Royally Claimed - By Marie Donovan Page 0,37

his head to kiss her, and she threaded her fingers through his sleek black waves.

He reached under her shorts, inhaling sharply when he realized she wasn’t wearing any underwear. His fingers found her damp core, opening her and playing with her hard little clit, teasing until it swelled. She widened her stance and spread her arms for balance on the sink top.

“You want me to take you like this?” His hands caressed and molded her bottom cheeks.

She couldn’t speak, only nodded.

“God, Julia, you turn me into an animal.” He nudged her knees even wider with his and pushed the fabric to the side. Somehow the band of fabric made her feel even more naked than if she had been totally bare. He gripped her hips and thrust into her, letting out a groan as he settled himself to the hilt.

“Move,” she moaned, when it seemed as if he was determined to drive her crazy and stay still.

He pistoned in and out of her, shoving his hands under her tank top to cup her breasts. His big fingers rolled her nipples into diamond hard points, sending jolts of lust triangulating down to her clit.

She tossed her head back and he bit her earlobe. “Touch yourself, Julia. Rub your clit for me.”

She did as he commanded and looked into the mirror above the sink. She gasped. Her eyes were dilated and hazy, her hair a wild tangle.

Frank caught her gaze in the mirror. “Look how sexy you are. I can’t even leave you long enough to undress you.”

They both appeared dressed, but it was obvious that he was possessing her body. And possessing her mind and heart, as well.

9

JULIA STOOD UP AND SET DOWN the paint roller, noting the smears on her fingers. The downstairs bathroom was mercifully a sandy taupe color now, covering Benedito’s unfortunate experiments in interior design. Along with Julia’s help, Frank had ordered sets of pretty aqua and off-white towels and rugs as well as some pale blue-green bottles made of bubbly glass. Although Frank was a typical guy and not interested in scented candles, she’d also convinced him to order several creamy vanilla pillar candles of varying heights and widths. He could understand the need for emergency lighting, but explaining tea-lights to him just resulted in incredulity that anyone would want such a useless, tiny candle.

The vanity was a rich, dark mahogany with a marble top, solid marble, not laminated to look like marble, or even cultured marble. Frank had mentioned casually that the quarry in Italy had sent him pictures of various slabs until he saw one that he liked.

Julia could see why he liked it. It probably would have made a nice statue for some church somewhere, because the stone was almost flawless, a beautiful creamy color that would look wonderful for years.

She decided not to wash the paint off her hands and brushes in the zillion-dollar sink and went into the kitchen.

Frank was doing the same, washing grime off his hands. She nudged him aside playfully, dunking her hands under the running water. He dumped soap on her and started scrubbing her hands with his.

His hands were such a contrast to hers—dark and tough, but with a gentle touch. Her hands were pale with long fingers, well-suited to stitching up lacerations and inserting IV lines into patients. Once, she even got to deliver a baby—not by choice, of course, since the mother had been in her car in the emergency room driveway. The paperwork afterward had been horrendous, but she got a secret thrill from seeing her name on the baby’s birth certificate.

“I delivered a baby once,” she blurted.

“You did?” His hands tightened for a second on hers. “Whose?”

“A patient who was having her fifth baby. They got caught at a train crossing and by the time they pulled into the emergency room driveway, the baby was coming. All the docs were tied up so I pulled on my gloves as I ran and got there just in time.”

“That’s amazing, Julia. You must have been so proud.” He dried his hands and gave her the towel.

“It was special.” She sighed, hanging up the towel on a hook near the stove. “Maybe I should have been a midwife. It’s a happier profession than patching up sick and injured people all the time.” But she knew why she hadn’t gone into midwifery—for several years after breaking up with Frank, she had a hard time looking at babies without imagining a dark-haired, dark-eyed laughing baby that looked