh air and man, a combination that made her head reel and her insides flutter in some strange places. She was aware of the sensual, forbidden parts of herself like she’d never been before, like she’d never been awake before.
She couldn’t help but protest when he abruptly broke contact and pulled back. His breaths came short and rugged as he spoke in a sheepish voice.
“I just realized… I didn’t even ask your name. Sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine,” she cut in, with a bit of a wonky smile, while she struggled to find purchase around a haze of desire. “You don’t have to apologize. I’m Melita. Melita Saari-Quinn.”
“Alex Moncado,” he introduced himself with an answering grin. Then, “You have an interesting name.”
Large hands swept up and down her arms, wrenched goose pimples at his tender touch.
“Product of a Finnish and Irish-Maltese marriage. My mother gave birth in England, and missed Malta terribly at the time, so she decided to use the Latin word for the island as my name,” she laughed. “Luckily, her wish to raise me in Malta came true and they settled back here when I was five. What about you?”
He picked a bite-sized piece of melon wrapped in Parma ham and fed it to her. The cooling, sweet juice exploded in her mouth and mingled tantalizingly with the saltiness of the meat.
“I’ve lived here all my life, and pretty much do what was expected of me – I run a business that’s been in my family for about fifty years. We have a few stores around the island.”
“Oh,�
�� she answered, after she’d chewed the last of the morsel. She was dying to ask him which stores but didn’t want to sound pushy. “Moncado is not a very common surname here,” she remarked, opting for a more indirect route.
“My ancestors are Sicilian. They had come to Malta and left a while later, but a couple of them stayed on. They must have loved the beaches,” he replied with a glint in his eyes that even she, with her impaired vision, could discern.
His answer wasn’t quite what she hoped for – he didn’t volunteer information about his work or state what business he was in – but she wouldn’t pressure him to tell more than he wanted. If she dug around or even flipped through the phone book, he probably wouldn’t be too hard to find on an island as small as this. Still, that wasn’t the point.
From the way he just kissed her, he liked the way things were turning out, and that’s all that mattered.
“Kiss me again,” she softly demanded, feeling uncharacteristically bold and feminine.
The blazing fire that licked at her with his appraising look was all the encouragement she needed to slide her arms around his neck and throw herself, body and soul, into another kiss. She teetered on the edge of the stool but somehow didn’t care if she toppled them both off. His arms snaked around her and held her tight, one hand splayed across her back, the other buried under her hair to hold her head prisoner.
She also slid her hand up his nape and into his hair. Sexy, close-cropped dark hair.
“Perhaps we need to go somewhere more comfortable,” he said at last, his voice rich like velvet. “What do you think of the couch? I’ll bring the trays over so we can eat.”
“How about the bedroom?” she shocked herself by suggesting. “It’s right off that corridor over there.” She pointed at a short hallway with a door to the right and one straight across, at the end of it. “I’ll pick one tray, you get the other one.”
Without stopping to wonder how she’d become such a siren, she slid off the stool, grabbed a tray, and led the way to the room across the hallway.
“That’s the bathroom.” She pointed to the door on the right hand side, more because she needed to keep talking as if chit-chat would calm the rioting butterflies in her belly.
It was a tiny one-bedroom farmhouse, but that’s what gave it most of its charm. It packed a real punch in such limited square footage, and she couldn’t imagine a better, cosier place for this rendezvous, or one that would have felt so much like a home.
The bedroom was rather small, too. It was decorated in neutral, shabby chic white furniture, which made the large brass bed with the fancy burgundy and white counterpane stick out like the fabled Gulliver in Lilliput.
Melita placed her tray on a nightstand and was suddenly reluctant to look across the bed, where Alex switched on the lamp. A spate of shyness caught her in a firm grip and she found herself defensively crossing her arms and shuttering her gaze.
But Alex stood close to her now. He uncrossed her arms and clasped her chin between his thumb and forefinger. Gently, he made her look straight up at him. He held her, strong and secure. Left her no quarter, no chance to look away.
“Don’t be ashamed to look at me. I want to be able to see your face, to see how my touch makes you feel inside,” he said, a statement that would have had her on the floor, at his feet, were he not holding her up with a powerful arm and his amazing dark gaze.
She squinted a little. “Are your eyes a dark brown?” He was a good half head taller than her. She wasn’t short herself, but she had to stand on tip-toes to get a closer glimpse.
“Hazel,” he responded, “but there are moments when they turn several shades darker, even black. Depends on my mood.”
She smiled and placed a palm against his cheek and jaw. How she loved the masculine feel of day-old stubble that prickled her skin…
“And what mood are you in now?” she teased. Her voice sounded distant to her, almost as though someone else was saying the words, or she was hearing them through a speaker with the volume down low.
“I’m in the mood to love you,” he murmured.
His words, on the other hand, rang in her head like the resounding peal of a giant church bell.
In the mood to love you.
“Yes,” she managed, only that. Her eyes burned and filled with moisture. It was difficult to swallow past the emotion that gathered in her throat.
Yes, even if it’s only for tonight.
“Let me, then.”
This wasn’t really happening, was it? It was mad, wild… and so implausible.
His head bent down to kiss her. An unhurried kiss this time, almost tentative. He took his time to invade her mouth, to brand her with the heat from his – and even then, it was a slow burn that started where their lips met and coursed down her body to her very core, between her trembling legs.
Without breaking contact, he reached up to pull her back zipper down, then left her lips to taste along her jaw, round the curve to her ears. When his teeth nibbled on her earlobe, the dress had started to fall off her shoulders. The silk slid down easily, and she was left in her cream lace bra and panties.
In a smooth sequence of moves he reached out to pull back the bedclothes, then swung her up in his arms and laid her on the bed. He ran his hands down the underside of her legs, forged a smouldering path of skin all the way to her feet, where he gently removed her strappy sandals and placed them on the floor.
She’d once heard that the feet ought to be considered the most intimate part of one’s body because they are so close to the earth; they know, intuitively, all its shifting shapes, patterns, textures, and secrets.
Perhaps that’s what he was thinking too when he lingered on her soles, observant and thoughtful.
He pulled back suddenly – as though he’d forced himself to – and removed all of his clothes by the soft lamplight, allowed her to see his unconcealed arousal that was only for her. She felt herself colour with a mixture of timidity and exhilaration.
At the appreciation in her eyes he joined her in the bed and eased her to him. Emboldened by his nakedness, she unclasped her bra, shook off the straps and threw it aside, along with the rest of her clothing. There was nothing better than to have his solid chest, or the tantalizing rub of his spattered chest hair, against her bare skin.
He dropped light kisses on her eyes, forehead, cheeks, chin, and trailed his lips down her neck, between her collarbones, to the deep valley between her breasts. They felt fuller, heavier, and when his mouth closed around one of them, she thought she’d surely die of pleasure.
His tongue teased the distended nub; then he drew on it hard until the blood rushed there and caused a needle-sharp shock of electricity to bolt through her. A rush so strong it brought her close to that little death she coveted – the ultimate carnal fulfilment.
His attention diverted to the other breast, to which he gave a similar treatment before he shifted his body fully on top of her and slid downward to taste all the way to her belly button and beyond…
“You taste like apples,” he smiled against her skin.
“Must be my body lotion,” she sighed, half-dizzy.
“I love apples,” he remarked before he parted her legs wide. “They’re good for you.”
His fingers plied her sensitive flesh so he could discover another intimate part of her. A part that hadn’t seen a man in too long.
He learned every square inch as his tongue mirrored the sensual assault to her breasts. With her eyes closed, the sensation heightened and fanned through her. It devoured her.
Lost in a world where shame had no place, she arched her back and bore against his mouth, so he would push her over the edge into an abyss where all that existed was the pull of gravity. Fireworks erupted inside her, like shrapnel, while she fell down hard. It went on, this fantasy rollercoaster ride across a monster mountain range, until finally, the storm quieted down and she drifted back to reality on a cloud of joy and contentment.
She opened her eyes to find
him hovering above her. There was something different in his perusal, something so sweet and vulnerable that it made her emotional all over again. She bit on the inside of her mouth to keep from sobbing.
What had gotten into her?
“When I first saw you I thought you were possibly the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen,” he told her, very seriously. “I’m sure of that now.”
She knew he meant every word, so she just had to pull him down for a tender kiss, and to hold him to her for a close embrace. There was no getting around the fact that this was supposed to be merely a sexual encounter between strangers, but she couldn’t imagine not seeing this man again.
For all intents and purposes, after tonight, they would say goodbye.
The thought strangely dispirited her. She asked herself what would happen if they parted ways and she met him some day, down the road, in an entirely different situation. Would they act as strangers, as if nothing had ever happened between them?
As though they’d never abandoned themselves in each others’ arms?
Perhaps she should have insisted upon being paired with a foreigner with no roots here. Someone she wouldn’t be tempted to track down. It would probably be easier to leave it all behind, then, without wondering what could have been…
She worried her bottom lip and pressed her nose against the silky softness of his hair. The scent of ocean breeze glided past her weak defences, and she wondered about him. She thought forbidden things, things that only devoted lovers would understand. Like what brand of shampoo he used, and why. Whether he used an electric shaver or old-fashioned blade. What ruffled his feathers and did he like dogs.
She wanted to know everything about him.
Not a good thing.
Her mind was worse for wear than a knotted-up bale of wool. But, she needed to let herself go and enjoy this night, to make the most of it, not worry about the future. The proof of Alex’s desire for her stark against her thigh, all she should want now was to lose herself with him.
Something to Live for (Moonlight Dating Series) Page 2
