Chasing Love (3 page)

He looked slightly familiar but, as she ran through the guys she sat next to during lectures and labs, no one sprang to mind. Frowning, she tried to figure out if he was the partner of one of her girlfriends.

“Such a sad frown marring your fair skin,” he murmured, stroking a finger down her forehead, trying to push away her frown. Christiana was surprised to feel a ripple of electricity at the touch. She started feeling worried and excited at the same time, a very rare occurrence for her.

“Who are you?” she finally caved in and asked. “You seem…familiar…but I can’t put my finger on where I’ve met you. You’re not Talia’s new partner, are you? Because I’ve heard he’s a bit of a good-looking stud, but a total ladies’ man, and I don’t help partners of my friends cheat.”

Her pirate merely pulled her closer and swung her in the opposite direction as the key changed, indicating the end of the song was near.

“I know who you are, Sweet One, and that’s all that really matters.”

The endearment rang bells in the back of her head. Christiana was surprised to find her mouth going dry. What was it about this man?

He looked handsome, from what little she could glean through his costume, but her body seemed to be reacting with a startling amount of desire, with very little provocation. The intensity of her sexual response to this masked man simultaneously confused and excited her.

Maybe she needed to get laid more than she realized. Smiling at herself, she made a mental note. Time for new batteries.

Her pirate swung them around in a different direction, so they cut a swath through the crowded ballroom. Many couples were grouped in the shadows of the room, the night’s darkness being allowed in through the candlelight and opened French doors.

Everything added up to the romance and passion her soul had craved for years, yet there was still something niggling at the back of her mind. This reaction from her body seemed heightened for some reason. She wasn’t blind, nor had she cloistered herself away for the last ten years.

Christiana knew how she reacted when she saw a stud, when a handsome man would run his eye over her curves and smile in appreciation. So, too, did she know how her heart beat faster on the rare occasion she would go out on dates, or make out in the back of a movie theatre.

Her heartbeat certainly felt accelerated but the thumping of her heart, her shortness of breath, wasn’t due to the exertion of dancing. It seemed to be related to the electricity between her and her pirate.

Christiana frowned, not at all sure she understood what was going on. Her gut was telling her there was more to this pirate than she fully understood. He certainly knew who she was, yet she simply for the life of her couldn’t put her finger on which particular friend or tutorial buddy he was.

Her damned pirate totally held the upper hand, both in this dance as well as the whole encounter, and it irked her even as she felt herself growing warm and excited. The first flush of sexual curiosity and desire seeped into her system like a drug, making her want to rest back in her pirate’s arms and let him take her away.

Whoa
! her mind cried out and Christiana frowned even more. Fainting maidens and submissively tame fantasies were not her. She had been in control of herself and determined to make her own destiny since she was a teenager.

So why the sudden desire to give everything over to some strange masked man?

As the music wound to a halt, she prepared herself to fob him off  to one of her colleagues with a promised dance. Her mind was creating problems where there undoubtedly were none and her mixed emotions, mingled with her burgeoning sexual curiosity and hunger, were making her unable to think clearly.

She needed a breather, another cola or maybe some coffee. Anything to clear her head and take a step back for a moment.

Yet, he didn’t relinquish his grip.

“Let’s get some fresh air,” he laughed as he led her out the French doors they had halted beside.

Before she could decide whether to protest or indulge in the long-held fantasy of a strong man taking command of her, her huge, masked pirate was spiriting her away into the enormous college gardens and out into the moonlit night.

So much for being in charge of her own destiny! Christiana smiled and allowed herself to be led meekly away, all the while plotting furiously and arguing with herself on what she should be doing.

Her soul eventually won out. She had wanted passion and mystery, romance and excitement, and here he was leading her outside the crowded ballroom and into the moonlit night.

Be careful what you wish for
…she intoned silently to herself.

Smiling, she allowed Fate to lead her away in the guise of one huge, masked pirate.

Chapter Two

Edward tried his damndest to keep not only his hands from roving, but his laughter contained.

Just before she had left to return to college last Christmas, she had turned down his offer,
again
, saying she couldn’t possibly become intimate with someone she had known
forever
.

Damn her.

It wasn’t like he was asking her to marry him, or shackle herself to him for eternity. He simply wanted a no-strings-attached affair. A mutually satisfying fucking frenzy between two very old friends. A weeklong orgy where he could get her out of his system and stop comparing every fricking woman he met to her.

She wanted passion and romance? She wanted some huge stranger to sweep her off her feet? When Sophie, Christiana’s mother, had laughingly confided to him some of her antics while she tried to sew her own costume for the Graduation Ball, he had thought of the perfect solution.

Romance her, sweep her off her feet, carry her into the night and seduce her senseless. Finally get her out of his system and move on with his life. Find his True Mate and live in peace.

He had almost forgotten how delicious her scent was or maybe he had deluded himself into believing his memories were exaggerated. Either way it didn’t help his light-headedness at the nearness of her delectable body and delicious scent.

Among the crowded, sweaty and drunken masses she was a breath of fresh air. She filled his lungs with her delicate scent and he feared he would drown in her.

As he led her around the back, to a secluded spot where he couldn’t scent any of the other young adults rutting away like animals in heat, he drew Christiana up to him. Enjoying the feel of her body pressed along his, he tried in vain to stop his cock from becoming iron-hard.

Giving in to temptation, he bent down to kiss her.

Her lips softened deliciously and he swallowed his groan of desire. Despite the fact they had known each other their whole lives, Edward had only kissed Christiana a handful of times. Over half of those kisses had occurred before the age of ten for him, and seven for her. As he was now twenty-seven years old, the fact he could recall these incidents in accurate, fairly intimate detail sometimes slightly worried him.

Her scent enveloped him and he drew her closer, wanting to crawl inside her skin. This woman had been his playmate and confident for most of his life. Even though they argued and often fought like cats and dogs, he knew in a crunch he could trust her with his life. In his mind, that counted for a hell of a lot.

And now he was seducing her. Weird but true.

He had always figured the openness and honesty that lay between them could extend naturally to the bedroom. They had precious few secrets, had always refused to let the ordinary male/female barriers come between them.

He had held her when she had been twelve and bawling over her first period. She had teased him mercilessly when he had brought his first serious girlfriend back to meet his family and her own. He still cringed at the open and child-like innocent questions she had asked him when he got his first teenage boner in her presence.

He had thought that their sexual curiosity could be taken care of just as simply and in their usual straightforward manner.

But no, he had royally screwed that up over ten years ago. At the idiotic age of seventeen, Christiana had been just fourteen and had proposed they date and get engaged. Her grandfather had been seriously ill and, even though the Old Man hadn’t pushed them exactly, his wishes for them were known by every member of both their families.

Worried sick about the man he considered his grandfather and topped off with the burning urgency to go and sow his wild oats most seventeen-year-old men had, he had politely, but firmly, spurned Christiana.

She had never mentioned sex with
him
again. They talked about sex and positions and manners like normal friends, and what sometimes all their talking felt like they discussed it
ad nauseum
. By the time the four years of his college education had passed and he had moved back home to settle down, he had begun to understand just how important Christiana felt to him.

It took him a while to understand but he measured each and every woman he became involved with against her and most came up depressingly short.

By the time she had been eighteen and beginning college herself, he had been broaching the issue of sex between them. He smiled sardonically as he recalled just how firmly-but-politely she had squashed the conversation each and every time he had brought it up since then. It almost felt as if Fate or the Goddess was laughing at him through the younger girl.

That must account for the raging boner straining his pirate’s breeches. Or for the heart pounding fearfully fast in his chest, acting as if it were about to burst out of his chest cavity. Or the incredible, animal lust he had for this delicate woman.

She
wanted romance and passion, he reminded himself, not for a raving lunatic to strip her bare on the college lawns and fuck her senseless here and now. Romance and mystery would be perfect to pique her interest and then leave her wanting more. Even better would be if he could stay masked long enough that she wouldn’t know who he was.
That
was mystery and romance.

Sighing at the idiotic notions females sometimes came up with, Edward tried to rein in his hunger. He had lusted over Christiana for the best part of ten years; he could wait a few more nights while he seduced the woman. She had waited years for him—he could still tell she was a virgin. He didn’t understand how but he
knew
he would be able to tell when she gave herself to another man. He could try to wait a couple of nights for her.

Maybe three at the most.

His intentions had become pure over the last minute but everything flew out of the window as Christiana moaned in hungry lust and opened her mouth for him.

How could any man resist that invitation?

Without even thinking about it, Edward bent her back into the tree and thrust his tongue into her mouth.
He
would have been gentlemanly about this kiss but, if
she
was going to invite him inside, who the hell was he to turn her down?

Stroking inside her mouth, tasting her damp, inner flesh, Edward was surprised to find his knees beginning to buckle. Straightening his stance, he decided to hell with chivalry. Chivalry never satisfied good old lust. Pressing his erection between her legs, he swallowed her gasp, and then drank her moan of approval like the sweetest of nectars.

Twining with her tongue, dancing inside her body, Edward felt almost lightheaded from the lack of blood to his brain. Everything had headed south and congregated for a party in his pants.

He squashed the thought that
never
had he felt such driving, forceful lust before. Never had he wallowed so lazily in a woman’s scent before.

When Christiana reached down to touch his burning shaft, he struggled to remember why he wasn’t planning on stripping her and fucking her here. Taking a deep breath, he tried to come to his senses.

Chapter Three

Christiana touched her pirate’s rock-hard erection and barely suppressed a moan. She didn’t know who he was and she didn’t care. He smelled of home, of the woods back behind her parents’ enormous house, of salty masculinity and some other elusive factor she simply put aside to his unique scent.

She had never touched an erect male cock flesh-on-flesh before but, boy, she felt tempted. She didn’t know if it had anything to do with the night, the moonlight shining down on them, or even this mystery pirate of hers but something inside her screamed for some release and sexual playing.

Even through the thin, shiny breeches, she could feel the heat
radiating
from his cock. As she touched it, it seemed a curious mixture of hard and soft. She had talked at length with Maggie and a few other close girlfriends about men’s cocks, their varying sizes and shapes.

It might be the virgin in her but this man seemed larger than most she had been warned about. She felt a giggle bubble inside her as she mentally tried to measure his length.

She had a ‘special’ ruler back in her dorm. One night, she and Maggie had drunk an entire bottle of red wine and laughed themselves silly using the ruler to show each other the ‘measurements’ of men of their acquaintance.

It had all been in fun between the two girls, two college girls drinking and being silly in their room late at night but she wondered if she could go back to Maggie now and boast of ‘her’ specimen.