He smiled, arms closing around her as he gazed up at those figs.
If he hadn’t promised to force her to two more orgasms as revenge earlier, he might have just dozed off there, contented. But…his hand curled lazily over her bottom, which he still had not entirely bared to him. He didn’t believe in empty threats. A man lost all credibility that way.
And he wanted her to believe him.
Oh, he definitely wanted her to believe in his ability to give her all the orgasms a woman could possibly stand. He smiled and slid his hand under her panties to trail his fingers down that sensitive line between her butt cheeks until he just barely brushed the open lushness of her sex. She jerked a little. Oh, she was still
highly
sensitized there, wasn’t she? It wouldn’t take much at all. In fact, she would need just this slow, gentle, lazy stroking, something she could stand, a tender orgasm that lapped softly through her. A long, slow, easy orgasm.
He might be able to give it to her here. Turn her over, so that her back was against his chest, hold her firm with one arm, and just gently, gently stroke her, ignoring protests, until she grew lax, until she came. But he wanted to get his own back.
So he lifted her and carried her to that tree trunk.
Her eyes came open as her butt touched its trunk and then widened in alarm. “Damien—”
“It’s so cute how you say my name. As if I’m going to listen to it. I warned you, didn’t I? This afternoon is mine now. You don’t get to take it back.”
She stared at him, eyes very wide.
He smiled. “Shh. You’re feeling sleepy, aren’t you?”
“I
was.
”
“Just lie back.” He pushed her gently back onto it.
God, he liked that view. He pushed her legs apart. Oh, yeah. Better and better. He leaned forward and blew a long slow breath against her still-exposed clit. She jerked, and his mean streak woke up alive and hungry. Oh,
yes
, he liked the idea of doing whatever he wanted to her. And of making her like it.
“Shhhhh.” He leaned forward and touched her very lightly, teasingly with his tongue.
She jerked, her thighs trying to clamp around his shoulders. He pushed them firmly back. “There you go,
chérie.
You can be as sleepy and dreamy as you want. I’ll take care of this one.”
“Damien—” Wondering and nervous and, yes, a little dreamy. What a beautiful mix of emotions. Especially when he caused them.
“Relax,
chérie.
I’m just playing down here. I’ve got all the time in the world.”
And he took it, playing with her with fingers and tongue and lips, this slow, long, luxurious build as she moaned and shivered and gradually, oh so gradually, started to come, in long, shallow waves, like the kind that rolled up a flat beach that stretched out forever, gentle, not deep, but taking forever to leave. He made sure they took a long time to leave. Coaxing her to just one more ripple, and just one more, and just one more.
Until finally, finally, they all subsided away. And she covered her face with her hands and actually started to cry.
Oh, that—that hadn’t been his intention. Torment, yes, and an exercise of his power, but not one that
hurt.
He pulled her into his arms. “Shh. Shh. Okay?”
She pushed his shoulder, which he recognized as a much gentler version of his cousins’ thumps of half-reproach. But she curled into him, burying her face in his shoulder. Not pushing him away, but finding refuge in him. Oh. These were different tears. Not grief or pain, but more like some women at a wedding, maybe? Just too much emotion.
He petted her, loving exactly how limp she was in his arms, as if all her will had abandoned her. And he really was a bastard, because even the way she rubbed her wet face into his shoulder made his own arousal press at him more and more insistently. He could control it, of course. But God, he didn’t want to.
He stood with her in his arms. “Do you think you’d mind me taking another turn, too?”
She curled into his body and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. “Oh, God, you can do whatever you want. I think you’ve just made my body utterly yours.”
He grinned, his arms tightening around her like his own personal pirate booty.
Yes.
He definitely liked the sound of that.
“I’m sorry about your back.” Damien’s fingers brushed the naked curve of it, gentle over what must be scratches from the bark. His voice was deep and quiet.
Jess wrapped her arms around her knees, still naked except for panties, back on his T-shirt on the sand. Sore, tired, satiated, not at all interested in making that hike back to his car. “There you go again. Apologizing.”
And you never apologize to me at all.
But she had. Were they at peace now? Post-catharsis?
He sat beside her and pressed a kiss to a sting on her shoulder blade. “Your skin has marks on it from that bark. I should have made you wear a shirt for the second time.”
A vision of herself as she must have looked to him, spread over that tree trunk. Adding a T-shirt to her upper body in the vision only made her sex look ten times as exposed. She flushed from her toes to her forehead again as she thought about it.
“It can’t be that bad.” She could only feel the brush of his fingers. They touched her left shoulder blade, then drifted to a couple of other spots on her back, the brush of those calluses making pleasure shiver through her like a sleepy smile. “I liked it,” she said. “The texture. I liked
all
the textures.”
She’d never felt so much texture in her life. So many senses, all at once.
Damien looked still undecided, guilty.
She shook her head a little. “You’re just coasting on that reputation for meanness, aren’t you?”
“What?” His eyebrows drew together a little. He rose and took a step toward the river, his head brushing fig leaves. For the first time ever, she could just take her time and enjoy the view of his naked torso without that fluttering, wild excitement and urgency taking over. Damn, he was hot. The golden tone to those broad shoulders and that lean ripple of abs belied all those business suits.
“What happened, you kidnapped one of your cousins’ teddy bears and held it for ransom when you were six to get revenge for something, and the label has stuck to you ever since?”
He glanced back at her, a complicated expression startling across his face. Like she’d hit surprisingly close to home. His eyebrows drew more sternly together. “Trust me, I’m quite capable of being ruthless.”
She grinned at him. “I noticed.”
Damien…ha! Was that color on his cheeks? He reached up to touch a fig by his head, his hand hiding his face.
That spring of laughter inside her kept surprising her. This great, bubbling source of
happiness.
She’d been happy with him that night in New York, but a you’ll-have-to-wake-up-soon happiness, rimmed around by the grief that waited just as soon as she stepped outside his sphere. Here…everything felt so
alive.
Sorrow wasn’t lurking just outside, waiting to mug her as soon as it got her alone. They
were
outside. Here life waited. There was nothing to wake up from, because it was broad day.
And she’d just had maddening, greedy, life-filled, joyous
sex.
More of it than she had quite realized a person could have in one afternoon. Damien had a really interesting way of venting his grudges.
She grinned a little. His
long
,
hard
grudge. Made a woman kind of want to annoy him again and see how long he could keep that temper of his up the next time. She smothered her smirk in her arms.
“So is that fig you’re fondling supposed to be the actual phallus or a testicle, in terms of male sex symbols?” Her grin escaped.
Laughter caught Damien completely by surprise. His face lit with it. Oh, he liked her teasing him. He liked it a lot. He dropped his hand. “I compartmentalize. Mostly, to me, they’re just fruit.”
“Oh, fine, ruin them for me for life while you still get to enjoy them.”
He grinned, and it made him look so wickedly happy and
young
,
as if life was burbling up in him, too. “Are you sure you won’t eat one?” He stretched it down to her on the tips of his fingers.
She gave him a pretend indignant glower, and then grabbed it and ate it. Figs fresh off the tree were a miracle of flavor that had apparently survived being a sex symbol since the Greeks, so no sense letting him ruin them for her. She stuck her tongue out at Damien after she swallowed.
Humor and happiness startled across his face again. His eyes looked very green, as if the green river behind him and the light filtering through the great green fig leaves brought their color out.
“My reputation for ruthlessness doesn’t have anything to do with sex,” he pointed out to her. A wary fascination showed in his eyes, his hand curling around a fig branch for support.
She grinned. “That’s a relief. When a man has an actual reputation about his sexual proclivities, it’s never a good sign.”
Laughter sparked in his eyes again. He took a step back toward her. “We’ll keep it between us, then?”
Her breath hitched. Her eyes clung to his. “Oh, I…”
hope so.
All the ways you like to have sex and I like to have sex…let’s keep them just between us.
Just you and me.
What if…he was a person she could show all her dirty side to
and
all her sweet, fragile, wishing side to, too? The idea filled her with the most exquisite hope.
Hope like standing on a terrace above New York looking down at the lights of the city and still believing in stars above.
His face grew serious. He knelt in front of her on the sand and studied her face a long moment. “You look beautiful,” he said suddenly. “Right now. Just”—his fingers reached toward her and then fell away—“beautiful.”
Naked on the sand and God knew what going on with her hair? She wasn’t
beautiful
,
even when she was all dressed up for a party. Not compared to the people he was used to, certainly. She raised her eyebrows at him. “Are you sure I don’t look a total mess?”
“Well, you do. But that’s part of what’s so beautiful.”
Heat touched her cheeks. He threaded his fingers through her hair, removing bark, and then lay back on the sand, curling one hand loosely around her ankle as he drew a knee up and threw his other arm over his forehead, shielding his face from the dappling of sun.
Such a perfect, gentle cave of drooping fig branches and green leaves and filtered sunlight. The quiet rush of water. The insistent song of cicadas. A place out of time where anything was possible. She sat and he lay there for a long time, not speaking, just…quiet together.
Quiet together was a wonderful way to be. And she’d never even suspected he needed it, that quiet. Well, on the terrace that night she’d thought she’d found a kindred spirit, but the next day, she’d convinced herself that he was
Damien Rosier
, glamorous and sophisticated, and quiet moments with someone like her could not possibly be his thing.
She’d been so stupid. What a reckless, self-destructive thing, to run away from a man like him because she got scared.
“I made a wish for happiness,” she said suddenly, low, gazing at the pattern of sunlight on sand. In the edge of her vision, Damien’s head turned.
“That night.” Her nose tickled a little. Not quite a prickle of tears but she still had to focus on breathing, on the water, on the light and shade. “In New York.”
Damien watched her silently, his gaze a pressure against her cheek.
“I was so lonely and so…tired. With my father dying. And at the same time, I was
trying
, you know? I joined forces with Tara, and we were building that company, with me as its perfumer, so I could be the person he and I had always dreamed I’d be instead of the one I’d become by accident. It was almost my promise to him, that I would do that. That I would dream. That I would be happy.”
Damien’s hand shifted from her ankle to close over the top of her dusty foot, firm and sure.
“I’m kind of an introvert,” she said. “I really don’t like that kind of party. A small gathering of friends, of real friends, that’s fun. But not those big, fake displays.”
“Nobody likes those, Jess. It’s a job we do.”
Her eyebrows crinkled. She was pretty sure that a lot of people at those perfume industry parties loved every minute of them, but it was interesting that he didn’t. He seemed so at ease there.
She’d been
so
stupid.
“But you know how friends always nag you when you’re single? That you need to go out more, that you’ll never meet anyone if you spend your Friday nights at home? I wanted to try. I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to believe that happiness existed, and that I could find some and carry it with me even through my father’s death, so I’d still have some, you know? Even after he was gone.” Her voice choked.
Damien sat up and wrapped his arm around her. He squeezed hard—this fierceness to his solidity and heat.
Shh. I’ve got you. I know it’s not all right, but I’ve got you, if that can help.
“I made this wish for it, in my lab, that afternoon. Almonds for Christmas, and jasmine for me and my father, and vanilla, because vanilla always makes me feel as if someone who loves me is baking me a batch of cookies. Like I still have a mom, you know? And I know it sounds stupid, from the woman who made Spoiled Brat, at a party like that, but…I sprayed it like a wish. On my wrists before I got there, but then, I couldn’t last long at the party—I just really don’t deal well with that kind of thing—and I stepped outside onto the terrace. But I knew that was cheating, to go to the party but spend the whole evening in hiding, so to still feel I was trying, I sprayed it at the door. A wish. For happiness.
Come find me here.
”
“I was standing by the door talking to someone, I don’t remember who,” Damien said. “At first I thought it was her perfume, but she was wearing this ironic floral.” Yeah, Spoiled Brat’s success had inspired a lot of those. “I wanted to find the person who smelled like…hope, and happiness. This private, sweet happiness that you have with those very close to you. That wish that a child makes the night before Christmas. I just wanted to see what she was like, the person who would wear that scent. I wanted to smell happiness, too.”