Claimed: Gowns & Crowns, Book 3 (18 page)

“Sure,” she said, drawing out the syllable as she tilted her head. “You’re not going to tie me to the bed or anything are you?”

He lifted his brows. “Would you like that?”

To his surprise, she winked. “No. Not until I’ve saved your life and you owe me big. I have a feeling you can tie a hell of a square knot, and I’d need to make sure you let me go.”

“Mmm.” The thought of Nicki tied to the bed was more arousing than he would have expected. Not because he wanted to dominate her, either. Even locked in chains, he suspected that Nicki wouldn’t be easily dominated.

No, this had more to do with giving her the attention and care he was sure she’d never claim for herself. For having the leisure to treat her the way he wanted to treat her. If he needed to tie her up to make that happen, then he would, eventually. But he wondered if he didn’t need to…if all he needed to do was ask.

His body responded with swift and insistent urgency, and he tightened his jaw against its intensity. He tousled Nicki’s hair with a second towel, then threw it aside. Then he pulled her to the door.

“What about you?” she asked.

“I’ll dry.” Turning swiftly, he caught her up in his arms, her natural athleticism making the move easier as she anticipated his movement and braced herself on his shoulders.

“Should it bother me that you’ve been carried before?”

She grinned. “Team adventure races. Sometimes it’s just easier to throw me.”

Before she finished the words he tested the theory out, tossing her toward the bed as she burst into startled laughter. He followed as quickly, climbing onto the bed and tangling them both in the sheets.

“See? I told you I would dry off.”

“Not by using me as a towel!” she protested, but she wrapped her arms around him anyway. “Now I’m all wet again.”

“I was counting on it,” Stefan said, and he lowered his mouth to hers to give her a searching kiss before breaking away again. “You’re right, though, you’re definitely good at being thrown.” He nuzzled her lips. “How good are you at lying still?”

“That depends.” She scooted up onto the pillows, smiling as he propped himself on one arm. “Am I lying in a shallow ditch while a fire is racing over me, or lying in a sleeping bag with a bug crawling over me?”

“Nothing so nerve wracking, I assure you,” Stefan said. “You won’t have to leave the comfort of this bed. And I assure you, I would gladly defend you from any attacking bugs.”

“Then what are you…” her voice trailed off as he slid off the bed.

“We’ll start with something easy. Stay there,” he said, then he moved swiftly back into the bathroom. This hotel was usually occupied by celebrities and the glitterati, and management had spared no expense to ensure they were properly taken care of. In one of the cabinets there was a complete supply of sun care and beach recovery supplies, including a myriad of suntan lotions and exotic oils. He picked up one of the bottles and read the label. Close enough.

He padded back into the room, and Nicki’s gaze drifted decidedly south as he approached the bed. Then she spied the oil. “I don’t think that’s going to at all be necessary—”

“I do,” he said as he knelt again on the bed.

“Seriously, Stefan you don’t need to massage me every time we get naked. Which is not to say I mind it, in the slightest. But it’s not necessary. I’m not that broken.”

Her words made his heart thump in a strange, discordant cadence, but he set the bottle down on the bed, then reached behind her to shove the pillows to the side. “I’m not trying to fix you, Nicki,” he said, his voice rough. “I promise.”

He put his hands on either of her shoulders, pressing her down flat. Then he picked up the oil again. “I’d like to tell you that this is for your pleasure, but it’s not,” he murmured as he flipped the lid of the oil bottle open. “It’s solely for mine.” He shook the bottle, catching her attention. “And it’s water based, happily enough.”

Nicki watched, mesmerized, as he tipped the bottle over, at an angle that assured that only the thinnest trail of oil drizzled out from the tip. The oil slid in a long, sensual line through the quiet air until it landed, pooling over the pebbled nipple of first her right breast, then her left as he shifted the position of the bottle.

Nicki released a guttural sigh as she sank more deeply into the only remaining pillow on the bed, offering no protest as Stefan continued the thin trail of oil down her quivering abs and over her belly. Fierce satisfaction rose within him as she arched beneath the sensual assault, her mouth falling open as the cool slide of oil spilled down her skin.

“You’re going to have to replace these sheets,” she managed as he tossed the oil aside.

“They can put it on my bill.” He leaned forward and slid his fingers over her breasts, slick with oil, taking her nipples between his fingers and squeezing enough to make her focus back on his face. She was flushed, her breathing more of a pant, but there was no hesitation, no doubt in her gaze.

He spread his fingers over her breasts, palming them as she arched beneath him. “I’ll give you exactly three hours to quit that,” she half-moaned, and her face was a wonder to behold. Nicki was always in motion, ready to dash to the next adventure or take on the newest challenge. She never slowed down. But now she had stilled, now she was solely focused on the present. Her mouth was slack, her lips parted softly, her breathing low and deep as he kneaded her breasts with a slow, sensual movement. Her brow was untroubled, and her eyes had drifted closed, giving her the aspect of a woman asleep, lost in dreamless relaxation.

You’re beautiful
, Stefan thought, and grimaced as Nicki’s eyelids fluttered. He hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud.

“You don’t have to say things like that,” she murmured, though her smile was dreamy as her eyes fixed on him. “I mean, they’re lovely, but again, they’re not necessary.”

“It’s only the truth,” Stefan said. “You appreciate the truth.”

Her lips twitched. He hadn’t changed the cadence of his hands, his movement, and he could almost see her sinking further and further into deep bliss as he lavished attention on her. When he dropped his mouth to the stiffened peaks of her breasts, she hissed another sigh, muttering something far too incoherent to make out. With the focus of her attention, though, he dropped his hands away, sliding down to smooth the oil and warmth further down her waist and belly. His touch was gentler here, though her abs knotted briefly, resisting his touch. But he didn’t take long to get to his destination.

The oil shimmered on Nicki’s thighs as she tensed again, but he whispered reassurance while his fingers dragged along the outside of her lean hips and strong legs before curving in again. “Have I done anything you haven’t enjoyed so far?” he asked.

“No…oh, God no,” she said, her heavy lidded eyes watching him as she struggled up onto her elbows. “But you’re going above and beyond the call of duty here—seriously.”

“And you’re not following directions,” he smiled. “You’re supposed to be relaxing.” His hands shifted, his fingers dipping down into the vee between her legs, running along the outermost edge of her most sensitive skin.

Nicki’s gasp was tight. “You seriously expect me to relax while you’re doing that?”

“I expect you to try.” Stefan held her gaze, drinking in the sheer vitality of the woman who lay open before him, his to cherish and hold…and to thoroughly, completely enjoy. “I don’t think you’re trying hard enough.”

Chapter Fifteen

Nicki flopped back down on the bed as Stefan pulled her legs wider, her mind lost in a riot of sensation. The midday sun streamed through the windows leaving nothing to shadows or gloom, but she didn’t feel self-conscious about her body fully revealed to him. If anything, her body was something she could count on, at least the outside of it. She knew she was fit, knew she looked as good as her genetics would allow. She wasn’t embarrassed, despite Stefan’s intimate gaze.

But she
was
close to toppling over the edge, before the man had even laid a finger on her where it mattered most.

Stefan solved that problem as she thought it, dragging a soft finger against the tiny nub of nerves that made up the pinnacle point of sensation for her, the exact nexus of need and want that had her clenching the sheets with her fists as he zeroed in. Then he moved off it as quickly, and it was all she could do not to reach up and guide him back, give him a map, read off GPS coordinates if it would get him back to where he needed to be.

“Patience,” Stefan breathed and Nicki’s eyes shot open, only to see him watching her face as he brushed his fingers against her once again. “I want to explore your body, to touch and taste you. That will take time.”

“Not too much time, I hope,” she gritted out. He swirled his fingers closer to where she most wanted him. He grazed her clit and she sucked in a breath, her legs locking down to stay still, and he rumbled a soft laugh.

“So sensitive,” he murmured. And he spread his fingers over the skin of her inner thighs, kneading the oil in more deeply. He lowered his mouth to her hipbone and touched his teeth against the skin that rested above the bony knob, the shock and pleasure of the nip startling her. She jumped beneath his touch and his laughter sounded again, but his mouth trailed a scorching trail over her leg and down the curve of her inner thigh, not stopping until his tongue had replaced his fingers over the sensitive folds of skin. He suckled her clit, and Nicki felt the pull of need more strongly than ever, the urge to burst getting inexorably closer.

“Yes, yes,” she muttered as if it were some kind of incantation to bring what she most wanted into reality.

Stefan was happy to comply. His right hand shifted to grip her outer hip, and he flicked his tongue over her in a rapid staccato of movement that made her breath catch in her throat, her heat beginning to stutter step but only for the best of reasons as he twisted her higher and higher, seeming to know instinctively when she would crest, when she would break, and easing back from that brink in time—only to start the progression all over again, each rushing tide faster and faster as she built toward her release.

“I think, perhaps, this—”

Nicki’s brain melted as the unmistakable pressure of Stefan’s fingers slipped fully inside her channel, pausing momentarily at the brink before dipping deep inside her. As he filled her, he pressed more insistently against her clit, this time with his mouth, his tongue, the slight scrape of his teeth. The rushing tide became a waterfall and a strangled cry escaped Nicki’s mouth before she clamped her teeth shut, half lifting out of the bed as the orgasm shook her entire body. She bucked, hard, but Stefan only let up a little, allowing her to settle back into the sheets only a half breath before his tongue skated again over the over-sensitized skin, his pressure both within and without driving her toward another impossible release before the first one was complete.

“Stefan—I can’t—” was all that Nicki could manage before she tumbled over the edge a second time, and then he did withdraw, but only briefly until he returned to her body, holding her against him, her back to his chest as she half-curled into a quivering mass of convulsions.

“Shhh,” he said, again and again as she trembled in his arms. Surprisingly, she felt the sudden need to cry, and she blinked her eyes hard against the sensation. Stefan merely tightened his hold around her, his murmurs sliding between English to what had to be Garronois and back to English again. He let her mind race without interruption, through its twisting, turning thoughts—and if he knew she was enduring a cacophony of reactions he gave no indication. He merely held her, as if they had all the time in the world.

Nicki blinked out toward the windows of the hotel room, where light poured in past the sheer curtains. From this angle, she couldn’t see the ocean or the city, or the boats clogging the bay. She could only see the crystal blue sky, staggering in its beauty, with only a few clouds chasing across. How many times had she laughed up into that sky, whether she was clinging to a mountain or toeing the edge of a cliff or standing at the top of a summit? That same exultation swamped her, the sense of it dizzying her almost—but not the dizzy of danger, of her heart beating too fast and her blood coursing too slow. It was the dizzy of magic, the dizzy of possibility.

She blinked. It was the dizzy of falling in love.

Oh, no you don’t
, she willed herself as Stefan leaned forward to nuzzle her shoulder. No, no, no. This wasn’t real, what she had with Stefan. This wasn’t long term. It couldn’t be. Stefan wasn’t lovestruck. She’d caught his fancy and she was certain he was earnest in all of his compliments, but she was a moment’s fascination with him. The same way he was a moment’s fascination for her.

Yeah. Exactly like that.

She schooled her breath to slow, her legs to unkink, and reaching her point of relaxation was easier than she thought it would be.

When she unbent enough for his satisfaction Stefan spoke again.

“Had enough? Or would you—” His thick shaft nudged against her back, and she turned more fully to him, pulling him over onto her as she lay back on the bed again.

“Please,” she said, surprised at the brokenness of her voice as she realized he was already sheathed. “I want—yes.”

Fortunately, Stefan had added “satisfied garble” to his list of foreign languages, and understood what she wanted perfectly. Slowly, with infinite gentleness, he leaned forward and nudged against her center, waiting until the next paroxysm of tremors subsided to ease himself into her. She sucked in a breath as he stretched her, but his gaze was locked on her face and when she met his stare, her body relaxed all at once, allowing him to slide into her with greater ease. He pressed forward, filling her, and her legs flopped loosely to the side, her back arching. She savored the pure sensual pleasure of the two of them so intimately connected.

“Good?” Stefan asked, and she sensed the intensity of his stare—she’d closed her eyes again, and now she fluttered her lids open to meet his beautiful blue-gray eyes. He watched her with such infinite tenderness and unmistakable desire that her heart swelled with joy—it was so much—too much—yet she wouldn’t trade this moment for the world.