Page 34 of Cursed

Chapter Twelve

Edeena allowed Vince to pull her up off the couch, unsurprised her legs were so shaky. “I’m significantly underdressed here.”

Heat flared again as he cast a glance back, his eyes dark with intensity. “I applaud that, for the record. Whenever you feel like going naked around me, be my guest.”

“Mm.” She stopped him as he moved again, her hand on his sleeve. “I’m also feeling a little out of place.”

He froze, clearly surprised, but she didn’t correct his dismay at first, instead using the opportunity to step close to him. Catching the hem of his shirt, she pulled it up, and he lifted his arms obligingly to allow her to strip it from his upper body.

Vince was radiating nearly as much heat as she was, and Edeena placed both of his hands on his pecs, savoring the hard planks of warmth beneath her palms. “Looks like someone works out,” she murmured, drawing her fingers down to his abs, which knotted at her touch.

“All part of the job, ma’am,” Vince said tightly, but he didn’t move as she traced a light touch along the edge of his cargo pants. She could see the rim of his boxer briefs, and she dipped a finger behind it tracing it around to his waist.

“Is this part of the job, too?” she asked, dropping her hand farther to grace the stiff line of his erection. Vince hissed as she drew her hand down then up against the sturdy cloth of his pants. Clearly the cloth wasn’t so thick that he couldn’t feel the pressure, feel it and respond to it with an urgency that made her smile.

It was good to know she wasn’t the only one in desperate need here.

She reached out and flicked open the clasp of his pants, then peeled them down and away. Somewhere along the line, Vince had kicked off his shoes and socks, and he stepped out of his pants easily, leaving him only in his boxers. The movement took him a few feet away from her, and she held up a hand to stop him when he would have closed the gap once more.

“Let me look,” she said, and she turned him slightly so that the full reflected light of the harbor splashed across his body.

My God, he’s built. She’d known about the shoulders, suspected that the chest would be thick and heavily muscled. But she didn’t expect the whip-cut abs, the muscles arrowing downward beneath the band of his boxer briefs. Those briefs stretched over narrow hips and then much heavier thighs, corded with muscle. “You don’t run, do you?”

He barked a laugh. “No. Too much weight to do that to my knees. I bike, and my cousins run a roofing business where I help out on occasion. Climbing up and down ladders all day will keep you in shape.”

“It definitely has.” She stepped back into the shadow of his body, savoring his touch as his thick arms came around her again, his hand warm and smooth along her back. He bent her into him and she felt another flare of heat as the obvious evidence of his reaction pressed into her belly.

For another second, she pressed her head against his chest, willing the moment to last well beyond this night, this week, this idyll here in a foreign country. It couldn’t, of course, and she sighed against Vince’s warm skin, allowing the sound of his steadily beating heart to lull her into her own sense of relaxation.

“Hey,” he murmured, tightening his arms around her as he spoke into her hair. “We don’t have to do anything else, Edeena. My night’s already pretty much perfect.”

Edeena smiled against him, hugging him more firmly for the lie. She shifted ever so slightly against his shaft and didn’t miss the hitch in Vince’s breath, then leaned back to look at him, the arcing movement of her body serving to intensify the intimate touch, not lessen it.

“Don’t think for a moment you’re not going to finish what you’ve started here,” she said, and a curl of pure feminine delight spread through her at the change in his expression—the hope, the almost desperate need flashing through his eyes. “You have a bedroom, I suppose?”

“You suppose correctly.” Vince’s voice was strained as he turned, and Edeena let him lead her into the room, realizing as she watched that he was practically trembling in front of her. A new and different sensation washed over her, one she wasn’t sure how to handle: power.

She wasn’t a stranger to sex, but the men she’d been with up to now had been little more than grown-up kids compared to Vince—college friends and sweethearts, as unused to hard work and the realities of life as she was. Vince wasn’t simply a few years older, he’d been working on his own for nearly a decade. He was big and brawny and . . . and he was trembling with desire at the thought of her touch. At the thought of making love to her.

It was like nothing else she’d ever experienced in her life, and she wanted more. A lot more.

“Nice,” she murmured as they stepped into the bedroom. Thick curtains hung half-drawn, allowing light to play over the bed, but keeping the rest of the room in heavy shadow. She let Vince advance further, pulling the covers back on the bed, but when he looked back at her questioningly, she gestured him to keep going, only approaching the bed once he’d climbed into it. There was a tense, curious expression on his face, and she chuckled, warming to the possibilities—thrilling to them, really. She’d never felt safer with someone, so certain that she was in good hands.

She’d never felt so wanted, either. Not for her money, her social status, or even for her good attitude and caring demeanor. Vince wanted—her body. Pure and simple. And she wanted to give it to him.

But first, she wanted to play.

“Do you mind if I . . .” she let the question hang as she leaned over the bed, reaching for the waistband of his boxer briefs. Vince didn’t resist as she pulled the briefs down over his powerful legs, didn’t object as she clambered up onto the fine cotton sheets, sinking into the plush mattress.

But when she positioned herself between his legs, tilting down, he lifted a hand to her shoulder. “Edeena,” he said, and in that word was everything she was sure he couldn’t quite bring himself to say—that she didn’t need to do this, that he wasn’t expecting anything of her, that he should be pleasuring her, not the other way around. The words seemed lodged in his throat, however, and she brushed off his hand.

“Just a taste,” she murmured, then smiled as Vince’s groan followed her as she leaned forward to the sharp planes of muscle above his thighs.

Vince’s sensibilities may have tried to spare her, but his body was definitely on board with the program.

Edeena lifted a cool hand and drew it along the edge of his thick shaft, stroking the soft skin that strained against her touch. Up, then down again; up, then down; her mouth hovering ever closer as Vince’s hands flattened on the bed on either side of his hips, clearly requiring a huge effort of control not to grab her.

She liked that she was causing him to twitch so tightly beneath her soft touch, and liked even more the strangled hiss as she circled the base of his shaft with her thumb and forefinger, tightening the pressure as her tongue darted out for that taste she’d warned him about.

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