Queen of Hearts: (Family Stone #6 Shelley) (Family Stone Romantic Suspense)

by Lisa Hughey

  “Trust me.” Ric said, “Plenty of people complain.” He tossed a clean towel to Shelley.

  Shelley shrugged. “I feel sorry for people who don’t ever find happiness.”

  After grabbing his weapon from the water cooler, he dropped onto a weight bench and straddled the black leather seat. “Do you ever think about your own happiness?”

  “Not really.” Shelley wiped the sweat from her face. “I just focus on other people. That brings me happiness.”

  Maybe that’s why he had been discontent lately. She was making him think about things. Assess his life, assess his priorities.

  He realized that being trapped in a hotel room with her had still been some of the best days of his life. In fact the last two days had been a revelation. He liked her. His restlessness in the hotel room had more to do with their incredible attraction than a desire to get away from her.

  In fact, he didn’t want to get away from her. He wanted to spend more time with her.

  “I’d like to make you happy,” Ric blurted out. Then felt incredibly stupid. She didn’t need him to make her happy.

  But he’d certainly like to try when this whole situation with Kandi was over.

  Shelley’s eyes widened in surprise and she stumbled as she stepped off the treadmill. She appeared to gather her thoughts and then she visibly relaxed, smiled.

  “I’d like that.” The gleam in her eyes turned speculative. She gripped the ends of the towel in her fists as her gaze skimmed his body. He’d stripped off his t-shirt once he started really sweating leaving his chest bare.

  “I can think of a way you could make me really happy.” Shelley’s smile was full of innuendo as she eye fucked him.

  He laughed. “Shelley.” His laugh broke when her gaze snagged on his steadily growing cock. Shit. No way to hide that while wearing his navy mesh basketball shorts.

  Ric took a large gulp of water hoping to cool down his arousal, and his reaction to her blatant come on.

  She was making him happy with just her words.

  “I’d really like a happy ending.” Shelley sauntered closer to where he sat.

  Ric choked on the water and some trickled from his mouth and down his chin. She couldn’t be saying what he thought she was…could she?

  “That’s really—”

  “A great idea,” she interrupted. “A fucking fantastic idea.”

  “What’s gotten into you?” Ric raised his eyebrows totally trying to stall her, distract her, anything to keep his brain off what she wanted.

  “Nothing today,” she grumbled. “That’s for damn sure.”

  Ric nearly choked again. He’d unleashed a monster. A sexed up, horny monster apparently.

  She stalked closer. “How about a skinny dip?”

  “I’m sure they frown on—”

  “The only reason we had our suits on yesterday was because you were in the Aquavant room with us.”

  Ric swallowed again.

  “So you want to….”

  “Have sex in the hydro-spa pool.”

  Ric coughed again at her blunt, uncompromising words. “Pretty sure their patrons don’t usually have sex in the pool.” She stood in front of him now. Her legs straddled the weight bench and her hard nipples were level with his gaze. Her entire body radiated heat and arousal.

  Slowly, so slowly, he had plenty of time to back away, or to push her away, Shelley lowered her body until she sat on his thighs. “Okay. You win.”

  Thank Christ.

  “No sex in the pool.”

  His erection was harder than the barbell bar and about to burst from the elastic waist of his shorts.

  “We’ll just have sex right here,” she whispered.

  “Um, Shel.”

  Damn, but her sweet, toned ass sliding along his thighs was a special kind of torture. Before he could say another word, she pressed her palms to his cheeks and her lips brushed ever so lightly against his mouth.

  Her bold tongue licked at the entrance as she rocked her hot pussy against his erection.

  Fuck it. They were alone in the fitness center. There were no cameras. No one could get in.

  Ric groaned into her mouth and when her tongue touched his, his control broke. He palmed her ass and rocked her harder into his cock. The heat from her sex seared him.

  She ran her hands over his shoulders and down his pectorals exploring his skin with firm strokes.

  He scraped her top up her body, the blade of his palm slid along her breastbone until he curved his hand around one exquisitely formed breast. Ric broke away from her erotic kiss and bent his head to taste the aroused bud.

  He rolled her hardened nipple on his tongue like a sweet berry and he sucked. Hard.

  Shelley moaned, her head tilted back, and her fingers gripped his shoulders like she was clinging to the side of a mountain and about to fall.

  He speared his other hand beneath her shorts and along the smooth skin of her ass until he stroked her sex. Damn, she was soaking wet.

  How could he resist her?

  Shelley sat on Ric’s thighs, his legs tightened beneath her ass. She marveled at the sculpted muscles of his chest. A smattering of black hair dusted his pectorals and lead in a happy trail down to the waistband of his basketball shorts. The bulge beneath the mesh was large, thick, and growing every second.

  Her head went light when she thought about all that power inside her.

  His biceps bunched, his brawny strength held in check as he tweaked her nipple with his callused fingers.

  His cock pushed the waistband of his shorts and the purple mushroom head wept with pre-come. Shelley licked her lips.

  Ric’s scent mingled with the musk of their arousal and wafted in the air like a super charged aphrodisiac. She scraped her fingernails lightly along his scalp, triumph rose as he groaned into her mouth.

  The last few days trapped in the hotel room with him had stoked her libido. She’d gone from an asexual being to becoming nearly obsessed with sex. Or maybe it was him. Maybe he brought out all these new, forbidden sensations in her. As if he was high-powered fertilizer, her sexual desire had grown from tiny to mammoth with every moment in his presence.

  It wasn’t just that. When he’d said he wanted to make her happy something had snapped to attention inside her. She was used to looking out for herself, making her own happiness. And if someone else tried, there was usually an end benefit for them. But there hadn’t been any calculation in his gaze. No judging the effect of his words. He’d seemed almost surprised when he’d blurted out the statement.

  He ripped her top over her head, the spandex caught on her ponytail holder, and her hair came tumbling down. Ric pulled his mouth away from hers. She sat on his lap, her bare breasts exposed to his gaze.

  They definitely weren’t as perky as they had been twenty years ago and while her abs weren’t as tight either she thought she looked pretty good. She fought the urge to defend her body.

  “Damn. You’re gorgeous.” If the expression on his face was indicative, he wasn’t complaining.

  With his index finger, he traced the blue vein that ran from her neck down to her breast. That one single point of contact was like a lightning strike, electricity shimmered over her skin. Her nipples tightened into nearly painful peaks.

  Ric sucked, using his tongue to press the bud hard to the roof of his mouth. Sensation shot straight to her pussy.

  She ached.

  She wasn’t sure what had come over her.

  Her forced seclusion had stripped her of her power, stripped of her choice, and trapped in the hotel room with a man who wouldn’t touch her and who she wasn’t supposed to touch. She had been aching and aroused and frustrated beyond belief and all those sensations tumbled into a major break in her control.

  She was a grown ass woman, and she wanted Ric Santana. Bad.

  She knew he wanted her too. The spectacular bulge in his shorts had been a dead giveaway that the man wanted to have sex as desperately as she did.

 
She sat on the boards of multiple philanthropies. She’d raised four children mostly on her own. She’d faced down haters, jealous wives and mistresses, judgmental men, the bastard of them all Jackson Stone Sr., and she’d triumphed.

  Two nights ago, she’d decided to throw years of reticence out the window.

  At the time, she’d thought it was just a reaction to being here for the wedding. But if she were honest, she now believed that she was only having these feelings because of this man. There was something about him. About him and her together that was magic.

  “I need you.”

  “Far be it for me to disappoint a lady,” his voice was husky with arousal.

  “I don’t want to be a lady right now.” She was tired of being a lady. Tired of trying to be the perfect citizen, the perfectly benevolent patroness. She’d spent years being polite, demure, above reproach, never making waves, never rocking the boat. She’d been that woman since she’d gone to live in the Stone mansion years ago.

  And where had that gotten her?

  Forty-five years old and she’d only had a handful of sexual partners. Until two nights ago she had never had multiple orgasms in a night. She’d never been so lost in another person she’d give anything to stay lost forever. Suddenly that lack seemed like an incredible waste of her life.

  “I want to do everything,” she told him enthusiastically.

  “Everything?” But he didn’t seem stoked, he seemed bewildered.

  “Yes.” Shelley thought about all the naughty things she’d read about or heard about when women talked in hushed voices at the country club, sometimes the same women who judged her for going to live with Jackson when Jess had been a little girl.

  Bitches.

  A thousand different images, sexual positions, sensual possibilities bombarded her brain. As if they’d been locked away behind her prim façade and with one simple sentence he’d released the floodgates. He wanted to make her happy.

  “I want to go down on you.” That’s what would make her happy. Or at least it was a start.

  Ric laughed. “I’m certainly not going to argue with you, but I’m not sure what you’re getting at here cariña.”

  “I have years of sexual repression to make up for,” Shelley said defiantly.

  “Okay.” But his actions had changed from sexual to comforting.

  Forty-five and still a damn good girl. “Maybe you don’t understand, but when I got pregnant I’d barely had a single orgasm.”

  Ric choked on his water.

  “And then I had a baby at eighteen. My mother kicked me out.”

  “Christos.”

  “I’m not telling you this for your sympathy,” she said crossly. “I was trying to survive, not club hopping. And since I moved in with Jackson twenty years ago, I’ve had three lovers. Three boring older lovers.”

  Ric swallowed. In sexual years she was just a baby. “For years I’ve been the Queen of Lonely Hearts.”

  He brushed a tendril of hair from her cheek almost tenderly.

  “Stop that. I don’t want tender.” She wanted hot, raunchy, dirty, nasty sex. “The other night was the most sexually explosive encounter of my life. And I don’t want it to be a one off.”

  “Me either,” he replied huskily.

  “Make me scream.”

  Fourteen

  “Far be it for me to deny you…anything.”

  She hadn’t moved. Was barely breathing. “You’ll—”

  “Do whatever it takes to make you happy.”

  She eyed him speculatively. “So if I said I wanted to go down on you right now….”

  Ric rocked up into her. “I’d say, I’d prefer to be inside you but it’s your choice.”

  Her breath caught.

  “Okay, we’ll do that later.”

  “So what do you want now?”

  “You,” she said breathlessly. “I want you.”

  She burrowed her hands beneath the waistband of his shorts, shoving the material below his balls, and trapping his thighs. But he forgot all about the awkward when she wrapped her fingers around his cock. Her grip was tight, firm, erotic as she pumped his erection. “Gonna have to let go for a minute, sweetheart.”

  Her gaze was fixed on his cock, the head peeking between the gap in her fist.

  Shit, if she kept this up it was going to be over before it started. “Stand up,” he commanded.

  Ric made sure his weapon was within reach and he still had a view of the only entrance to the room.

  Shelley complied but she made sure to drag her breasts along his chest as she stood slowly. “You are so beautiful.” He traced kisses up her abdomen and along the underside of her breasts.

  Shelley curled her arms around his shoulder while his mouth played with her nipples.

  Ric shoved her shorts to her ankles, trailing his palms along the back of her legs and down her calves. She shivered and he couldn’t fucking wait to be inside her.

  “Shit. Condom.” Ric mentally reined himself in.

  “It’s okay.” She breathed in his ear.

  “I won’t put you at risk.” No way would he be responsible for another unplanned pregnancy.

  Shelley stepped out of her shorts, grabbed the bright material, and withdrew a single package from the pocket. She ripped it open with trembling fingers.

  The leather bench seat was cool beneath his bare ass. But he was burning up. He rubbed his fingers along her dripping wet sex while she tentatively rolled the condom down his erection.

  “Still pretty amazing,” she whispered.

  “Yes, you are.” He paused. Absolutely amazing.

  “I was talking about how that fits inside me.”

  Ric wanted to shout with laughter but the awe in her gaze humbled him.

  “You can take it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Let’s watch.”

  They bent their heads. Ric had never seen a more beautiful sight than his cock sliding into her sex. Slow. Even. Every inch inside her and he seemed to swell harder, until he was buried balls deep. Her slick channel throbbed around him snug and sweet. The buzz in his body built as they sat still, neither moving.

  Then she moaned. The sound was soft, erotic. “That feels so good.” She nuzzled the skin behind his ear.

  He took in the moment. The soft dim lights of the gym. The weight of her on his thighs. The snug clench of her sex around his cock. Her breasts pillowed his chest and her face nuzzled his neck. Her warm breath in his ear. The little sounds of her pleasure as she waited for him to satisfy her.

  He felt like a god.

  She’d blown his fucking mind.

  How was that possible? He’d been around the world. Survived several tours with the SEALS, including some nasty places. And none of that had prepared him for the sweet, bombshell that was Shelley Stone.

  Ric began to move, pressing his feet to the floor he pushed up into her, then rocked back. The head of his cock rubbed her g-spot, pushing her higher.

  He swelled almost painfully tight. Desire built in the base of his spine.

  They crashed into each other, her body strung taut. “Let go,” he demanded. She bounced on top of him reaching for her pleasure.

  Rick tilted her head and stared fiercely into her aroused, haze green eyes. “Let go,” he demanded again.

  With a noisy cry, she began to convulse. Her gaze went unfocused, and her lids drooped as her orgasm flowed over her entire body.

  That was all it took for Ric to let go. His fingers bit into her hips as he held her still. The buzz at the base of his spine exploded outward and he began to come in long punishing pulses. Her pussy squeezed his cock, and his brain simply shut down.

  Shelley’s chest heaved and her breath soughed over him. She was slumped over his shoulder, barely moving. Little aftershocks sizzled beneath his skin. His cock was still semi-hard inside her, as they reveled in the mind-altering orgasm.

  “Fuck me,” he finally breathed out.

  “Been there. Done that.” Sh
e lifted her head, her eyes bright and her smile radiant. “Ready for round two.”

  He groaned. “Not here.” They were out of condoms. And he wanted hours in a bed, taking his time to give her all those experiences she hungered for.

  Ric’s semi-hard cock slipped from her body. “We can clean up down here first.” One of the pool rooms had a misting shower. “Then head back to the room.”

  “Okay.”

  They grabbed their clothes. Ric held her hand gently in his left. In his right, he carried his weapon.

  “You really think you need that?” she asked.

  “I won’t leave you unprotected.” Didn’t matter if he thought he needed it. He didn’t think Kandi was bright enough to evade the police for long but she’d proven to be pretty resourceful up to this point.

  “I’ll be quick,” she said and headed for the shower.

  “Go ahead. I’ll be right back.” He needed to dispose of the condom. Fortunately there were private bathrooms connected to the pool room. He would only be gone for a second.

  Shelley finished rinsing off. She thought about waiting for Ric and standing under the water with him. But now that he wasn’t right with her, doubts and insecurities came rushing back in. No need to highlight her body.

  Besides, she was hoping she could convince him that they’d be safe in their hotel room if he stopped this overprotective need to guard her every second.

  The cops should pick up Kandi soon. Right?

  She pulled her running gear back on, then turned as she heard the door open, ready to greet him with a wide smile. She was going to have fun convincing Ric to do that again.

  “Well, isn’t this special?”

  Shelley’s heart thudded in her throat.

  Shit. Kandi stood in the doorway. The gun in her hand was huge. Kandi didn’t look so good. Her hair was disheveled and her tight jeans looked like they could use a washing. She still had on the heavy makeup from last night including the false eyelashes but her mouth was bare of lipstick and her eyes were wild.

  Shelley could only be thankful that Ric was in the bathroom. Her heart beat erratically. She knew she needed to keep Kandi distracted. She didn’t want Kandi suspicious of the fact that Shelley was in the spa by herself. She knew if she stalled long enough that she and Ric could overpower Kandi. Ric wouldn’t let her down.