Something to Live for (Moonlight Dating Series) (3 page)

The
contact of his lips with hers prompted an instinctual groan.
Melita
realized, however, that the groan didn’t only come
from her. His mouth felt warm and coaxing as he parted hers for a penetrating
kiss.

The
instant she saw him attraction arrowed through her.
Illogical,
irrational, undeniably real.

She
grabbed on to the hem of his blue t-shirt sleeves and hung on for dear life,
while the play of his tongue against hers provoked a concerted sexual response
that took over all of her body. Her wrists and forearms pressed against the
powerful, taut muscles of his arm, and she wantonly leaned into his chest.

She had
never felt so good about kissing a stranger. Come to think of it, she’d never
kissed a stranger. His mouth tasted of savoury olive and he smelled of fresh
air and man, a combination that made her head reel and her insides flutter in
some strange places. She was aware of the sensual, forbidden parts of herself
like she’d never been before, like she’d never been
awake
before.

She
couldn’t help but protest when he abruptly broke contact and pulled back. His
breaths came short and rugged as he spoke in a sheepish voice.

“I just
realized… I didn’t even ask your name. Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“
It’s
fine,” she cut in, with a bit of a wonky smile, while
she struggled to find purchase around a haze of desire. “You don’t have to
apologize. I’m
Melita
.
Melita
Saari
-Quinn.”

“Alex
Moncado
,” he introduced himself with an answering grin.
Then, “You have an interesting name.”

Large
hands swept up and down her arms, wrenched goose pimples at his tender touch.

“Product of a Finnish and Irish-Maltese marriage.
My mother gave birth in England,
and missed Malta terribly at the time, so she decided to use the Latin word for
the island as my name,” she laughed. “Luckily, her wish to raise me in Malta
came true and they settled back here when I was five. What about you?”

He picked
a bite-sized piece of melon wrapped in Parma ham and fed it to her. The
cooling, sweet juice exploded in her mouth and mingled tantalizingly with the
saltiness of the meat.

“I’ve
lived here all my life, and pretty much do what was expected of me – I run a
business that’s been in my family for about fifty years. We have a few stores
around the island.”

“Oh,” she
answered, after she’d chewed the last of the morsel. She was dying to ask him
which stores but didn’t want to sound pushy. “
Moncado
is not a very common surname here,” she remarked, opting for a more indirect
route.

“My
ancestors are Sicilian. They had come to Malta and left a while later, but a
couple of them stayed on. They must have loved the beaches,” he replied with a
glint in his eyes that even she, with her impaired vision, could discern.

 
His answer wasn’t quite what she hoped for –
he didn’t volunteer information about his work or state what business he was in
– but she wouldn’t pressure him to tell more than he wanted. If she dug around
or even flipped through the phone book, he probably wouldn’t be too hard to
find on an island as small as this. Still, that wasn’t the point.

From the
way he just kissed her, he liked the way things were turning out, and that’s
all that mattered.
  

“Kiss me
again,” she softly demanded, feeling uncharacteristically bold and feminine.

The
blazing fire that licked at her with his appraising look was all the
encouragement she needed to slide her arms around his neck and throw
herself
, body and soul, into another kiss. She teetered on
the edge of the stool but somehow didn’t care if she toppled them both off. His
arms snaked around her and held her tight, one hand splayed across her back,
the other buried under her hair to hold her head prisoner.

She also
slid her hand up his nape and into his hair.
Sexy,
close-cropped dark hair.

“Perhaps
we need to go somewhere more comfortable,” he said at last, his voice rich like
velvet. “What do you think of the couch? I’ll bring the trays over so we can
eat.”

“How about
the bedroom?” she shocked herself by suggesting. “It’s right off that corridor
over there.” She pointed at a short hallway with a door to the right and one
straight across, at the end of it. “I’ll pick one tray, you get the other
one.”
 

Without
stopping to wonder how she’d become such a siren, she slid off the stool,
grabbed a tray, and led the way to the room across the hallway.

“That’s
the bathroom.” She pointed to the door on the right hand side, more because she
needed to keep talking as if chit-chat would calm the rioting butterflies in
her belly.

It was a
tiny one-bedroom farmhouse, but that’s what gave it most of its charm. It
packed a real punch in such limited square footage, and she couldn’t imagine a
better, cosier place for this rendezvous, or one that would have felt so much
like a home.

The
bedroom was rather small, too. It was decorated in neutral, shabby chic white furniture,
which made the large brass bed with the fancy burgundy and white counterpane
stick out like the fabled Gulliver in Lilliput.

Melita
placed her tray on a nightstand and was suddenly reluctant to look across the
bed, where Alex switched on the lamp. A spate of shyness caught her in a firm
grip and she found herself defensively crossing her arms and shuttering her
gaze.

But Alex
stood close to her now. He uncrossed her arms and clasped her chin between his
thumb and forefinger. Gently, he made her look straight up at him. He held her,
strong and secure.
Left her no quarter, no chance to look
away.

“Don’t be
ashamed to look at me. I want to be able to see your face, to see how my touch
makes you feel inside,” he said, a statement that would have had her on the
floor, at his feet, were he not holding her up with a powerful arm and his
amazing dark gaze.

She
squinted a little. “Are your eyes a dark brown?” He was a good half head taller
than her. She wasn’t short herself, but she had to stand on tip-toes to get a
closer glimpse.

“Hazel,”
he responded, “but there are moments when they turn several shades darker, even
black.
Depends on my mood.”

She smiled
and placed a palm against his cheek and jaw. How she loved the masculine feel
of day-old stubble that prickled her skin…

“And what
mood are you in now?” she teased. Her voice sounded distant to her, almost as
though someone else was saying the words, or she was hearing them through a
speaker with the volume down low.

“I’m in
the mood to love you,” he murmured.

His words,
on the other hand, rang in her head like the resounding peal of a giant church
bell.

In the mood to love you.

“Yes,” she
managed, only that. Her eyes burned and filled with moisture. It was difficult
to swallow past the emotion that gathered in her throat.

Yes, even if it’s only for tonight.

“Let me,
then.”

This
wasn’t really happening, was it? It was mad, wild… and so implausible.

His head
bent down to kiss her.
An unhurried kiss this time, almost
tentative.
He took his time to invade her mouth, to brand her with the
heat from his – and even then, it was a slow burn that started where their lips
met and coursed down her body to her very core, between her trembling legs.

Without
breaking contact, he reached up to pull her back zipper down, then left her
lips to taste along her jaw, round the curve to her ears. When his teeth
nibbled on her earlobe, the dress had started to fall off her shoulders. The
silk slid down easily, and she was left in her cream lace bra and panties.
 

In a
smooth sequence of moves he reached out to pull back the bedclothes, then swung
her up in his arms and laid her on the bed. He ran his hands down the underside
of her legs, forged a smouldering path of skin all the way to her feet, where
he gently removed her strappy sandals and placed them on the floor.

She’d once
heard that the feet ought to be considered the most intimate part of one’s body
because they are so close to the earth; they know, intuitively, all its shifting
shapes, patterns, textures, and secrets.

Perhaps
that’s what he was thinking too when he lingered on her soles, observant and
thoughtful.

He pulled
back suddenly – as though he’d forced himself to – and removed all of his
clothes by the soft lamplight, allowed her to see his unconcealed arousal that
was only for her. She felt herself colour with a mixture of timidity and
exhilaration.

At the
appreciation in her eyes he joined her in the bed and eased her to him.
Emboldened by his nakedness, she unclasped her bra, shook off the straps and
threw it aside, along with the rest of her clothing. There was nothing better
than to have his solid chest, or the tantalizing rub of his spattered chest
hair, against her bare skin.
 

He dropped
light kisses on her eyes, forehead, cheeks, chin, and trailed his lips down her
neck, between her collarbones, to the deep valley between her breasts. They
felt fuller, heavier, and when his mouth closed around one of them, she thought
she’d surely die of pleasure.

His tongue
teased the distended nub; then he drew on it hard until the blood rushed there
and caused a needle-sharp shock of electricity to bolt through her. A rush so strong
it brought her close to that little death she coveted – the ultimate carnal
fulfilment.

His
attention diverted to the other breast, to which he gave a similar treatment
before he shifted his body fully on top of her and slid downward to taste all
the way to her belly button and beyond…

“You taste
like apples,” he smiled against her skin.

“Must be
my body lotion,” she sighed, half-dizzy.

“I love
apples,” he remarked before he parted her legs wide. “They’re good for you.”

His
fingers plied her sensitive flesh so he could discover another intimate part of
her.
A part that hadn’t seen a man in too long.

He learned
every square inch as his tongue mirrored the sensual assault to her breasts.
With her eyes closed, the sensation heightened and fanned through her. It devoured
her.

Lost in a
world where shame had no place, she arched her back and bore against his mouth,
so he would push her over the edge into an abyss where all that existed was the
pull of gravity. Fireworks erupted inside her, like shrapnel, while she fell
down hard. It went on, this fantasy rollercoaster ride across a monster
mountain range, until finally, the storm quieted down and she drifted back to reality
on a cloud of joy and contentment.

 
She opened her eyes to find him hovering above
her. There was something different in his perusal, something so sweet and
vulnerable that it made her emotional all over again. She bit on the inside of
her mouth to keep from sobbing.

What had
gotten into her?

“When I
first saw you I thought you were possibly the most beautiful thing I’d ever
seen,” he told her, very seriously. “I’m sure of that now.”

She knew
he meant every word, so she just had to pull him down for a tender kiss, and to
hold him to her for a close embrace. There was no getting around the fact that
this was supposed to be merely a sexual encounter between strangers, but she
couldn’t imagine not seeing this man again.

For all
intents and purposes, after tonight, they would say goodbye.

The
thought strangely dispirited her. She asked herself what would happen if they
parted ways and she met him some day, down the road, in an entirely different
situation. Would they act as strangers, as if nothing had ever happened between
them?

As though
they’d never abandoned themselves in each others’ arms?

Perhaps
she should have insisted upon being paired with a foreigner with no roots here.
Someone she wouldn’t be tempted to track down. It would probably be easier to
leave it all behind, then, without wondering what could have been…

She
worried her bottom lip and pressed her nose against the silky softness of his
hair. The scent of ocean breeze glided past her weak defences, and she wondered
about him. She thought forbidden things, things that only devoted lovers would
understand.
Like what brand of shampoo he used, and why.
Whether he used an electric shaver or old-fashioned blade.
What ruffled his feathers and did he like dogs.

She wanted
to know everything about him.

Not a good
thing.

Her mind
was worse for wear than a knotted-up bale of wool. But, she needed to let
herself go and enjoy this night, to make the most of it, not worry about the
future. The proof of Alex’s desire for her stark against her thigh, all she
should want now was to lose
herself
with him.