All the Way (15 page)

Her eyes rolled back as he went to work, diligently tasting every drop, pushing and circling the nub that made her shake and groan. “You
taste
like vanilla,” he told her, his hot breath washing over her.

She fought with her emotions, trying to separate lust and love: a losing battle even before Adriano gripped her behind and plunged his tongue deep between her hidden folds, searching for the opening to her vagina. After purging her soul, he lapped up the vanilla-cream reward.

Desperately out of control, she pulled Adriano to her, rolling on top of him to take command.

He wrapped his arms around her and flipped her back down on the mattress, despite her protests. “I'm in charge.”

His lips planted fierce kisses across the planes of her body, and the heat swelled, drowning her.

“I want you so badly,” Adriano said between guttural moans.

She answered him with a kiss.

He flipped her facedown on the bed, wrapped his arm around her waist, and brought her up to her knees. He bound her wrists within the iron grip of his hands.

“I have to take you this way.”

She understood. They had been forbidding themselves too long, and now the sexual beast inside him demanded it.

He pushed her thighs apart and used his hand to guide his hard penis into her softness. He rocked with fierce strokes, pushing his torso against her back until they both fell to the bed. Sinful need dictated his movements as he chased his prize.

Payton pled. “Adriano, please.”

He pulled away by inches. Nudging her onto her back, his lips quieted her sensual moans. He crawled between her legs slowly, more controlled but with no less prowess. Advancing slowly, he filled her. He placed tiny bites along her collarbone as her fingers combed his flowing hair. She closed her eyes and let his cottony mane dust her face. He nibbled her ear while flexing his hips. She wrapped her legs around his back, but he pried her loose and helped her hook her ankles around his neck. His hips pinioned, pushing his erection deeper.

“I want you so badly,” he confessed. “I've wanted you since I wrestled you down in the backseat of the Land Cruiser. Is this what you wanted? Is this why you make me so damn crazy?” He worshiped her breasts and cupped her bottom, driving deep, oblivious to her breathless answer. He rocked and probed until he found the rhythm sure to send her over the edge.

Her cries of satisfaction released his tension, and he didn't try to hold back his own climax. He plunged his hands against the mattress, lifted his torso from the bed, and began a deep thrusting motion. Rocking in the cradle of her legs, he touched every intimately sensitive area of her body. He swung his hair out of his face with the flip of his head. “I want you so badly, angel.”

“Now you have me.” Her hands started at his scalp and moved down the ripples of his back. He drove into her bottomless cavern, ecstasy pulling him with magnetic force. He threw his head back as he growled from the pleasure.

Chapter 17

“What the hell was that?” Adriano stared up at the ceiling, panting hard, dripping with perspiration. They lay side by side, hand in hand.

“I think you bit me.” Payton examined her shoulders and collarbone. “Several times.”

His head snapped in her direction. “I've never felt anything like it. The intensity was mind-blowing.”

“You were out of control.” Her eyes roamed the perfect form of his naked body. “So was I.”

His eyes held an unasked question. Trying to find a rational answer to his animalistic behavior, Adriano asked, “Do you think Lila puts something in the food?”

“We haven't eaten since breakfast.”

Both listened to the noises of the workers cultivating the farm.

Breaking the tension, Payton jumped up. “I'm going to shower.”

He scrambled to the edge of the bed to catch her around the waist. “Wait.” He turned her to face him and pulled her between his iron thighs.

“If you tell me you made a mistake, Adriano Norwood, I'm going to kill you.”

“Angel, would you let me talk?”

She thought
he
looked angelic with the long, dark tendrils softly framing the masculine lines of his face. She watched as his eyes drank up her body. After a nerve-splitting minute, she demanded, “Talk, Adriano.”

“I don't understand what happened here, and I'm not willing to attribute it to the danger we're in making us react crazily.”

She heard the mistake speech coming on. If he tried to pretend their tempestuous lovemaking meant nothing, she would crawl under the bed until it was time to return to the authorities. No matter how much she denied it, her heart had been aching for his touch. To deny her the emotions attached to their encounter demeaned what had taken place and reduced it to common, ordinary sex.

He noticed the slight tremble of her bottom lip and continued his attempt to explain the unexplainable. Always composed and the master of his words, he fumbled, searching for the right thing to say. This was awkward after-sex conversation, and she didn't need it. She'd survived too much over the past few weeks to be taken down by the loss of control of her own emotions.

“Being together night and day,” she said, “our minds were bound to become preoccupied with sex. Thinking you were missing sparked something in me, and I lost control.”

“You're saying it was a mistake.” He splayed his fingers at her waist, gripping her hard, as if he were afraid to let go. “You think it shouldn't have happened.”

“No, that's not what I'm saying.”

“It's what I'm hearing.”

“I should go shower,” she said, eager to make a quick escape.

“Dammit, Payton.” He released her, crossing the room, placing himself between her and the only exit. For a fleeting moment, jumping out the window didn't seem so bad. She wanted to run away from the heady emotions engulfing them. How could something that felt so good be wrong?

“We have to think this through,” Adriano said, pacing back and forth. His long strides took him wall to wall in a matter of a few steps.

“Think about what, Adriano? We slept together.”

He stopped abruptly, staring at her with a coldness that chilled her to the bone. “It was just sex? This is what you're trying to lay on me?”

“Well,” she hesitated, poised for the lie that did not come. “No.”

“Either it was sex for you, or it was something more.”

“I can't handle this conversation right now.”

“We deal with it. Now.” He stationed himself in front of the door, a clear indication this conversation was not over. “This is business. I get that. You're my source for the story of the century. I'm your safety net.”

Her anger flared. “Don't make me stand here and listen to your self-righteous speech.”

“I'm trying to work this out without either of us being humiliated.”

“Humiliated?” She lost power over her bottom lip, and it trembled violently.

“That's not what I meant.”

“You're a reporter. Your life revolves around choosing the right words to express your opinions. I don't think you mistakenly chose the word. Do you know what's humiliating? How about giving your body to a man you've come to care about and him telling you ‘It's only business.'”

“I didn't mean it that way.”

“Say what you mean!”

He responded with his own roar of anger. “Stop playing games, and tell me how
you
feel.”

She turned her back on him.

“You're the one who hopped out of bed, rushing to get out of the room. You're the one implying this was a freak sexual encounter. Now you care about me? Which is it, Payton?”

When she didn't answer, he approached. She moved away, but not fast enough to avoid the span of his arms. He roped her and pulled her in.

“Let me go.”

He sat down, pulling her onto his lap. “Quiet, angel.” He waited until she relaxed against him before he spoke again. “This can't be a mistake.”

She looked into the depths of his eyes, and all was lost. She was helpless against giving him the truth. “I was scared out of my mind when you weren't in the loft. More than being afraid Sherman had gotten to you, I was terrified you had left me.”

He rewarded her honesty with a kiss.

“What do we do now?” she asked him.

“Let's make love nice and slow.”

“I think you bit me.”

He laid her gently on the bed, spreading her arms out from her body like angel wings.

“You're not sure?” Mischief sparkled in his eyes. He lifted her leg over his shoulder and bit his way to her sex-soaked mound. “This time I'll do it so there's no question how I feel afterward.”

She shivered with every nibble. Liking her response, he pulled the delicate skin between his teeth and placed his mark of passion on her thigh. She writhed from the intense suction in such an intimate place. His expert moves stirred erotic wishes she had never dared fantasize about.

He lifted his head, smiling proudly at the purple-black mark of possession. He slipped his hand beneath her and cupped her plump bottom while he drew a field of butterflies on her right thigh. Each nibble sparked new desires. Each flick of his tongue gave her the right to react more brazenly to the sensation.

He loomed over her. “Any doubt you've been bitten?”

“None.”

He kissed her lips, making her hungry for the caress of his tongue. “Can I taste you again?” His hands cupped her breasts while his lips applied suction. He teased her nipples, pulling her nectar from deep within, draining her to depletion.

He smiled down on her.

He licked his lips.

His hand went to hers, and he guided her across the topography of his body. She took him firmly in hand, helping to measure the correct amount of pressure to apply. She stroked him long, slowly, savoring every twitch of his fairy-kissed brow. Her hand gyrated between his thighs. A profound howl escaped the depths of his being. She kissed his chest from her vantage point below. She fondled, bringing him to the full length and hardness she preferred. Adriano returned the favor with the salacious stroke of his fingers between her thighs. She pulled him to her, opening herself to his penetration. Diving in several times, they erupted in an explosion enfolded in butterfly kisses.

 

 

At three in the morning, Payton placed a bunch of purple grapes on Adriano's abdomen and fed them to him one by one.

“Did you date in Charlotte or Miami?” This was an area of her life he'd carefully avoided in his questioning. He'd never strayed from the details of Sherman's business. Tonight, after spending the day in bed, he felt emboldened.

“Adriano, are you still trying to
get the story?
” She peeped up at him. “You've gotten everything I have to offer.”

“Yes or no?”

“Casually.” She fed him another grape.

He folded his arms underneath his head. “I love my work. Jake and me in the midst of danger, hunting for a story, outsmarting other reporters—it gets my blood boiling. I've only recently started photographing our assignments. We couldn't find a photographer who could keep up with us, and I always wanted to learn, so it all came together.”

Payton ran her fingers through his hair. “It sounds like you're apologizing for something.”

“You won't be able to go back to Skye. What will you do?”

She hated the question. He sounded too at ease in the finality of their association. He'd asked her several times before, and the answer was always the same. “I don't know. I'll have to start over.”

He wrapped her in his arms. “This has to be hard for you. I can't imagine giving up my career. Everything I've worked for in the blink of an eye.” He kissed the top of her head. “I'll help you think of something. What else do you like to do?”

She buried her face in the crook of his neck. “No more questions tonight, Adriano.”

“I didn't mean to upset you, angel.”

Thinking of the future was too much to bear. She wanted to wallow in the present. Lie in his arms on the small bed eating fresh fruit off the taut ridges of his stomach until dawn. Dream about the unattainable future she wanted to have with him.

The lump throbbed in her throat. Adriano had become her strength. When he walked away, she would collapse. She questioned if fear of Sherman's retaliation made her feel this way. She knew otherwise. Adriano had looked past her tough exterior and explored the untapped chambers of her heart. Imagining a day without him following her around, snapping pictures with his camera and hammering her with questions about her life, made her whimper in his arms.

He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “I'm sorry, angel. If I could have known you before all of this, I would have kept you out of harm's way.”

She snuggled closer, trying to lose herself in him.

The certainty of his voice gave way to husky emotion. “Life is so damn unpredictable. Sometimes things happen, and it takes years for us to understand why.”

“Us?” she managed around the tightness in her throat.

“Us. Why now? Why in the middle of so much chaos did we meet?”

“The reporter in you is rationalizing. Why can't this be about needs, emotions?”

Opting not to answer, he placed a tender kiss on her forehead. “When this is over, you'll be fine.” He tried to lighten the heavy emotion cramping the room. “You were tough enough to kidnap me. You're tough enough to survive anything.”

“Can I?”

“Yes.”

She burrowed deeper into him so he wouldn't hear her desperation. “Can I survive my heart shattering when I walk away from you?”