Lying in Your Arms Page 11

  She made as if to move toward him. He put a hand up to stop her. “Me first. Then your turn.”

  That was when she finally figured out what he wanted. A sultry smile broke over her face. She stopped stalling, rose to her knees and crawled toward the head of the bed.

  Just because she was a witch and she knew how badly he wanted her, she put some serious wag in that ass, parting her legs a little more than was necessary. A flash of glimmering pink—oh, how that smooth skin felt against his lips, he could have died of sensory overload last night—greeted him. She was practically daring him to resist. She wanted him to climb onto the bed behind her on his knees and ram into her.

  “Later,” he promised.

  “Everything’s later,” she grumbled.

  “So stop stalling so we can get on to the now,” he said with a lazy grin.

  She grinned back, admitting she liked this push and pull between them, the sparring over who called the shots.

  She finally reached the top of the bed, shoving the pillows out of her way and kneeling. He walked closer, took her hands and rested them on the top of the tall wooden headboard, making sure she remained on her knees but completely upright.

  Kissing her on the mouth, hot and hard, he dropped onto his back on the bed and slid up toward her. “Show me, Mad. Show me everything.”

  She looked down at him, over her shoulder, and slowly eased her legs apart, opening for him.

  “Beautiful,” he growled, unable to tear his eyes off her glistening, sensitive folds. She was swollen and plump, pink and perfect.

  When her knees were far enough apart to accommodate him, he slid all the way up so his head was between her thighs.

  “Hold on tight,” he said.

  “Is it going to be a bumpy ride?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Oh, good. That’s my favorite kind.”

  He didn’t give her any more time to prepare or talk. He just couldn’t wait to taste her fully. Wrapping his arms around her thighs, he tilted her sex toward his mouth and slaked his thirst for her.

  She cried out when he flattened his tongue and licked her from stem to stern. Knowing he had her attention, he slid his tongue deeper, between those luscious folds. He lapped into her, sliding his tongue deep enough to make her sing, then moving out again. She tasted as amazing as she looked, as she smelled, as she felt, and he had to tell her so.

  “I could do this every day for the rest of my life and die a happy man,” he muttered.

  “You’re killing me, Leo,” she groaned, sounding hopeless and desperate.

  Almost laughing, he moved his mouth to her pebbled clit and sucked it between his lips. Her hips jerked, but he held her tight, nowhere near ready to let her do what he knew she wanted to do: slide down his body and impale herself on him. Although part of him would love that, considering his need was almost painful, he wasn’t going there until she’d completely lost herself to everything but sensation.

  Continuing the relentless assault, he brought her higher and higher. She quivered and moaned, but didn’t release her death grip on the headboard. He explored her completely, pleasured her until his tongue ached, until, finally, a cry of utter satisfaction signaled her orgasm.

  “Yes, oh, lord, yes,” she said, her voice weak.

  He moved out from under her, his face wet, his every sense filled with her. Madison sagged against the headboard, sucking in deep, needy breaths, completely wrung out. She made as if to turn around, and he knew she still wanted to use her mouth on him, but he was barely holding it together. He had to be inside her, right now.

  Rising to his knees, he moved in behind her. Madison smiled at him over her shoulder, suddenly looking a lot more energetic, and scooted back to meet him, her legs parted invitingly.

  “Yes,” she told him. “I want you to be buried so deep inside me I’ll remember you there for a week.”

  He smirked. “A week? Oh, please.”

  She licked her lips and curved that gorgeous ass a little higher in welcome. He didn’t need any further invite. Taking her hips in his hands, he held her tight and nudged into her. Pleasure washed over him the moment hot, hard cock met warm, slick channel, and he groaned as he sank deeper and deeper, every inch feeling like a step closer to heaven.

  She cried out when he finally sank all the way, making a place for himself deep inside her willing body.

  “You okay?”

  She literally purred. “So okay.”

  Not wanting to hurt her, and knowing the angle had to be pretty intense for her, he moved slowly at first. He made easy love to her, caressing her hips, her thighs and the small of her back between each deep stroke. But as the intensity built, as her cries increased and she pushed back ever harder, he knew she was long past any need or desire for gentleness.

  Which was good. Because he’d reached the point where he needed to pound into her in a mindless frenzy.

  But he also wanted to see her beautiful face, wanted to kiss her and share the gasps as they both hit that cliff and flew off it.

  Pulling out of her, he flipped her onto her back. Her eyes were sparkling with excitement and wanton pleasure. Her face was flushed, her every breath a gasp, and her whole body sheened with sweat. They were slick and hot and so well matched he wondered how he’d ever done this with anyone else.

  “That was...”

  “The halfway point,” he muttered, making sure she knew they weren’t done. “At most.”

  A sultry smile widened those lips. “One-twelfth of our day, then, huh? You’d better slow down.”

  He laughed out loud, but grew serious when she reached for him, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck and pulling him down for a deep, hungry kiss. Her thighs parted again and he settled between them, getting back into her with one hot, hard plunge. He reached for one of her slim legs, lifting it over his shoulder, lightly biting the thigh as he drove a little deeper. The angle was incredible. He felt so completely taken in by her, welcomed and pleasured.

  She thrust her hips to meet his every downward stroke. Soon she was rolling her head back and forth on the pillow, biting her lip to try to hold back her cries.

  “Nobody can hear you, sweetheart,” he told her as he felt waves of heat radiating through his body, preparing him for a mind-numbing explosion.

  As if she’d just been waiting for permission, she let out a tiny scream of pleasure with the next thrust. An even louder one followed, and he knew by the way her head fell back and her fingers tightened, digging into his shoulders, that she had come again. Seeing her losing herself to glorious pleasure was enough to send him tipping over the edge, too, and with one more deep thrust, he flew apart as well, coming into her in wave after wave of ecstasy.

  He didn’t roll off her right away, wanting to watch sanity return to her face and feel the raging heartbeat begin to slow to a normal rhythm. He lowered her leg, keeping himself propped on his elbows so he didn’t crush her, sharing heaving breaths and then, when she opened her eyes again, satisfied smiles.

  “That,” he told her, “was...”

  “Number one.”

  9

  ALTHOUGH THEY HADN’T hit the world record—whatever that might be, and she doubted it was anywhere near twenty-seven—Madison still found it deliciously difficult to walk the next day. For thirty-six hours, she and Leo hadn’t left her room, except to go out into the private pool. They’d ordered room service when hungry, had slept when exhausted, had soaked in the pool when overheated, and had made love so many times, she’d lost count of the positions, sensations and orgasms.

  And throughout all of that, she hadn’t given more than a passing thought to all the nonsense going on back home. It was like they were living in a completely different world. Things like tabloids and paparazzi and movie stars didn’t exist.

  Being with Leo had made her troubles disappear.

  He was funny and smart, could be bossy, which she liked, and could also be incredibly tender, which she also liked. He was, without a
doubt, the most amazing lover she’d ever had. Patient to the extreme, powerful and exciting. But the sex was also playful and fun.

  Honestly, she didn’t even want to think about what it would be like to give him up at the end of this vacation.

  Not that they’d talked about that. Neither of them had mentioned the real world or going back to it. She knew she might be riding a cloud of sexual euphoria, but she was happy to be airborne and didn’t want to come back down to earth.

  Of course, this wasn’t exactly what she had in mind.

  “I’m sorry, I changed my mind, I don’t think I can do it.” She heard the nervousness in her own voice and while she hated herself for it, she couldn’t prevent it.

  “Come on, I know you’re not scared of heights. You’ve been skydiving,” Leo said, looking surprised.

  “Over North America. Not over the freaking jungle.”

  It was probably a bad time to get cold feet, considering they had already ridden the party bus several hours to get here. They’d also already paid the exorbitant fee for the double experience—a treetop tour on some swinging wooden walkways, plus zip lining out to a beautiful waterfall in the middle of nowhere. Not to mention they were already standing on a small platform hundreds of feet in the air, getting strapped into harnesses for their zip-line adventure!

  She’d been very excited about it, right up until the moment she’d seen a vine dangling from a nearby tree and had a sudden image of a long, slithery animal.

  “It’s the snake factor,” Leo said, understanding immediately.

  Yeah. That. Madison had seen that vine, recalled what kinds of creatures made their home in the jungle, and her feet had turned into icicles.

  She gulped and nodded. “I want to do this, I really do. It’s gorgeous.” She spread her arms wide and looked around them at the incredible green canopy blocking out the blue sky above their heads. She truly had never seen such a remarkable palette of different shades of green—her favorite color. Part of her wanted to soar through the sky, to explore the wonders of nature that made this place so different from anywhere back home.

  Part of her wanted to carjack the nearest tour bus and hightail it back to the resort.

  Because of those pesky snakes.

  The guide—young, cute and English speaking—had obviously overheard. “Oh, no, no snakes to worry about, señorita.”

  Madison just lifted a skeptical brow.

  The young man shrugged. “Maybe a few.”

  She reached for the clasp of her harness, ready to strip out of the contraption.

  “But you’ll do nothing more than wave to them from the air as you fly over,” Leo insisted with a chuckle.

  “What if the harness breaks and I fall a hundred feet into a nest of fer-de-lances?”

  “That won’t happen,” the guide assured her.

  “Plus, I think if you fell a hundred feet, you’d have more to worry about than some snakes,” Leo pointed out. “Broken limbs, crushed skull, that sort of thing.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  The guide didn’t laugh at that part, either. They’d gone over the rules for this adventure many times; the company prided themselves on their safety record.

  “Impossible,” the man said, looking offended.

  “I know, we wouldn’t do it if we didn’t think it was safe. It’s just, she had a snake encounter at the hotel the other day,” Leo explained.

  “Oh, then all is well!” he exclaimed. “It is like lightning. You’ve been struck once, you never will be again.”

  “Huh.” She wasn’t buying it.

  “He’s right, you know. What are the odds?” Leo prodded.

  Probably not as good as getting engaged to the tabloid-proclaimed sexiest man alive, yet she’d managed to do that, if only for a very unusual reason.

  “Come on, are you really going to let a phobia about something that probably won’t happen stop you from doing something you really want to do?” Leo asked.

  When he put it like that, it did seem crazy.

  “I’ll go first if you want, clearing the way.”

  “My hero.”

  A grin lifted a corner of his mouth and one of those sweetly sexy dimples appeared. Leaning closer, so the guide wouldn’t overhear, he whispered in her ear, “The faster we get back down to earth, the sooner we’ll be back at the hotel with those pretty new scarves you bought at the bazaar.”

  Her heart sped up. The bus had made a couple of stops during the trip here, including one at an open-air market. She’d found a stall selling long, beautiful silk scarves and had bought a few of them, knowing when Leo’s brow shot up that he knew why.

  “All right, all right. I guess I’ll do it.”

  “Are you sure?” Leo asked, searching her face carefully, all kidding aside. “If you really don’t want to, I’ll understand.”

  She gazed at the canopy—all that green—at the zip line extending as far as she could see toward that waterfall, which sounded absolutely beautiful, and nodded. “I’m not going to let a phobia deprive me of something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”

  “Good girl.”

  Pressing a quick kiss on her mouth, he stepped to the edge of the platform. Within a moment, he was gone, flying like a bird, whooping as he went, his laughter floating back to her on the air.

  “Ready señorita?” the guide asked.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  She stepped to the edge, took a deep breath and did what she’d been doing ever since she met Leo Santori.

  She leaped feetfirst into adventure.

  * * *

  LATE IN THE DAY, after their jungle excursion—which Madison had loved in spite of herself—they boarded the tour bus for the trip back up to their resort. The bus was crowded with other tourists. They’d met some very nice people from various parts of the world. Now, though, after a day with them, she really just wanted some alone time with Leo.

  She kept thinking about that beautiful waterfall, and how much she would have liked it if they’d had it all to themselves. Making love in the water, she had recently discovered thanks to her private pool, was one of her favorite things. She could only imagine how it would have felt to stand beneath those cascading sheets of cool liquid and lose herself in his strong arms.

  She suspected every other couple there had had the same thought. Unfortunately, nobody’d had the nerve to say, “Hey, how about we take turns, you guys go explore the jungle and give us a half hour.” It wasn’t like college when they would know by the sock hanging on the doorknob that it wasn’t safe to come back yet.

  Tucked together on the bus, she and Leo kept their voices low, not talking a lot to the people around them, who were well on their way to being drunk. It was a long drive and the rum punch was complimentary. There was also a guy playing a guitar up front, tourists shouting out windows and being a little stupid. But here in the back, cocooned as they were in their own private little nook, she was able to forget any of them were even there.

  “That was pretty spectacular today, wasn’t it?” Leo said.

  “Definitely.”

  “Glad you went for it?”

  “I am. Thank you for doing it first and scaring the wits out of all the snakes so they got out of the way before I arrived.”

  “Just call me Saint Patrick.”

  She sipped her drink, which was heavy on the rum and light on everything else. Half of one was knocking her on her butt, and she couldn’t imagine how the people closer to the front, who’d downed three or four, were feeling.

  Or, actually, considering they’d had to pull over once for some guy to get sick, maybe she could.

  “So, tell me about these Santori men raised by Santori women.”

  “Huh?”

  “You said something about it the other day. About how men in your family learn to treat women right.”

  “Well, they do,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve told you there aren’t many breakups in the family.”

  “Except fo
r Great-Uncle Rocco and Great-Aunt Gertrude,” she said with a laugh, “who got tired of waiting for each other to die.”

  “Actually, their names are Vinnie and Sarah. But like I said, they’re the exception, not the rule. My parents have been married thirty-five years, my dad’s brothers even longer. Uncle Anthony and Aunt Rosa just celebrated their fiftieth. All six of their kids, who are happily married, celebrated by giving them a trip to the old country.”

  “Old country?”

  “Italy.” The dimple flashed. “I’m Italian, if you didn’t notice.”

  She giggled. Big, brawny, dark-haired, dark-eyed, sexy as hell. Oh, yeah, she’d noticed.

  “Are they all Italian? I mean, the wives and everyone?” she asked, hoping he wasn’t hearing a question that was dancing around in her brain. That question being—is one-eighth Italian, by virtue of having maybe an Italian great-grandparent somewhere in the family tree, good enough to get the welcome mat put out by the family?

  She wasn’t exactly hinting that they might end up married, but she also wouldn’t mind if this vacation fling turned into something more when they got back stateside. She was pretty much homeless right now, and not tied down anyplace, who was to say she couldn’t check out the Windy City and decide to stay?

  “Definitely not,” he said. “Tony’s and Nick’s wives are—they’re also sisters. But most of my other cousins didn’t go looking for ‘traditional’ wives.”

  She thought, Good.

  She said, “Interesting.”

  Although he’d mentioned it, they hadn’t talked a lot about his broken engagement. He didn’t seem to be dwelling on it, that was for sure, and she hoped it wasn’t a sensitive subject. She wanted to know more.

  “What did they think of the former-future Mrs. Leo Santori?”

  It took him a second to process the question and figure out what she was asking. Once he had, he grinned. “My brothers hated her.”

  “That’s not a good sign.”

  “I know, right? Rafe, my older brother...”

  “Army Ranger?”

  “Right. He only met her once and told me that she reminded him of a crocodile—big, bright teeth, always ready to bite.”