Sympathy for the Devil (International Bad Boys Book 4) (13 page)

She picked it up and uncapped it, set her lips to the opening and drank, letting the fire it put in her belly soothe the butterflies that had taken up residence.

“Easy there, lightweight,” he murmured, and she closed her eyes and drank again, this time to the memory of long-ago words.

He took the bottle from her then and set it to his own lips, and her gaze got hopelessly snagged on the press of his lips against the opening.

“Have you ever wanted something and thought that it was out of reach only to find that it’s not?” she asked, her eyes faintly pleading.

And he turned the photo in his hand around and showed her a picture of himself and said, “yes,” and it was the most beautiful word she’d ever heard.

Love and loss. Hope and despair. With the sea at his back and desolation in his eyes, lurking right there beneath the longing. She’d de-saturated some of those images, made them bleaker and more unforgiving until they were shattering in their simplicity.

He lifted the bottle to his lips again and she stopped him, leaning forward and getting all up in his space as she took the whisky and the photos and set them on the little bedside table.

Her gaze skittered to his eyes, gauging his reaction as she raised her hand, tentatively placing her palm over his heart, or thereabouts. She’d done this before with him, but never like this. Never with full awareness of who she was and what she could offer him. Love, if he would take it. And honesty. “I’m scared, Caleb. Scared that you’re not going to want me for long and that you’re going to turn my world upside down.”

He was trembling ever so slightly.

So was she.

“I wanted you from the moment I first saw you,” he muttered. “Ten years later, I saw you again and I was back there again. Wanting you. It doesn’t go away. It never will.”

And then he framed her face with his hands and brought his lips down to hers, and she was gentle with him at first, because he’d taken a fist or two for her today and she could see the faint bruising on his cheek and the extra plumpness of his upper lip. He let her be gentle and trace the swelling with her tongue for all of two seconds and then he opened for her and became the aggressor. She remembered this.

The hunger beneath the sweetness of his kisses. That deeply cutting edge.

He took his time when it came to kissing, she remembered that about him. Feeding her senses with the taste of him and the wicked curl of his tongue and the play of the air in between. Hot kisses and his hands in her hair as he tilted his head and fed her need for him until there was no time to even catch a breath.

“Whatever you want from me . . . whatever you would have,” he rumbled into the curve of her neck. “Take it.”

So she slid his shirt up and off and set her lips to his neck. And the muscled and indents of his chest next. And then, she dragged the edge of her thumb across his pebbling nipple and tried to keep an element of tenderness always in her touch, for there was bruising on his body this day and it was more extensive on his body than on his face.

“On your back,” she whispered, and he drew her down on the bed with him, his hands beneath her dress. More kisses then, so much more skin as she straddled him and gasped when he settled her right where she wanted to be, those hard and capable hands of his hands riding low on her hips while his thumbs circling over her skin.

“Do you remember when you urged me to go slow all those years ago?” she whispered and the smile in his eyes assured her he did. “I’d like to take that advice.”

He wasn’t the only one who’d divined, over the years, the pleasures that came with restraint.

With mouth and with hands she made her way down his body, the cut of muscle, the angry red of the bruising. Kisses for the punishment he’d taken as she tracked the marks all the way from his ribs to way down low on his belly.

And then she cupped the heavy weight between his legs and he was hard and long as he rolled up into her touch as if his body was no longer his to command.

It was hers.

His jeans came off and so did her dress, and there were things to consider like just how slow she could go given the aching thrum of her body for completion.

Not that slow, she wagered, as she lowered her face to the cut of his groin and breathed him in.

He smelled incredible, mouthwateringly clean and masculine, and he tasted even better. Proof positive that fantasy had nothing on reality. She pushed his thighs apart and took what she wanted, licked a stripe from beneath his balls all the way to the little cluster of nerves just beneath the head, lingering . . . lingering here and there . . .

“Bree—” he began, only to groan in pure surrender as she closed her lips over the tip. More, she dug her fingers into his hips and swallowed him down. She bent his spine and got him all wet. Little slides and long ones. Open kisses, slick and breathy.

She wanted him hollowed out and pleading and she got him there, trembling on the brink, but she didn’t let him go over.

Not yet.

“Protection,” she murmured.

“Jeans pocket,” he said, and there was another deviation from her memories that neither of them seemed to have a problem with. And yet . . . as necessary as it was, it wasn’t entirely what she wanted.

One day . . . one day soon . . . the only thing she was ever going to want between them was skin.

He took control of things then, cupping her buttocks and inching into her gently, bit by glorious bit, and she let him take care of her, one hand on the cut of muscle on his chest as his eyes fluttered closed and he drew a ragged breath.

“I’ve looked for this,” he whispered as she bent to kiss him. “I’ve looked for you everywhere.”

Tiny thrusts as she became more comfortable with his size and the effortless strength at his command.

“You never stayed in touch with me.” The words were torn from her without her full permission, but she rolled with them, even as her body rolled with his.

“You didn’t want me to.”

She’d given him her virginity and wrapped a thousand fantasies around him. “Yes, I did.”

He snapped up into her, all the way to the hilt. “You had big dreams. There was no room for me in them. Your words, not mine.”

“I was a fool. Some dreams change. My dreams of you never did. Promise me you’ll stay in touch this time.”

“No.” With a fierce, sinner’s smile as he put his thumb to her center, expertly navigating the folds and driving her relentlessly towards the edge. He sat up and wound his hand through her hair. He tilted her head and set his teeth to the underside of her jaw and there was an element of punishment in his touch that flat out did it for her. Skin to skin, all the way from thigh to shoulder, and she wasn’t really concentrating on his words anymore because her body was almost there. “No, Bree. I’m not going to make promises this time around that I don’t want to keep.”

And then he slid his lips up towards her ear and whispered, “Ask me if I’m willing to love you forever and never let you go instead.”

She heard his words and her body crested for him on a wave of pure pleasure. Riding it, riding him, to the break.

Caleb was done talking. Done hiding his deepest desires from her. He rolled her over onto her back and set about stamping his claim on her body, heart and soul. He wanted this.

He took it.

Faster now, to match the need in him, and to hell with the aches in his body. All they did was make his pleasure keener anyway. Bree’s hands at his back and her body utterly his and he’d only ever had sex like this with her, every piece of him hers.

“Take a chance on me, Bree.” As she writhed beneath him. “Share your life with me, all of it, and I’ll spend the rest of mine making sure you don’t regret it.”

As she came on his cock and screamed “yes.”

C
aleb figured out
how to breathe again in the aftermath. He held a trembling Breanna through the twitches that shuddered through their bodies and the blissful lethargy that followed. He shifted until he was stretched out beside her, his body still half covering hers, and she smiled up at him with the smile of an angel and eyes still sated with a wholly mortal pleasure.

“So I’m thinking I may have to say all that again,” he rasped with the voice he had left. “Without the distraction of sex.”

“I’m listening,” she said and ran her fingers along the shallow cut of muscle low on his belly and damned if he didn’t feel himself stir.

“My life is here, for the most part, and I know with absolute clarity that I want you in it.”

“Joined at the hip?” she asked.

“No, not joined at the hip, but keep stroking.”

She smiled, just a little bit. “One of these days we’re going to have a serious conversation without the sex.”

One day, but it wouldn’t be this day.

“I can restructure my business,” she offered quietly. “Bring it here. Keep an offshoot in Sydney. It’s a risk.”

“How can I make it less of a risk?”

“Just be with me. In the sun and rain and I’m pretty sure there’s going to be quick-sand.”

“You want something from me, ask,” he told her and meant every word of it. “If you need blocks of time away from the bay, we can make it happen. I can leave here on occasion. I’m not asking you to give up everything you’ve worked for in order to be with me. It won’t be all one-sided.”

“Did I mention that my apartment in Sydney overlooks the ocean?” she murmured. “We could stay there, on occasion. You could get acquainted with Coogee beach.”

“I could probably get around to it.” But it wasn’t essential. “What else do you need?”

“Sunrise over the ocean in the mornings. I’ve developed quite a fondness for them.”

He smiled lazily, confidently, he couldn’t help it. “I see.”

“I want to take hot showers with you when you come in from the sea. Help you out around the marina if you ever need it. I want to be someone you can depend on.”

“I like it.”

“I want your patience, when your playboy reputation threatens to leave me feeling insecure.”

“I can help you there.”

“Because I’ve never really known what on earth it is you see in me.”

“Pretty girl.” He said it teasingly.

“Uh huh. I photograph a lot of them.”

“A pretty girl who got behind a camera the better to see into the heart of things. A clever, driven girl who wanted to catalogue every bit of this world and the people in it and who went on to became a woman of great talent and ambition. I see steely control in her and every now and then a craving for abandon that I fully intend to keep satisfied. I see a thirst for perfection that’s been tempered by time and experience. I see a woman who forgives others far more easily than she forgives herself. And I see someone who’s a little bit afraid to commit, just in case she doesn’t deliver. I see you, Bree, every beautiful contradiction. And I love what I see.”

He watched as a tear tracked down her face and then another and he caught them with his lips and then shared them in a kiss. “Whatever fears you have . . . let me see them. We can slay them together. Please, Bree.”

“We’re good,” she whispered against his lips. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than here with you, front and center . . . with the rest of the world within reach.”

New memories for the taking. Better ones.

“It’s the most amazing feeling,” she offered quietly. “Right now, I really don’t feel as if I have any fears at all.”

*     *     *

It could have
been ten minutes later, but it was more likely only five, when Bree stirred and planted a languid kiss on the bruise on his shoulder before sitting up and reaching for the nearest item of clothing. Not her clothing, his T-Shirt. But her bra was under it.

“I need to get dressed,” she said.

“You really don’t.”

“I really do if I want you to undress me all over again later. Once we reach your house boat.”

There was that.

“I thought that I wanted to hide away up here this evening. I wanted to avoid my past and what people might think of me, and when Gemma turned up I was all for avoiding yours.” She found her panties, nothing more than a wisp of blue lace. “I don’t feel like that anymore.”