He watched in breathless silence as she brought her hand to her face and languidly licked her palm, then stroked it up the length of him.
Using knees and thighs, she drew him back into her until he rested not inside her, but against her.
She moved. Sliding her swollen clit against him. Using him for her own pleasure.
He would have killed to be inside her then. Would have crushed throats with his bare hands just to split her in two and punish her with relentless, brutal thrusts.
But one look at the wild, worshipful expression on her face robbed him of all such thoughts. Only one remained.
He wanted to watch her come.
His fingers dug into her hips, angling her so the blunt head of his cock stroked her again and again, the heat between them building like kindling for a fire the jealous heavens sought to douse.
Lightning scorched the clouds with brief, blinding light. Thunder startled the water spreading out around them into roiling white-capped waves.
They moved together against this drama of sky and sea. Or maybe because of it.
Moira clawed at his back, bit his ear, whispered curses and blessings into the wind as it whipped her hair against his face.
Her scream was shattered by thunder, carried away in the ceaseless roar of waters. Her body folded up against him as her legs shook. Dark lashes resting against her cheek, her forehead furrowed like she studied the internal sensations. Like she—
It couldn’t be. Not her—
“First.”
As had been their pattern, Nick wasn’t sure she had spoken until she spoke again.
“Yup.” She nodded. “Never had one before. Truth to tell, I’d always wondered what made folks’ eyes roll back in their head.”
Nick’s own need still pulsed between his legs, throbbing against the insult of words when only fucking would do. “You mean, out of all those men, you never—”
“Nope.”
“Oh, Moira.” His temporary irritation was banished by the thoughts of hours they would spend sweaty and naked as he introduced her to every single pleasure his long life had brought him. “We have some serious catching up to do.”
She hopped down off the guardrail and shimmed her skirt back down her hips. “’Fraid we can’t.”
“Can’t?” Nick turned the word over like the mystery it was. Words like can’t and won’t didn’t exist in his vocabulary. “Why not?”
“’Cause of that.” She looked at something in the distance. Something over his shoulder.
He turned just in time to greet the oncoming wall of water. “Oh, fuck,” were the last words he managed.
11
“Well, that was impressive.”
Moira whipped around to find Tierra standing a few yards down the dock. Rain dripped from her umbrella and puddled at her sandaled feet. The hem of her long peasant skirt was soaked and soiled. Her eyes shone from the shadow a deeper shade of green, like leaves washed vibrant by a storm.
How much had she seen? A pang of guilt stabbed Moira between the ribs.
The downpour ceased abruptly, disappearing like some faucet in the sky had been shut off, which Moira supposed was as good an image as any for what had transpired. The sudden silence left in its wake was broken only by the ocean’s steady hush. “It was an accident.” She slid Tierra a small, sly smile. “Mostly.”
They stared out at the shifting green-gray seascape. The squall had all but disappeared, and taken Nick along with it.
“What you just did…” Tierra shook the umbrella and folded it at her side. “That wasn’t because of what happened at the shop, was it?”
“What I did?” Unable to decipher what all Tierra had seen, answering a question with a question seemed the safest route.
“Blasting Nick Kingswood off the dock, for starters.”
“Naw. Though he had it comin’ about eight ways from Sunday.”
Tierra didn’t seem inclined to argue. “What about what happened before that?”
“What about it?”
“You weren’t…trying to get him not to…” Tierra trailed off.
Moira raised an eyebrow at her sister, confident she could wait out a silence much longer than the woman fairly bustin’ at the seams from the effort of not saying something.
A frustrated exhale came seconds later. “You didn’t try to hump him out of evicting Ambrosia’s, did you?”
“Nope.” Moira wrapped her arms around her own goose-pimpled flesh. “It don’t work like that.”
“How does it work?”
Moira looked at her sister, trying to read her expression like some women back home did tealeaves. Never before had anyone asked her this question. Not once. Not ever. “You really wanna know?”
Tierra nodded. “You tried to tell me earlier, and I cut you