Page 35 of The Seven Rings
She tipped her head up to welcome the kiss.
Warm lips meeting, sliding, parting.
She rose on her toes, and her hands took his face, then glided up into his hair.
It all aroused her, the warmth and taste of his lips, the texture of his skin, his hair, the feel of his body pressed to hers as the night air danced around them.
Her fingers got busy on the buttons of his shirt.
And the pounding, like slamming pistons, clanged from the third floor.
With a mix of longing and defiance, Sonya pulled him closer. “No, don’t listen. It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t matter right now. She doesn’t exist right now.”
“Just you and me.”
“Yes.” Spreading his shirt open, she ran her hands over his chest. “Just you and me.” Her lips curved before they met his again. “And a couple of dogs snoring on the floor.”
“Just how I like it.” He drew her shirt over her head. “And here you are, with me, in the moonlight.”
Ignoring the insistent banging from overhead, he held her close, felt her heart skip a beat or two against his.
Just how he liked it.
And when he ran his hands over her, that heartbeat increased, as did his. Outside, the waves rose and fell, their rhythm steady and strong as he changed the angle of the kiss and deepened it. The airseemed to sing as it wafted over the sea and shimmered into the room.
He’d thought he’d known how much he’d wanted her, almost from the first moment, but it was nothing to what he felt when she was with him.
He barely noticed when the pounding stopped, and only thought: Dobbs can’t win against this, not against what’s real. Not against love.
He picked her up to carry her to the bed, and she smiled, laid a hand on his cheek.
“Just you and me,” she repeated.
They undressed each other, taking their time, taking that time for lips to meet again, and again, for hands to stroke, to linger. For trembles to turn to sighs.
With the sea air came the wash of moonlight and that beat, that steady beat of water against rock.
His eyes were like the night sea, deep and dark. No man, she realized, looked at her exactly as he did. No man, she felt certain, seemed to understand the whole of her as he did.
And with him, as with no other, she could let herself give all she had, let herself take, all she wanted.
His hands, so strong, so sure, thrilled her. Kisses, long, slow, deep, set her blood to simmer. The bed groaned as they moved together, reaching, taking, so quiet murmurs and sighs grew breathless.
As urgency climbed, as hands and lips became more insistent, she welcomed the ache of need.
In the moonlight, with the music of the restless sea surrounding them, she opened for him.
When they were joined, when they were locked together, the world spun away. Like the waves, she rose and fell. She let herself give, let herself take, until there was nothing else.
In the morning, Sonya dressed for the work at hand in sweat shorts, a tank, and her oldest sneakers. She wound her hair, clipped it up.
She armed herself with packs of sticky notes.
With Owen and Trey she began a systematic search, going through dressers, bureaus, armoires, drawers in occasional tables and stands.
For the most part, those drawers proved empty. But here and there they found a stray pen, notepaper, the occasional photograph.
In one she found an old tea tin.
