Page 42 of Café Diablo

I’m an island girl born and raised.”

“Have you ever been to the mainland?”

“Sure.” I nod against this chest, the warmth of him beside me making me sweat. “A couple times for vacation. I went to New York and LA, but there were too many cars and too much smog, and it was all metal and skyscrapers. You can’t see the stars in any of those places.”

His fingers dally against my ear. “I can’t argue with that.”

We’re quiet again for several more minutes and his breathing starts to lengthen, the song of the waves playing in the distance, along with the soft hum of moths and insects buzzing in the dense of the woods.

“You know, I was a bit of an ass earlier—” Edwin says, and I lift my head and faux-gasp at him.

“You? An ass?” I mock, and he pinches me in the side, which makes me snuggle up even closer.

“If you don’t interrupt me, I might actually say something nice,” he chides, his fingers stroking my hair softly, and I make a motion to zip my lip. It’s dark, but I think our eyes have adjusted enough for him to see the motion. “So, yes,” he continues. “Painting is definitely not my scene. But, it’s definitely yours.Youwere really impressive. Everyone at the class tonight loved you. You’re charismatic, funny, charming. You had everyone eating out of your hand.”

I run my fingers around the top button of his shirt, listening, my fingertips occasionally brushing the centimeter of skin and chest hair where the collar fastens.

“Clearly you love it,” he says. “And yes, I can be a dick, but I didn’t miss the fact that tonight you were one-hundred-percent in your element. You were mesmerizing.”

“I bet that’s how you are in the courtroom,” I say quietly.

“Maybe,” he agrees. “Except not nearly as sexy.”

“I doubt that.”

I lift my head up from his chest to look at him. In the dark, his eyes are black marbles but they sparkle and, to the best of my judgement, that was genuine.

“Are you going to make a joke now?” he asks, and I shake my head, adjusting my hips. I flip my weight in the hammock and move so that my chest is pressed against his chest and I’ve lifted my face so it’s hovering only inches above his. He tenses under me, my body dragged against his to get into position, but all I can do is look down at his moonlit face and take in the powerful shape of his cheekbones and the perfect round of his mouth and the fact that everything about him is so damn beautiful it almost hurts.

I’m captured by him.

I look into his eyes far longer than is comfortable, my mind painting the ocean of stars around us and my chest contracting with a wicked fist of fear and tenderness, emotions I want to paint.

Edwin hooks his hand behind my neck and pulls me toward him.

It’s a surrender, like the soft tug of the ocean, it seems innocent until you’re dragged below by the powerful undertow. He pulls my lips against his and we are the ocean rolling in and over and on top of itself. His mouth is so soft and plush it makes me moan the second I’m tasting it. My entire face warms at the rush of his delicate lips, shivers tingling through my body with his subtleness. His mouth sweeps across mine, and for all his previous blushing and trepidation, this kiss is not a hesitation.

This kiss is a command—no, a demand—capturing all my attention as it releases goosebumps all the way down the backs of my legs.

His other hand slides around my waist and we tilt together as the hammock swings, the pressure of him promising that he knows exactly what to do with me if I give in. I kiss him harder and our mouths open, his tongue teasing inside me and stroking my own. It turns my whole body molten. I dig my fingers into his hair, and we become a tangle of limbs and gasping, my fingers aching with easy abandon.

This is our first kiss. Despite all the brash physical intimacy that we’ve already shared, we’ve never actually kissed before. The brush of his lips feels wildly private and heated, but also consequential, as if it means something—more.

I try to ignore the weight of that thought and angle myself to explore him more deeply. His hand strokes my neck and fire blossoms across my face as those nimble fingers and lips start to trace my throat and chin. I moan, breathless as he touches me, his soft mouth running over the ridges of my skin.

“Is this how you reel in a jury?” I ask, my voice caught with whispering heat. “Not the kissing, I mean the soft luring? Reeling them in?” I find his mouth and kiss him thoroughly again, not giving him a chance to answer. My body trills with how kissing alone sends bolts of electricity across my entire body: my nipples harden at the scrape of his chest, my toes curl in the hammock, my muscles limber, wanting to form into the perfect shape against him.

I shift my weight to get better access to his mouth, when the hammock throws me off balance and I have to overcorrect. Edwin grabs my hips quickly, righting us and dragging me on top of him so our gravity is stabilized. Suddenly, I’m straddling him in the hammock with our chests and hips aligned. I stare down at him, flushed and surprised, panting at how immediate this is.

One of his hands reaches up to brush the side of my face, and I lean into his fingers as he traces my cheekbones, my lips, the ridge of my throat. Then, he’s once again kissing me with that wild tenderness that has awakened my body.

He eases all the tenseness from my muscles and I limber and mold to him. The overtness of my spread legs against his groin becomes a delicious throb of need. He’s not completely hard yet, but I can feel him starting to thicken beneath me, that gorgeous cock that I’ve tasted beginning to swell against my shorts. I moan into the rock of the hammock, allowing my clit to drag against his length, and it’s so naughty he groans at my covetousness.

“Devil,” he hisses, his arms snaking around me, not daring let go, the pressure of him crushing against me and making me moan. His mouth turns wicked and his body hardens. Our range of motion in the hammock is small, but somehow he makes up for that with his tongue lashing against my teeth as his hands sear up and down the sides of my body like hot irons.

If we were naked, it would only take a few more strokes of my clit against the root of his cock before I’d be so wet that he’d have no choice but to let me ride him in this hammock. My pussy clenches, because not only are his kisses hot as sin, but this just went from a romantic make-out session to the promise of star-lit hammock fucking.

“I realize I may have handcuffed you that first night,” I say, teasingly. “But now that I know what your hands can do—” I moan as he aggressively slides both of his hands down over my ass and grinds his cock against where I’m spread. “Not fair!” I gasp into his mouth, the pulse between my legs pounding furiously. “What are you doing to me?”

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