Deep (Pagano Family #4)(52)
“Yes.” She was naked, but still wearing the necklace he’d given her earlier in the day. The sun. It made him all the hotter to see it. All day, his eyes had been drawn to it. More than an adornment, it was a symbol. A mark. He hadn’t realized it when he’d bought it, but it was more than a gift. It was a statement.
He released his aching cock from his sweats and lifted her off the ground, catching her leg high over his arm. More than two weeks had passed since she’d been hurt, and days had passed since their f*cking had caused her ribs discomfort. She was working out again, and he could feel the way her muscles stretched more easily with his demands.
Sinking deeply into her, he felt again, as always, the wonder at her responsiveness. She was completely without affect in sex, without guile or self-consciousness. Just as she danced for herself, for the enjoyment of it, she f*cked the same way—by instinct, following the needs and impulses of her body.
He’d f*cked a lot of women. About half of them f*cked like they were performing—always aware of how they looked, how they sounded. Most other women were passive, apparently taking his need for control and his lack of gentleness to mean that he didn’t want them to participate, even when he told them to. Beverly just went with it, doing what felt right, making whatever sounds happened, moving with him to maximize her own experience—which maximized the shit out of his.
And so, as he’d known would be the case, as soon as he was inside her, as soon as his hand was plucking her nipple and his tongue was exploring her mouth, she gave up her protests about their location and was completely with him, grunting raunchily with every thrust, biting his tongue, his lips, yanking at his hair. This was what he wanted. Passion. Physical need so great and powerful that the world disappeared around them.
Nick let go of the world and f*cked her, driving harder and deeper with every thrust. She let go of his hair and put her hands against the wall, forcing her body down with his every inward, upward thrust, bringing him even deeper. Needing more oxygen than he could get through his nose, he broke their kiss and put his forehead on her chest.
“I need it harder,” she gasped. “Harder, oh God, please harder.”
He went harder, but didn’t have much longer left, so he dropped his hand down her back and slid two fingers into her ass. This was his; only he had ever given her pleasure in this way, and Nick found that fantastically potent. He wanted more of her ass, but would take that slowly. For now, he loved the way all her muscles closed around him like a vise the very instant his fingers pressed against that tight skin. She came immediately, and she came hard.
And tonight, she came screaming, drowning out the sound of the roaring surf. Nick released his hold on himself and followed with her, his own shout crashing around them.
They’d definitely given the neighbors a show.
12
“Remember to keep your breaths coming from the diaphragm, from your center.” Bev looked at the women assembled before her, facing the ocean. Teaching this little morning beach yoga class was one of her favorite things. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was just play money, anyway, set aside for treats and extras. And she would have done it for free. She’d been glad to get back to it, and gladder still that her class didn’t seem to mind that there were two guys in suits lurking back at the edge of the sand.
Two men. Donnie and a much bigger guy everybody called Smash. Bev felt sure that his mother had named him something else, but he hadn’t said, and she hadn’t asked. Though she liked Donnie a whole lot and had been even having fun with him hanging around all the time, Smash was grimmer and more businesslike—and he scared Bev, just a little. She knew he was on her side, there to protect her, and in that way she felt safer with him around. Donnie wasn’t so great at the bodyguard gig. But Smash didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d sit with her and watch Smallville reruns with some popcorn.
She moved her class down to savasana, talking them through the full-body relaxation, keeping her speech timed to the ebb and flow of the water nearby. Then they came up to lotus, and she ended the class, as always, with “Namaste.”
The class rolled up their mats and walked together toward their building. Bev looked up and saw Nick watching from his balcony, dressed in everything but his suit jacket. He lifted his coffee mug, and she smiled and waved at him.
“Come see me before I go,” he called down.
She wasn’t really sure what day marked the beginning of their couplehood, but she marked their time together from the bombing, which was just shy of three weeks earlier. Things seemed to be moving quickly, at least from her perspective, but they also seemed to be going at the perfect pace. They spent almost every night together, sometimes in his bed, sometimes in hers, with no real plan or reasoning behind the choice.
He’d been away one night, in New York for some kind of business. With the extra guards and that terrible scene at the cemetery with all the guns, Bev expected that his business in New York had been dangerous, and she had felt real fear for him, even though he’d brushed her fears away, just as he had in the car at the cemetery.
What he did didn’t matter to her, at least as long as it was in the abstract, at least as long as she had the Nick she knew. But what she didn’t know did scare her. There was so much death around him. The chance that he’d get caught up in that himself had to be high. She was holding her heart out to a man who could die and take it with him.