Rooted (Pagano Family #3)(28)

“You want it?”

She nodded, his grip on her hair impeding the movement.

“Oh, I think you’re gonna scream for me, beautiful.” Keeping his hand wrapped with her hair, he brought the other around and pushed it between her legs, finding her clit. He strummed it like an instrument as he pounded into her. After a moment, the resistance he felt inside her eased, and then she began moving, too, countering his thrusts so that they slapped noisily together. Every time she tried to lean forward, he yanked her back by her hair, keeping their bodies sealed together as much as he could.

He felt her orgasm rise in her, rolling spasms starting up in the muscles that clenched him most intimately, and she let go of the shelves and reached her hands back, over her head, to grab handfuls of his hair. As her body milked him harder, driving his frenzy toward madness, and as her cries grew louder, he changed his approach, leaving long thrusts in favor of short, rapid ones, just as deep. And then he slapped her clit. Her body went stiff at that, and then wet ran over his cock, his hand, down her leg. He slapped her again, more sharply, and she screamed, pulling his hair so hard he felt strands give up and part from his scalp.

He’d never done anything like that before. And he hadn’t come yet—how was that possible? As her coming waned, though, he pushed her forward, toward the bookcase again, and grabbed her hips with both hands, surging into her again and again until the heat in his belly and balls caught fire, and he nearly screamed himself.

Spent, he pulled out and leaned lightly on her, resting his forehead on her shoulder as they both fought for breath. Her sweat had intensified the scent of her perfume, and it wafted around him, holding him prisoner.

“Jesus Christ,” she whispered, her voice edged with strain.

He nuzzled her shoulder. “Are you…was that…I…” The power of speech had deserted him.

“I’m good. Surprised. Shocked, actually. But good.”

So was he. “Stay tonight.” On the ride over, she’d said she wouldn’t, but he wanted her in his bed. He wanted that badly.

“Theo…”

“Stay.”

“What about Eli and Jordan?”

“We’ll move to my room. They know to stay out of there. It’s not like they’ll be scandalized, anyway.”

“I don’t…” She didn’t finish, and he knew that, with a little more coaxing, she would stay.

He turned her face so he could kiss her. “Stay. I don’t want to be done yet.”

She chuckled, low and sultry. “Only if I get to ride you rough, too.”

He grinned. “Yee-haw. Ride away, cowgirl.”





7



Carmen woke but didn’t open her eyes right away. Nothing felt right or familiar, so she took a minute to get her bearings and decide whether she was in some kind of trouble. As sleep receded completely, she remembered where she was. Theo’s bed.

Sunlight beamed across her bare back. She was lying on her stomach in a sinfully comfortable bed. She scanned her head and body to get a read on her condition this morning. She’d had a lot to drink—apparently, she was a drunk in France—and her head was hard at work reminding her of that fact, but she didn’t feel shaky or nauseated, at least not lying still.

She was sore—her crotch, her breasts…her neck. Oh, shit. One arm was bent at the elbow and resting near her face. She eased it over so that she could put her hand on her neck. The whole right side was tender to the touch. The right side, because Theo was a southpaw and tended to lean left. Jesus, did she have a hickey? She thought she did, and by the feel of it, a massive one. Oh, good lord. Really?

Embarrassment didn’t get a chance to take hold, though, not yet. It got washed away by the memories of how she’d ended up in such a state. That recall swept discomfort away, too, leaving heat behind, and a dizzy breathlessness that had nothing to do with the aftereffects of drink.

Never would she have expected sex with Theo Wilde to have been so…wild. The man who’d written that beautiful, poignant, loving memoir, who’d cared for a dying wife and had found a way to give her dignity and beauty when she died, who’d shepherded his sons through their grief. The man who’d approached her in such a ridiculous manner, who’d been nothing but steady and calm, patient and persuasive, in the short time she’d known him—this was not a man she’d expected to be fierce in bed. ‘Fierce’ was not an adjective she’d have thought could possibly apply to Theodore Wilde: widower, father, poet.

And one hell of an amazing f*ck.

Carmen opened her eyes.

She rolled carefully to her back and looked around. The bedroom they were in was like something out of a period movie—huge, with insanely high ceilings, the ornate Venetian plaster walls deep grey with white trim, the dark parquet floors gleaming. Floor to ceiling casement windows lined one wall, in the middle of which was a set of double doors to the balcony. Brilliantly white sheers spanned the wavy glass from the ceiling and pooled on the floor. Two windows were open, and the sheers billowed gracefully inward and outward with a light summer breeze. The sounds of a Paris shaking off its night’s rest wafted into the room. Shit, she loved this city. If only her life had taken the route she’d planned to set off on, all those years ago. Maybe then she’d have had a life like Izzie’s…