Charmed: Destiny Romance (7 page)

‘Yes.’ Mel pressed her head back into the pillow, nearly mindless with pleasure. ‘Now.’

‘Now? Are you sure, now? Because it seems to me as if you might be about to come.’

‘Yes.’

‘So which is it?’

‘Yes.’

Thankfully, he seemed to realise she was beyond conversation, because he stopped talking. Instead he lowered his mouth to her breast, sucking the tip between his lips as he kept up the tempo between her legs.

It was just the extra stimulation she needed. The pressure of his fingers inside her, the pulse on her clit, the wet heat of his mouth on her nipple . . .

‘Yes!’

Mel’s back arched and fluorescent white fireworks went off behind her eyelids as her body convulsed, a wave of pleasure centred low in her belly radiating outwards into sparks that flew to the very tips of her fingers and toes. He kept her at the peak, bouncing from exquisite agony to exquisite agony until she finally had to suck in a deep, ragged breath.

‘Oh, God,’ she said with a long sigh, her body collapsing to the mattress.

‘I’d say “no, archangel” again, but that’d be repeating myself.’ His words were carefree, but his voice was rough.

His fingers stilled against her, slipping out of her body and simply resting against her sex, cupping her, as if holding her together. She needed it.

When she finally opened her eyes, it was to meet his gaze.

She swallowed hard, rattled by the intensity of her orgasm and the passionate heat of his stare.

‘Now,’ she said.

One corner of his mouth lifted in a tiny smile. ‘Yeah?’

She nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘Okay. Gimme a sec.’

He rolled away and opened the drawer of his bedside table, rummaging around for a condom. By the time he rolled back to face her, he was ready to go.

Mel’s body had been slowly coming down from her peak, but the sight of him, his cock so hard and big, was enough to have her stirring again and ready for more.

Before he could move over her, Mel threw her leg over his hips and snuggled in tight, pressing their bodies together as they lay side-by-side. She made sure to line them up so his erection was nestled tight against her slit.

Michael’s arm went around her, pressing her to him, at the same time as he raised a warning eyebrow at her. ‘I’m on a pretty short leash here, sweetheart.’

Mel just smiled. With the slightest movement of her hips she could slip against him, sliding up and down the solid length of his cock.

‘That’s so good,’ she said with a sigh.

‘Hmm.’

The noise Michael made was half growl, half groan. He let her continue to stroke him for a few moments, but then he suddenly announced, ‘Enough!’ and flipped her on to her back. Before she could take a breath, he was over her, poised and ready.

He waited for her to make eye contact and as soon as she did he began to press inside her. Mel arched into him and wrapped one leg around his hips to let him sink deeper. When he was finally all the way in, their pelvises locked together, he leaned down to kiss her lightly.

‘Okay?’ was all he said.

Mel could only nod and dig her fingers into his back.

Then he moved, and it was déjà vu – Mel remembered back in the shop when he’d first appeared, this sensation of him buried inside her and how it had made her knees buckle. She could only be grateful that this time – now that it was real – she was lying down, and need do nothing but take her pleasure.

Michael hooked his hand under her knee, spreading her wider, speeding up his thrusts. And then Mel had no room for thoughts, only feelings. Only the rasp of his stubble against the soft skin of her throat as he leaned down to kiss her, the tickle of the hairs on his legs against hers, the press of his body on top of hers, the heat and strength of his cock inside her.

Her body was winding up to orgasm again despite having been so recently satisfied. The bump of his hips against hers, the thrust of him hitting the perfect spot inside, it was too much. She couldn’t control the mounting sensations and simply had to go along for the ride – crying out in mingled surprise and pleasure when her body crested, her muscles contracting around him.

‘Michael!’

‘God, you feel so good, baby.’

He kept moving, prolonging her peak. ‘That’s it,’ he encouraged. ‘Yeah. You look so beautiful.’

‘You,’ Mel gasped, hoping he’d understand what she meant.

‘Yeah.’ His voice was even grittier now, nothing more than a growl. ‘I’m gonna.’

He was moving fast, fierce, powerful thrusts that had Mel digging her fingernails into his arms, not caring if she left marks.

Then he groaned, his face twisting with pleasure, his rhythm faltering as ecstasy overtook him.

He was truly divine – an angel of bliss, both hers and his own.

Michael shuddered and collapsed, rolling to the side to spare her his weight. For long moments they simply lay together, breathing heavily.

Michael disappeared to the bathroom to take care of the condom, returning with a glass of water that he offered to her.

‘That was quite a workout. Don’t forget to rehydrate.’

Mel giggled, which was silly, but she couldn’t help it. And she drained half the glass before handing it back to him. Michael drank the rest and then climbed back into bed, spooning against her back.

Snuggled into his warmth, her body replete, Mel realised that she had never, in her entire life, felt this peaceful. Whether her crystal ring was just doing a very good job, or Michael’s neighbours were all far away, there was no background chatter humming in her mind, no threads of other people’s thoughts crowding in over her own. And from Michael? All she sensed from him was the same sleepy satisfaction that was suffusing her own body.

His arm, heavy across her belly, tightened to pull her closer. And Mel surrendered to sleep.

A slamming door in the distance woke Michael and he stretched and groaned. But it was a satisfied, all-is-well-with-the-world kind of groan. The kind you’d see from an alpha lion on a wildlife documentary after it had fought off a challenger and won the lioness.

Beside him, Mel lay sleeping on her belly, head turned to the side, arms flung out as if she was falling.

He checked his watch – five p.m.
What a day!
It certainly hadn’t been anything like the day he’d predicted when he’d woken up right here in this bed this morning. Not that he was complaining.

He ran a finger lightly down Mel’s back, relishing her smooth skin and her pervasive scent of flowers and sex. But before he could plan some kind of delicious wake-up for her, his stomach growled loudly, protesting its emptiness. Although the breakfast he’d eaten before the museum had been substantial, the ice cream that had been their only food since wasn’t terribly sustaining.

‘Mel?’

She didn’t stir.

‘Mel?’ he tried again. This time he wriggled down next to her, wrapping an arm across her back and pulling her across the bed and into him.

‘Mmm.’ Mel made a gloriously sexy sound, half a sleepy sound of protest, half a rumbly purr of pleasure, and simply snuggled her head into his chest. Her legs threaded with his and her hand went to his shoulder, and suddenly there was nowhere Michael wanted to be but this bed. He’d starve to death, if necessary, because this was too good to leave.

‘W’as time?’ Mel mumbled without opening her eyes.

‘About five.’

‘Morning or afternoon?’

He chuckled. ‘Afternoon.’

‘That all?’ He felt her smile against his skin. ‘Best sleep ever.’

‘Yeah,’ he agreed. They’d napped for an hour at most, but he realised now he felt refreshed in a way that full nights of sleep hadn’t achieved for a long time. Not since last year. And especially not these past couple of weeks, since his father had banished him and Annie had gone along with it. There was something about Mel that helped him to feel calm. She still puzzled him in all sorts of ways, but he couldn’t deny the strange
rightness
of the feeling of her being here in his bed.

His stomach announced its displeasure again – incredibly loud in the quiet room.

Mel laughed and blinked up at him. ‘Was that you?’

‘Guilty. We didn’t have lunch.’

‘We had ice cream.’

‘Not really a nutritious meal.’

‘But you ate all that bacon at breakfast.’

‘Hours ago!’

‘Okay, okay. And I guess we’ve had quite a bit of exercise since then.’ She gave him a cheeky smile. ‘What with the
yoga
and all.’

He couldn’t help smiling back. ‘That we have. All that
yoga.
’

She licked her lips. ‘So I suppose you need feeding before I ask you to provide round two?’

The very idea sent a rush of blood south, hunger be damned.

Mel’s eyebrows raised. Close as she was, she couldn’t help but feel him stirring.

She laughed. ‘Or maybe not.’

‘Ignore that. It’s not terribly rational.’

‘Perhaps not, but I’m not ignoring it. It’s too yummy and I hardly had a chance to get acquainted with it earlier.’

His brain was obviously slow to catch on with everything today, because it took a moment for him to work out what Mel’s head burrowing beneath the covers actually meant. And it wasn’t until he felt the lick of her tongue that he realised exactly what she had in mind.

He rolled on to his back and tunnelled a hand through his hair.

‘Christ, Mel, you’re going to kill me.’

A muffled chuckle was her only response, quickly followed by the sensation of his cock being enveloped in the wet heat of her mouth.

Michael lifted the covers and threw them back, partly to give Mel air, but more selfishly so he could see her working on him. The light was dim in the room – so he stretched out one arm and snapped on the bedside light, throwing a golden glow over the most erotic sight he could hope to imagine. Mel’s pink little tongue flicking against the head of his cock, her eyes looking up at him, sparkling with a mixture of mischief and arousal.

‘Seriously. If I have a heart attack and die right now, just put something on my grave like, “He died a happy man.” You could include a picture, if you want. If the cemetery will allow it.’

Mel laughed while her mouth was still surrounding him, and the vibrations sent another thrill of pleasure through his entire body.

He groaned and at the same time, his stomach yowled again.

Mel rested her chin on his thigh with wide eyes. ‘Seriously? That thing sounds angry.’

‘Hungry, not angry.’ This was the strangest conversation he’d ever had with a woman propped up right next to his aching cock.

‘You didn’t hear it from down here.’

Michael snorted a laugh. ‘If it’s going to be a distraction, perhaps we should go get some food first. Maybe we can continue this after dinner?’

A shuttered expression came over her face that sent a bolt of concern through him. ‘What?’

She paused before speaking. ‘We did say this was only going to be one day.’ Her voice was quiet.

Yeah. One day. A ‘day off’. Michael knew he should be grateful to have found a woman who didn’t expect more from him than what they’d originally agreed. Wasn’t that what all men wanted? But when he thought about waking up tomorrow morning with no more Mel in his life, the only feeling he could identify was a weird blankness. But he should be used to that by now. That was pretty much how his life had been recently. Apart from today.

‘We did say
one day
,’ he said. ‘But the day lasts until midnight, right?’

She brightened at that idea. ‘At midnight we turn into pumpkins?’ she asked.

‘Yes, absolutely. Midnight is pumpkin time.’

‘Good. Because there are a few other things I’d like to try out.’

‘Oh, really?’ Michael’s cock, which had begun to flag with the seriousness of the conversation, perked up at that idea.

‘Yes, really.’

‘Now, can I finish what I started?’

‘With pleasure.’

After a very satisfactory conclusion, punctuated only by his stomach’s insistent demand to satisfy a hunger of a different kind and Mel’s giggles in response, they pulled on their clothes and prepared to head out into the evening to find food.

At the door, Mel paused.

‘I wouldn’t have picked you as a surfer.’

She was standing beside the blue-and-yellow-striped surfboard that stood just inside the front door to his apartment.

Michael hesitated before answering. ‘Er, I’m . . . not. Not really.’

Had it been that long since he’d had a woman in his apartment? Long enough that there’d been no strangers through since the surfboard had come to live here – no strangers who’d think to comment on the incongruous item.

‘So it’s just for looks, then?’ She raised an eyebrow, and he couldn’t blame her. It’d be like putting a guitar stand in the living room if you didn’t play guitar. Pretty wanky.

‘No it’s . . . it was my older brother’s.’

‘Was?’

‘He died. Cancer. Last year.’ September nineteenth. Around three-ish in the afternoon – Michael hadn’t thought to check the exact time when his mother had called. Only four months after Dave had been first diagnosed – not that he’d told anyone when that had happened. No, he’d waited until Michael had been on a plane to the other side of the world to break the news to the rest of the family.

‘Oh, Michael. I’m so sorry.’ Mel looked close to tears. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t know.’

He shrugged. ‘How could you know? I didn’t mention it.’

‘I know, but usually I . . .’ She trailed off. ‘So he was a surfer?’ she asked after a pause.

‘Yeah. Pretty good, too. Tried to get me into it, but I was never as good as he was. Never even owned my own board – just used to borrow one of his.’ But this board was his favourite – Dave never loaned her out.

‘Could you stand up?’

‘On the board? Yeah, when I was practising. Dave was a good teacher. He was always teaching me something.’ The consummate big brother. And Michael had worshipped him, just the way a little brother was supposed to do. Dave was into surfing? Michael had tried his best. Dave wanted to be an accountant and join their father’s firm? That’s what Michael was going to do, too. Somehow, it had never been a competition. They had simply been best mates.

Mel stroked a finger down the dusty but still-waxy surface of the board. ‘I’ve always wanted to try.’

‘If Dave was here, I’d get him to take you out. He was a good teacher.’

‘Maybe you could teach me?’

He shook his head. ‘No. I’m no good. And besides, I haven’t been out for over a year.’ Probably since before he went to South America. Yeah, that’d been the last time – braving the chilly winter waters down at Rye Back Beach with Dave for one last surf before the end-of-financial-year insanity. It was probably the last time he’d seen Dave outside the office, too, before Michael had headed off on his annual overseas escape and come home to the devastating news. By then Dave was already in hospital for the last time.

‘Something tells me this board would like to get back out in the surf,’ Mel said. There was a strange tone to her voice – similar to the way she spoke during the aborted reading she’d done for him.

‘Is that your psychic senses tingling, or are you just being kind?’

‘A bit of both.’

‘Okay.’

‘But still, I like that you have it here, on display. It doesn’t exactly match, but it kind of works.’ She gave it one last pat and then stepped towards where Michael stood at the door.

He locked up on automatic pilot, absorbed in memories, leading her down the stairs and to the car in silence.

The surfboard wasn’t standing in the hallway as some kind of decoration. He hadn’t brought it home and then given careful consideration to where it would best fit; where the light would show it off best. No. He’d brought it home and then dumped it as soon as he’d got inside the door. On that awful day he’d managed to hold it together, through the funeral and through the ridiculous ‘wake’ that his parents had hosted at their house. Dave’s girlfriend, Becky, had called Michael out to her car and insisted he take the board there and then – telling him through her tears that Dave had made her promise she’d give it to Michael. She’d been so broken up, he couldn’t bring himself to refuse, even though he wanted to. He didn’t want anything to do with Dave’s life – let alone a six-foot-long reminder that couldn’t conveniently be shoved to the back of a cupboard.

Michael had brought it home and had only managed to get two steps inside the door before he’d collapsed. The board had ended up right where he’d curled up on the floor, and there it had stayed.

It was a daily reminder of how quickly life could change. How much you stood to lose. How easily someone you loved could treat you like a child and betray you.

‘What do you feel like?’ Mel asked.

The question made no sense to him. ‘Huh?’

‘Food, oh-boy-with-the-noisy-stomach. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already?’

‘No, I have definitely not forgotten.’ His stomach was still demanding, but now it was a kind of gnawing emptiness – the kind of emptiness that had been shadowing him for months.

‘If you didn’t have any preference, I’d like something Asian – Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian. I feel like something spicy.’

Michael shook his head to clear it. He’d just had an amazing afternoon. He was in the company of a beautiful woman who’d not only agreed to go out to dinner with him, but to come back to his place again for sexy times afterwards. Now was not the time to come down with a case of the melancholies. It was time to be charming and have some fun. This was their one day out of life. Damned if he was going to spend it moping like he did every other damn day of his damn life.

‘Sure. Let’s head to Acland Street – there are plenty of choices there.’

Mel couldn’t help the spring in her step. Even the busy street wasn’t bothering her – although it was the kind of place she’d typically avoid. Her crystal ring was only so effective, and a crush of dozens of people in close proximity was normally too much for her. But not tonight. For some reason the voices in her head were muted almost to silence. It was as if the bubble around Michael that stopped her from reading him had extended to include her.

‘How about here?’ Michael asked, stopping in front of a Malaysian restaurant.

‘Sounds good.’

They got a table and ordered wine and a few dishes to share. The waitress brought them a plate of roti bread and peanut sauce almost instantly and both of them dived in – although Michael’s stomach had been the noisy one, now that she was here surrounded by the smell of food, Mel found that she was starving, too.

‘S good,’ Michael said with his mouth full.

‘Mmm,’ Mel agreed, her mouth also full.

They looked at each other and both laughed before reaching for the plate and fighting to tear the roti to see who could get the largest piece.

‘Think we better order another one,’ Michael said once there were only crumbs left on the plate.

‘Yes!’ Mel attracted the attention of a passing waitress, making their request.

She smiled and chewed and did her best to enjoy the glowy feeling that was radiating from somewhere deep inside her. Yes, it was only for a day. Tomorrow, life would go back to her usual mundane, boring, lonely psychic-seer routine, replete with the restrictions from the Magic Council.

Mel knew firsthand that life wasn’t fair. She’d lived with the knowledge that her father would always be disappointed that she’d been born a girl. The knowledge that her mother was often annoyed – and scared – by Mel’s special needs as she was growing up and her abilities began to manifest. The teasing and ridicule of magical friends. The silent criticism of strangers.

If Michael was only hers for a day, she was going to take that day and wring every scrap of life out of it, if only so that she could live on the memories afterwards.

An older couple were pushing through the small space next to their table in the crowded restaurant when the woman stopped, putting a hand to her throat.