Cursed: Gowns & Crowns, Book 5 Read online

  His hands gripped her hips loosely, and his body lifted with hers as she arched again beneath him. By now, Edeena was muttering incoherently in her own language, and a burst of pure satisfaction shot through Vince as he heard the words. He may not understand them, but there was no mistaking what he should do next.

  He slid his tongue up her center folds once more, and flicked once . . . twice.

  Edeena came apart in his hands. Her murmurs transformed into a frantic rush of words, she gripped his shoulders hard, whether to move him or hold him steady he wasn’t sure, and a moment later her body went absolutely rigid for a long, impossible moment of sheer feminine power, then she jerked with an explosive movement. Her head sank bank in the cushions, her body quaked, and he rode out the tail of her orgasm while showering her legs and her belly with kisses, willingly shifting up in her arms again as she reached for him, holding him tight. “My . . . my God, Vince,” she finally muttered shakily.

  He lifted his gaze to hers, unable to stop his grin. “Welcome to America.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Edeena allowed Vince to pull her up off the couch, unsurprised her legs were so shaky. “I’m significantly underdressed here.”

  Heat flared again as he cast a glance back, his eyes dark with intensity. “I applaud that, for the record. Whenever you feel like going naked around me, be my guest.”

  “Mm.” She stopped him as he moved again, her hand on his sleeve. “I’m also feeling a little out of place.”

  He froze, clearly surprised, but she didn’t correct his dismay at first, instead using the opportunity to step close to him. Catching the hem of his shirt, she pulled it up, and he lifted his arms obligingly to allow her to strip it from his upper body.

  Vince was radiating nearly as much heat as she was, and Edeena placed both of his hands on his pecs, savoring the hard planks of warmth beneath her palms. “Looks like someone works out,” she murmured, drawing her fingers down to his abs, which knotted at her touch.

  “All part of the job, ma’am,” Vince said tightly, but he didn’t move as she traced a light touch along the edge of his cargo pants. She could see the rim of his boxer briefs, and she dipped a finger behind it tracing it around to his waist.

  “Is this part of the job, too?” she asked, dropping her hand farther to grace the stiff line of his erection. Vince hissed as she drew her hand down then up against the sturdy cloth of his pants. Clearly the cloth wasn’t so thick that he couldn’t feel the pressure, feel it and respond to it with an urgency that made her smile.

  It was good to know she wasn’t the only one in desperate need here.

  She reached out and flicked open the clasp of his pants, then peeled them down and away. Somewhere along the line, Vince had kicked off his shoes and socks, and he stepped out of his pants easily, leaving him only in his boxers. The movement took him a few feet away from her, and she held up a hand to stop him when he would have closed the gap once more.

  “Let me look,” she said, and she turned him slightly so that the full reflected light of the harbor splashed across his body.

  My God, he’s built. She’d known about the shoulders, suspected that the chest would be thick and heavily muscled. But she didn’t expect the whip-cut abs, the muscles arrowing downward beneath the band of his boxer briefs. Those briefs stretched over narrow hips and then much heavier thighs, corded with muscle. “You don’t run, do you?”

  He barked a laugh. “No. Too much weight to do that to my knees. I bike, and my cousins run a roofing business where I help out on occasion. Climbing up and down ladders all day will keep you in shape.”

  “It definitely has.” She stepped back into the shadow of his body, savoring his touch as his thick arms came around her again, his hand warm and smooth along her back. He bent her into him and she felt another flare of heat as the obvious evidence of his reaction pressed into her belly.

  For another second, she pressed her head against his chest, willing the moment to last well beyond this night, this week, this idyll here in a foreign country. It couldn’t, of course, and she sighed against Vince’s warm skin, allowing the sound of his steadily beating heart to lull her into her own sense of relaxation.

  “Hey,” he murmured, tightening his arms around her as he spoke into her hair. “We don’t have to do anything else, Edeena. My night’s already pretty much perfect.”

  Edeena smiled against him, hugging him more firmly for the lie. She shifted ever so slightly against his shaft and didn’t miss the hitch in Vince’s breath, then leaned back to look at him, the arcing movement of her body serving to intensify the intimate touch, not lessen it.

  “Don’t think for a moment you’re not going to finish what you’ve started here,” she said, and a curl of pure feminine delight spread through her at the change in his expression—the hope, the almost desperate need flashing through his eyes. “You have a bedroom, I suppose?”

  “You suppose correctly.” Vince’s voice was strained as he turned, and Edeena let him lead her into the room, realizing as she watched that he was practically trembling in front of her. A new and different sensation washed over her, one she wasn’t sure how to handle: power.

  She wasn’t a stranger to sex, but the men she’d been with up to now had been little more than grown-up kids compared to Vince—college friends and sweethearts, as unused to hard work and the realities of life as she was. Vince wasn’t simply a few years older, he’d been working on his own for nearly a decade. He was big and brawny and . . . and he was trembling with desire at the thought of her touch. At the thought of making love to her.

  It was like nothing else she’d ever experienced in her life, and she wanted more. A lot more.

  “Nice,” she murmured as they stepped into the bedroom. Thick curtains hung half-drawn, allowing light to play over the bed, but keeping the rest of the room in heavy shadow. She let Vince advance further, pulling the covers back on the bed, but when he looked back at her questioningly, she gestured him to keep going, only approaching the bed once he’d climbed into it. There was a tense, curious expression on his face, and she chuckled, warming to the possibilities—thrilling to them, really. She’d never felt safer with someone, so certain that she was in good hands.

  She’d never felt so wanted, either. Not for her money, her social status, or even for her good attitude and caring demeanor. Vince wanted—her body. Pure and simple. And she wanted to give it to him.

  But first, she wanted to play.

  “Do you mind if I . . .” she let the question hang as she leaned over the bed, reaching for the waistband of his boxer briefs. Vince didn’t resist as she pulled the briefs down over his powerful legs, didn’t object as she clambered up onto the fine cotton sheets, sinking into the plush mattress.

  But when she positioned herself between his legs, tilting down, he lifted a hand to her shoulder. “Edeena,” he said, and in that word was everything she was sure he couldn’t quite bring himself to say—that she didn’t need to do this, that he wasn’t expecting anything of her, that he should be pleasuring her, not the other way around. The words seemed lodged in his throat, however, and she brushed off his hand.

  “Just a taste,” she murmured, then smiled as Vince’s groan followed her as she leaned forward to the sharp planes of muscle above his thighs.

  Vince’s sensibilities may have tried to spare her, but his body was definitely on board with the program.

  Edeena lifted a cool hand and drew it along the edge of his thick shaft, stroking the soft skin that strained against her touch. Up, then down again; up, then down; her mouth hovering ever closer as Vince’s hands flattened on the bed on either side of his hips, clearly requiring a huge effort of control not to grab her.

  She liked that she was causing him to twitch so tightly beneath her soft touch, and liked even more the strangled hiss as she circled the base of his shaft with her thumb and forefinger, tightening the pressure as her tongue darted out for that taste she’d warned him about.

&
nbsp; Vince bit out a muffled curse.

  Taking that as approval, she edged forward another inch, drawing her tongue down the side of his shaft and up again, repeating the movement she’d made with her fingers. When he drew breath to speak—to tell her to stop or to keep going?—she shifted position suddenly and took him into her mouth, plunging over him in a quick, smooth movement.

  Vince’s words stopped short. She pulled up, then sank down again, learning the rhythm of his body, his garbled sighs and twitching muscles, feeling the pulse of his heartbeat through her fingers. She nipped and licked and tasted, lifting away just long enough to come up with some new variation to try, before sinking back over him again.

  She’d never enjoyed this particular act so much, she realized, half mesmerized by the wave of need building inside her as well. She could keep this up all night.

  If she didn’t knock it off in the next thirty seconds, Vince was going to seriously lose his mind. And his cool. And probably kill the woman with the force of his reaction if she didn’t duck and run for cover.

  It was bad enough what she was doing to him with her mouth. But the way she was positioned, with her hair falling over his thighs and the curve of her ass silhouetted against the Charleston harbor lights . . . he didn’t think he was ever going to get that image out of his mind. Staring at it now was almost enough to throw him over the edge, and the woman had barely gotten started.

  “Edeena,” he said roughly, and she finally—exquisitely slow and with no real appreciation for how close he was to a heart attack—pulled back to gaze up at him with her dark, liquid eyes. She kept her left hand on his cock, only now, her right slipped down to cradle his balls, and he had to close his eyes for a minute, steeling himself against the new assault. “Jesus, you’re killing me here.”

  “That sounds bad,” she murmured. He took advantage of the fact that he could reach her and leaned forward enough to taste her lips, the salt and heat of her mouth tantalizingly close. She slid her hands off him and lifted them to brace herself against his hips, her touch almost tentative, unused to the feel of him.

  But it was the soft touch of those long, slender fingers on yet a new part of his anatomy that did it. Though he suspected at a deep level she wanted to control her every move, he couldn’t help himself. He snaked his arms around her and pulled her close, his heart surging with renewed energy as she gave a startled laugh, sprawling over his body as dragged her toward him. Her legs naturally fell to either side of his hips, and in another breath, the very hot center of her was pressed up right against his already hair-trigger cock, and the resulting convulsion of said third party made her eyes go wide.

  He held her gaze with his, not giving her a chance to look away. “Edeena, you know how we talked about your behavior when you were with me, in the event of a crisis?” he said tightly.

  The question completely threw her, but she blinked, nodding quickly. “I . . . I’m to do whatever you say, exactly as you say, and I can yell at you later if you ask me to do something I take issue with.”

  “Exactly,” Vince gritted out. “We . . . are in the middle of a crisis.”

  Her brows went up, and amusement danced in her eyes as she realized the exact nature of the crisis. Somehow, impossibly, she seemed to grow even hotter, and the warm, damp heat surrounded Vince’s cock with what was tantamount to an engraved invitation to come on inside. And he wanted to—God, did he want to—but not like this. Not yet.

  “Dressing table, top drawer,” he said, and Edeena nodded as gravely as she was able, though a smile tweaked the edge of her lips.

  “The table right there?” she asked, shifting her body and sitting more upright, so that her breasts swayed in front of Vince’s face. Her beautiful, full, perfect breasts that even now bobbed not an inch in front of his mouth, begging him to kiss, nuzzle . . .

  His cock twitched dangerously again, and Edeena chose that minute to wriggle closer, sliding her body an inch higher against him, dangerously close to positioning herself exactly where she shouldn’t.

  “Sorry,” she murmured, now stretching languorously over him. “Brace me?”

  Left with no other choice, Vince planted his hands on Edeena’s rounded ass, grinding her into him as she reached the top drawer of his nightstand. After what seemed like several years of searching, she dragged something out and rolled back, introducing him to a fresh layer of exquisite torture as she returned to her upright position.

  She waved the foil package at him. “I’m not terribly practiced with these,” she murmured. “Can I watch?”

  His traitorous cock gave the answer for him, and Edeena fell back, returning to her knees between his legs as he ripped the condom package open.

  “Just a minute,” she murmured and she dipped forward again and once more slid her hot, wet mouth over him, inch by inch, pleasure and need intertwining so much that it was going to be a fucking miracle if he got the condom on himself the first time, the way his hands were shaking.

  Then again, the sooner he was done with that, the sooner he could feel Edeena’s body surrounding him, the tight heat of her pressing close, the—

  Edeena rocked back a moment before he started pleading, and he sheathed himself in one savage thrust, tossing the wrapper away and trying to stabilize his breathing. It was no use, however. No sooner did he brace his hands on the mattress than Edeena was on top of him again, straddling his legs as she pushed his shoulders back into the pillows.

  “Edeena, sweetheart, I—”

  “Shh,” she said, and a moment later she was positioned over him perfectly, sliding down over him in one slick movement.

  Vince couldn’t help it, he gritted out a half-gasp, half-moan, the tight heat of her so much more intense than he’d expected, the rush of sensation spiraling up within him, demanding its release. Edeena rocked forward and he realized he’d closed his eyes. Snapping them open now, he was greeted once again with her impossibly tantalizing curves, her olive-toned skin soft and supple beneath his rough palms. She sighed with unmistakable pleasure as he closed his hands over her hips, grinding her into him with deep, rhythmic thrusts.

  He looked up still further, and he was almost undone by the rapt intensity of Edeena’s face. She was staring at him, her own gaze riveted as if she planned to memorize every nuance, every shift of his expression. Framed by the lights of the harbor streaming in through the window, she had to be the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen—and she was here, he thought with the ragged edge of his mind. She was his. He couldn’t keep her, he would never even try. But for right now, there was nothing to stop him from making her his own.

  “What’re you thinking,” she murmured, leaning down close to him. He sat up more sharply then, taking her mouth with his, his arms snaking around her body to keep them joined as with one quick roll, he reversed their positions, pinning her beneath him with the intimate pressure of their joined bodies. Her hair spilled around her on the pillows and she laughed, the sound one of sheer delight.

  “You were thinking you wanted to flip me over?” she asked, and he grinned down at her.

  “I’m a big fan of acting on my instincts.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” Her eyes widened then as he began to move inside her, gently at first, slowly, watching as she stretched beneath him on the bed, her knees bending so she could take him in more deeply.

  “Oh . . . yes,” she managed and the low, throaty purr of her words sent his own desire ratcheting up higher again, his pulse beginning to hammer as his gaze swept across her face, her shoulders, the rise and fall of her breasts, the swell of her hips. Her knees bent further and suddenly her legs were rising as well. He caught them in his hands, shifting them so that her calves rested against his shoulders, and she moaned as the position allowed him to sink more deeply into her, pulsing once . . . twice . . .

  He could no more stop the flood of pleasure that coursed over him than he could stop a runaway train, and his orgasm caught him almost by surprise. His eyes locked on Edee
na’s as he convulsed against her, his mind turned inside out. She cried out, too, whether in surprise or shared release he didn’t know, couldn’t know. All he could hear was the pounding in his own brain, the surge of adrenaline, of need mixing with the utter rightness of having her here with him, perfect and right.

  They broke apart and sagged to either side of the bed, Vince up on his feet before the lethargy of his release caught too firm a hold and he lost all will to live, let alone move. He stepped into the bathroom and was back out again within thirty seconds, bearing towels. Edeena curled up on the bed, her beautiful face looking perfectly sated, blissfully content. Exactly as he imagined her, all the way down to her sultry, accented chuckle as she held out her arms.

  “I think America should consider you one of its national treasures, Vince Rallis,” she murmured as he sank down into her embrace. “I should think it would never let you go.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Edeena’s eyes drifted open as a bright shaft of sunlight lanced across the room, and it was only by squinting that she realized it was coming through a slit in the heavy drape of blackout curtains.

  Behind her, his arms still curled around her, Vince groaned. “If I don’t shut them exactly right, I pay for it every morning around this time.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said. Slipping out of his arms she pushed off the covers and stepped onto the thick rug. In the chair next to the bed, a plush robe rested, and she glanced back to Vince.

  “When did this arrive?” she asked.