Page 34 of Captured

Confusion, need, and want all clanged together in Lauren’s brain. What was he saying? How was she supposed to reply? Did he think?—

His next words hung it. “What are you afraid of?”

“This,” she snapped, and leaned forward too quickly for him to back off. With her free hand, she reached for the back of his head and pulled him toward her, so they could kiss, a real kiss, not the half-pitying smooch she’d experienced with him the night before. Once again, Dimitri let her pull him to her, giving as good as he got but nothing more—nothing.

The earth didn’t move, the sea didn’t rise up and attack them. The sun didn’t shower confetti rays on them. What the hell had she been thinking would happen? How could she seriously have believed?—

She broke away from Dimitri in embarrassment and more than a little disgust—at him, at herself, at this entire stupid situation. “That.”

His eyes lit up with amusement, and his mouth quirked up. “You were afraid of kissing me?”

Pull it together, she implored herself again. She seemed to be begging herself that a lot these days. Dimitri wasn’t a demigod—or, even if he was, demigods probably meant something very, very different in Oûros. That had to be it. Connection to theancient gods merited a fun dotted line on the Ancestry.com family tree, nothing more. She needed to deal with the man as aman...and that was more than enough.

“You kiss me like it’s your job, and it’snotyour job, Dimitri,” she said, waving her beer at him. “I don’t need your pity, and I don’t need your duty, though kudos to the Oûros National Security Force if it trains you to keep lonely women entertained. I thought—I mean, I thought—” She was having a hard time focusing with Dimitri so close.

“Perhaps you think too much, princess,” Dimitri murmured, and this time, the ocean did seem to murmur with him, the sound of the shooshing tide carrying along the sand. But surely she was making that up.

He leaned forward as she shifted back into her chair, pursuing her until his lips brushed hers once again. Teasing, tasting. He drew his tongue along her lips and she shivered at the almost electric taste of him. Now this is what she’d expected.

Her mouth opened on a sigh, and Dimitri pressed into her intimately, angling his head as he deepened the kiss. He tasted of salt and beer and lime, and Lauren’s mind completely blanked for a moment as he pulled her beer bottle from her unresisting fingers and set it away from them. Her hands seemed to naturally find their way under the loose fall of his tank top, and she shuddered as her fingers connected with the rock-hard planes of his abs. Demigod or not, Dimitri wasn’t a lean man, whipped to precision. He was thick and hard, almost bulky, his muscles bulging beneath her fingers as he moved his mouth away from hers to trace a line along her chin, up to the delicate skin by her ear.

“I assure you, kissing you is no duty,” he said, the soft tickle of his words sending whorls of intense desire down her neck. She slid her hands to either side of his torso, anchoring him to her, wanting nothing more than for this to continue. He did her onebetter, reaching out and pulling her closer to him until his groin pressed into the vee of her legs. The evidence of his arousal was as hard and fierce as the rest of him, and Lauren arched her body further, practically whimpering as his hand snaked around her waist to press her more tightly as her head fell back.

Dimitri used the angle to explore her neck, his rough, unshaven skin pressing against the hollow of her neck and shoulder while his lips ranged over her collarbone. His tongue replaced his lips and then his teeth, grazing over the delicate skin as if she were a meal to be consumed bit by careful bit. Explosions of desire had pretty much detonated everything south of her belly button, and she tilted her hips up more, wantonly, mindlessly, needing him closer, needing him inside her. Needing him to fill her with all his raw vitality until she was in his arms, wrapped by his body, nothing and nowhere and no one but his.

Somehow, one of his hands had slid up between their bodies, and it captured her left breast through the thin fabric of her clothing, touching, exploring. She shuddered as his fingers found her nipple, brushing across it as it peaked eagerly beneath his touch, the slow tease so brutal, her eyes practically watered with need. She was almost through a half sigh when he palmed the full weight of her breast, squeezing it hard as she gasped. His head lifted quickly, and he stared at her, his eyes mutinously hot. Had she ever seen eyes glow so fiercely, swirls of melted gold and bronze that trapped her as surely as his body did? Would she ever have the strength to look away?

“I didn’t hurt you?” he asked. His hand softened its hold, rolling the round swell in his palm. But he didn’t return his fingers to where she needed him most, wanted him, that tight pleasure-pain of her peaked nipples that made her want his hand beneath her shirt and thin bra, not on top of them, touching her skin to skin, heat to heat, need to need.

“No,” she managed when she realized he was still staring at her, waiting for an answer. “No.” Breathing had become something of a challenge, but she had to make him continue, had to make him understand. “Please, don’t stop.”

“I have hurt you,” Dimitri said, impossibly soft, his words making no sense to her, her body tense and quivering underneath him. He moved his hand away from her, and she almost cried out, until she felt the rough touch of his fingers on her belly, under the hem of her shirt, sliding up toward her breast once more and bunching up the material as he went. “Let me kiss it and make it better.”

Twenty

Dimitri took Lauren’s groan as all the encouragement he needed. He bent toward her body, reluctantly breaking contact with her so that he could take her breast in his mouth, sucking hard as Lauren gasped and entwined her fingers in his hair. Her body was on fire, and he had done that to her, he had made her forget, made her think of nothing but him. Him and the sunset and beach and his body and hers, wrapped together on this porch, which was now his favorite porch in any country, anywhere.

He didn’t need confirmation from her phone that she knew the truth about him, but he was fairly sure she still didn’t quite believe what she’d been told. She probably didn’t even know what being a demigod meant.

Good thing, he was just the guy to explain it to her.

Not quite yet, though.

“Dimitri,” Lauren said brokenly, and he adjusted his hold on her again, pulling her out of the chair in one fluid motion until she sprawled on him as he lay back on the porch. Her hair had fallen loose from her bun and was drifting around her shoulders, her lips full from his kisses, her eyes glazed as she settled against him. She was too far away now, however, and he reached upto her, freezing as she laid a hand on his chest. She couldn’t seriously want to stop now. Not now, when he was about to explode from looking at her, when all he wanted was to roll her beneath him and bury himself in the wonder of her body.

Instead, she gazed down at him and smiled, her gaze raking his face, his body. “You’re so beautiful,” she murmured, drifting a soft hand against his cheek. He stared back at her, willing his body to behave, to do this her way, whatever fucking way she wanted if it kept her touching him, rocking against him, her long legs straddling him and pressing up against his cock with a rhythmic pressure that made his head swim.

“Please tell me you’re not simply teasing me,” she continued as her gaze fell away. Her hand dropped to his shirt, where her fingers knotted up the material.

He huffed out a short breath, moving his hands to her hips to seat her more firmly over him, knowing his erection was unmistakable through his gym shorts. “Trust me, I’m not teasing here. You—” He broke off as she reached for her own clothes, pulling her top up and over her head, bringing the bra with it. Her body gloriously bared in the setting sunlight was quite possibly the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and his control slipped that much more as she lifted her hands to palm her own breasts, her gaze fixed on his face as his mouth went dry. She swayed toward him and he reached for her, his hands sliding up her back to press her close as he kissed her breasts, her collarbone, her neck, and back down to her glorious breasts, full and heavy andhis.

Lauren shuddered in his grasp, and his need crested again, until before he knew it, he was sitting up, scrambling to his feet with her tight in his arms, swinging her into the house as she laughed and held on. But he wouldn’t be fucking this woman on a porch. Not the first time. Maybe the sixth, but not the first.

The relative gloom of the villa’s living room was a balm to his senses, helping him to catch his breath. The room upstairs was much too far away for him to consider. The couch was too. Instead, he sank down onto the thick woven rug that covered the tiled floor, laying Lauren down as if she would break. She looked at him, dazed. He could get used to that look.

But for now, he couldn’t stand a minute more to be the only one wearing a shirt. He yanked off his tank top, and before Lauren could speak, he rolled back on top of her, stretching her hands high above her as he levered his body over hers. He reveled in the feel of her soft skin beneath him and tightened his abs in an attempt not to crush her.

“Hey—” She wriggled her wrists out of his grasp and brought her hands to his chest, her eyes wide as he braced himself above her. Releasing a purely feminine sigh, she trailed her fingers down his chest, feathering them along the line of hair that arrowed down between his pecs in a line that ended distinctly south of his navel. She followed that line like it was a map, not stopping until her fingers slid beneath the waistband of his shorts. She dragged the shorts low on his hips until the thick ridges of his hip bones were exposed, then slid her palms around his hips beneath his briefs, until her cool fingers cupped his bare ass. Pulling him into the vee of her thighs, she arched beneath him, giving him another heavy-lidded gaze. “I want you,” she murmured. “Please tell me I can have you.”

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