Kelly Hunter - Paradise Nights

He smoothed his hands over those golden shoulders, played his hands along her arms until his hands found hers and he set them palm to palm, smiling a little at the contrast. She had beautiful hands, smooth, feminine. A direct contrast to his much larger, rougher hands, and one that pleased him. She studied their joined hands with a tilt to her lips that told her the contrast amused her too, and then she threaded her fingers through his and made his hands prisoners.

‘You’d rather I didn’t touch you?’ he queried as her lips traced a path from his jaw to the edge of his mouth. ‘That’s a pity.’

‘I do want you to touch me,’ she assured him. ‘Soon. Very soon. But it’s very distracting and that’s not good, because right now I’m the one who’s doing the distracting.’

‘You’re right. You’re absolutely right,’ he murmured, closing his fingers over hers. ‘But you’ll let me know when you’re done with that?’

‘Of course.’ Her lips met his for a kiss so deeply drugging that he groaned beneath the onslaught.

‘Are you done yet?’ he demanded raggedly.

‘No.’ Another kiss followed, more potent than the first.

‘How about now?’

‘Patience, flyboy.’ But she punctuated her remark by loosening her grasp on his hands as she arched back, her body undulating ever so gently against his—like the lapping of the tide—and any patience he might have laid claim to disappeared beneath a wave of exquisite pleasure.

His hands left hers to slide over her skin, over her belly button, over the thin cotton material of those little white shorts, as he played his knuckles across the area just above where his body met hers. Back and forth, back and forth, while his body demanded more.

‘I think I’m done distracting you,’ she whispered.

‘You’re sure?’

She looked down to where his hand played over those little white shorts and shuddered hard against him, all feminine strength and outrageous heat. ‘Positive.’

‘Because I’d hate to rush you.’

Her eyes met his, dark and needy, as her fingers found her bikini string and tugged it loose. ‘You’re not.’

Her breasts were full and round, dusky tipped and perfect, and fitted his hands as if they belonged there. She gasped, her hands coming up to cover his as she pushed against him. She knew this game, revelled in it, and, heaven help them both, so did he.

With a ragged groan he wrapped his arms around her waist and her behind, carried her to the day-bed in the corner of the room, and tumbled her onto it.

Her clothes went, his did, and his need turned fierce.

He feasted on her lips, her skin, her breasts, and everywhere he touched she responded with a sigh, a shudder, a whimper. Tight, so tightly responsive, her eyes as black as her hair, hot colour riding high on her cheeks as he eased inside her, back and forth, each time filling her that little bit more.

She reared up beneath him, her hands clutching at his arms and her lips finding his for a kiss that seared clear through to his soul. He’d had lovers before, bedmates he’d enjoyed, but no one had ever played him like this. Not like this.

‘More,’ she whispered as he rolled onto his back, bringing her with him, still buried inside her.

‘You’ll get it.’ He found her centre with his thumb, and she found a rhythm guaranteed to send him soaring, arching back, her breath coming in short sharp gasps. And then he was flying apart, touching the sky, taking her with him as he emptied himself into her and gave her what she asked for.

She laughed in the aftermath. Deliciously satisfied laughter that slid through Pete’s body as he lay on his back, his hands still holding her in place while his muscles twitched and rippled in response to the demands he’d placed on them. So much for finesse. For taking his time . Taking the edge off his hunger for her.

The only thing he’d well and truly taken, he thought ruefully, was Serena. ‘You okay?’ he asked huskily. Not a question he normally had to ask. Usually, he made sure of it somewhere along the way. Usually, he didn’t lose his mind .

‘I swear I just went to heaven,’ she said, and laughed some more. ‘Am I dead?’

‘You have a pulse.’ He could feel it, intimately. ‘You’re not dead.’ Judging by his returning hardness, neither was he. Yet.

‘What’s that?’ she asked as he stirred inside her.

‘A minor miracle.’ Possibly an opportunity to show her he could be a civilised lover when he put his mind to it. Of course, first he had to find his mind. ‘You did say you wanted more.’

Her lips curved as she trailed lazy fingers up his arms towards his shoulders. ‘So I did.’

‘I aim to please,’ he told her, rolling her over onto her back before setting his lips to the corner of her mouth, the underside of her jaw, the curve of her neck, and then lower still, to a part of her he’d rushed over earlier.

‘Oh, you do.’ He closed his lips over her nipple and bit down gently, and she gasped and arched beneath him as her hands threaded though his hair, urgent and demanding. ‘You really do.’

PETE BENNETT was both passionate and extremely thorough when he put his mind to it, decided Serena some half an hour later as she stood beneath a lukewarm shower. Pete had showered with her briefly, kissing her senseless beneath the spray, and, cursing her roundly as his body responded to hers again, had made himself scarce.

She watched him through the gap between the shower curtain and the cubicle as he dried off and pulled on his shorts and then his shirt. Such a tough, hard body. Such pleasure to be found from exploring it. He had another scar, in addition to the one on his shoulder. This one was nasty—a couple of centimetres wide running across his lower back. She couldn’t be sure but it looked like a burn of some kind, maybe a rope burn, and she wondered what the hell had been on the other end of that rope to carve a gash that deep. He was a warrior, this man, never mind the façade. Beneath his reckless, charming ways lay the heart of a fighter.

Right this minute her warrior was a very sated man, she’d stake her life on it. His body had been to heaven and back. She knew this because he’d taken her with him. His brain, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have made the trip at all.

She stepped out of the shower and met his gaze in the mirror, hers questioning, his bleak.

‘Light-hearted,’ he said grimly.

‘Yes.’

‘And brief.’

‘Yes.’

‘Civilised.’ His eyes were anything but.

‘You forgot exclusive,’ she told him.

‘I didn’t forget.’ He turned around to scowl down at her, a thoroughly disgruntled dark angel, all the way from the spikes of his midnight black hair right down to his toes. ‘This is a disaster,’ he said as he pulled her closer. ‘You’re a disaster.’ And with a kiss so unguardedly needy she trembled beneath the force of it, he turned on his heel and left the bathroom.

Pete sagged against the bathroom door the minute he closed it, willing himself not to go back in there, willing his feet to take him down the corridor and out of the cottage and to keep on walking, straight down the hill to the village. He needed to think. To regain the balance he’d lost in the arms of a siren.

One step. He dragged his extremely happy body away from the door and took it. And stopped abruptly as he looked up, straight at Nico—at Nico and Sam— who stood beside him.

‘We’re gonna cook the sea bass I caught this morning,’ said Sam. ‘Me and Nico. And we’re inviting Chloe and Serena and you to come and help us eat it for dinner.’