Authors: Jillian Neal
Tags: #gypsy, #beach read, #bed and breakfast, #second chance romance
The shiver that worked up from Sienna’s
abdomen felt like it might have been an earthquake in her very
soul. Ryan was putting Evie to bed. Hoping he wouldn’t mind, she
borrowed one of his UGA sweatshirts, and had taken up residence on
the lower decks of the McNamara’s beach house, desperate to be
closer to the water’s constant rolling kiss of the shoreline.
The sweatshirt wrapped her in his scent and
his warmth, but tonight the cold came from somewhere deep inside of
herself. Fear set its glacial chill throughout her body. She stared
out at the water, certain that she was standing where she’d longed
to be for the last decade, but far too many things clawed at her
desperation to be content.
Images of her Inn ransacked haunted her.
Ian’s wrathful vengeance whenever something hadn’t gone his way
bulleted through Sienna. That was the only time she’d experienced a
home being destroyed. She’d run away, of course, but where had his
spiteful vengeance gone once she’d left? Was he still angry with
her? Could he have followed her? Was that some kind of warning?
She’d never told him about Gypsy Beach or Nana. She’d never said
much of anything to him. He’d had a nice apartment in Coto de Caza,
and they’d had fun running the kitchens in several upscale
restaurants where he was a chef. All Sienna really wanted was
someone to talk to, someone that could teach her more about
cooking, and somewhere to live that wasn’t her van or some hotel
room where the roach colonies outnumbered the patrons.
The few times she’d slept with him she’d
thought the sex was horrible. She’d had no choice but to compare it
to Ryan. And it was absolutely nothing when set side by side with
the awe-inspiring passion that flowed between her body and Ryan’s
when they made love. Ian was nothing more than a passing
distraction from her pain, and they’d both known that.
Anxiety eating at her, Sienna swept down a
few of the plank wood slats that led her closer to the shore.
Should she tell Ryan about Ian? Tell him how horrible his temper
was and how he frequently rampaged through his own apartment. Ryan
would blame himself, she knew. If Ian hadn’t gone through the Inn,
who had? Should she tell the police to be on the lookout? Would
they even care?
The moonlight caught the glimmering curl of
the foaming tide, revealing the dizzying greens and purples hidden
in the waves.
Nana.
Sienna choked back more tears. The
thought of someone’s hands being on all of her grandmother’s
beloved trinkets and books bruised her psyche. She’d tried so hard
to hide her fear and her anger from Ryan and Evie. She didn’t want
to add to his burdens. His seemed to vastly outweigh hers.
Loneliness and desperation drew her closer to the water’s edge with
magnetizing force.
All of the nightmares that had been her life
for so long. The running, the certainty that monsters were chasing
her, the narrow escapes seemed to suddenly converge. The riptides
of tormenting dreams could no longer hold her captive. Every
twisting turn suddenly made sense. Nana was gone, that was true,
but Ryan loved her. He always had. That belief brought breath back
to her half-drowned lungs.
Wrapping her own arms tighter around herself,
she knew whose arms she sought. She knew the path she longed to
take. She knew that he could make all of the terrorizing fears
disappear so thoroughly from her soul that it would be as if they
had never existed at all.
Realizing her misstep, she spun back. She’d
been heading the wrong direction once again. She’d stumbled one
last time in the darkened maze. Like her own personal compass rose,
she reset her course back towards the only thing that had ever been
able to save her. And there he was. Her own True North was coming
to rescue her.
Concern and love were armored in his drive.
“Sienna, baby, you okay?” In a few quick steps, his arms were
around her, and she was home.
Desperate for more, needy for his arms to
encapsulate her in his heat, for his lips to kiss away every wrong,
for their bodies to exist as one, for his passion to flood through
her, melting away the icy grip of terror that had taken up
residence in her soul, she angled her head upwards seeking his
mouth.
With a thundered groan, he captured her lips
with his own. The kiss was somehow reckless and still commanded
consent. Her lips parted, and with a rattled hum of need his tongue
plundered her mouth. He nipped her bottom lip and then sucked away
the slight pain. A ragged desperation seemed to exist within them
both.
His hands firmly grasped her backside and
drew her body into the thick, rigid pressure of his erection.
Sienna gasped, starved for his unyielding fullness, for his raw
passion to rip away every insecurity she’d clung to for far too
long.
“Ryan, please,” she whimpered, but the wind
carried away her plea.
His eyes flashed in white hot desire. He’d
heard her.
Nuzzling her face with the stubble of his
chin, he traced the ridge of her ear with his tongue before sucking
her lobe. Sienna shivered. Her entire body longed for more. “Tell
me, sweetheart. Tell me what you need, every single thing.”
He lifted his head and met her urgent
gaze.
“I need you. Just, please, make everything
else go away. Please.” Her body swayed against his, desperate to
feel every hardened plane of muscle and to be filled with him.
“I’m gonna make everything better, baby. I’ll
make it all go away. Everything but you and me. I’m going to take
you to bed and own you. The only thing I want on your mind is how
good it feels when you’re in my arms and how hard you need to be
fucked.”
“Now!” Bold determination burned through
her.
Another echoed groan lit the salt-soaked air
as she took his hand and raced back inside the house, desperate for
him to fulfill his promises.
Shoving him down on the sofa, she crawled in
his lap, straddling her legs over his as she began grinding against
the fierce bulge in his jeans.
Frenzied with desire, Ryan had the sweatshirt
up over her head and in the floor in one half second. God, she was
so needy it made him wild. It seemed some part of her now believed
his vows of love that he planned to make every day for the rest of
their lives, but she needed something more. She needed the passion
that she ignited from him. She needed to be tended to so thoroughly
she had no doubt of the burning lust that consumed him.
As she slid her body up and down along his
denim covered cock, he brought her left breast to his mouth,
sucking and nipping her until she shook in his arms. Those sweet,
ripened, little peaches so tender. Her rosy nipples drawn into
tight beads of craving need. Saliva flooded his mouth. He granted
her right breast equal pleasure, then drew them together so he
could bathe them with the fiery heat of his tongue. As he sucked
each of her nipples back and forth in syncopation, greed rocketed
upwards from his groin, flooding through his body, lighting every
cell with a carnal urgency that ravaged any ability to slow this
down.
He pulled the loosely fitted, thin, cotton
shorts aside. He wanted to see her lips glistening with need. A
deafening growl reverberated from his lungs as he watched her press
herself against his now painful erection. “In my bed, right fucking
now, baby. Let me see that pretty little ass and those sweet lips.”
He swatted her backside as she leaned upwards, bringing her slight
breasts back to his mouth.
“Oh God, yes!” Her breathy vow of approval
had him clenching his jaw, ordering his body to comply. He wasn’t
losing it tonight until she was thoroughly spent.
Flinging off clothing as they sprinted to the
bedroom, Sienna stared at Ryan as he kicked the door closed and
turned the lock. “All mine. Show me.” His orders urged her onwards.
The desperation in his eyes burned away all of her shame. They
weren’t seventeen-year-old kids anymore. She was a full-grown
woman, and he seemed to understand every potent desire of her
soul.
Her shorts hit the floor with a soft swish of
fabric. In two quick steps, he was on her. His right hand cupped
her mound. His left kneaded her backside.
Sienna felt the rebellious fire that she’d
suppressed for so long spark anew. From deep within her, it burned
for him. This time she wanted to be tamed. No longer a raging
wildfire unable to be contained, she’d found the only man that had
ever been able to satiate the heat and extinguish the flames
keeping her from being parched and destroyed, rescuing her not only
from every foe that set to do her harm but also from herself.
“I said show me, Sienna. On your knees, baby.
Shake that sweet little ass for me before I fill you full.”
A frenzy of elation spiraled through her. She
gave into his commands and her own heady desires. The intoxication
of tapping into her own femininity of sharing the juxtaposition of
her wild soul mixed with her meek heart, of giving that to him,
flooded raw ecstasy through her. His acceptance of her, just the
way she was, stripped away the fears and doubt.
The fire they shared raged in his eyes as she
crawled up on the bed. His desire filled her with power and fervent
sexuality. Her body rolled as she lowered herself to her elbows and
pushed her backside out towards him, desperate for his touch. She
stared back at him, daring him to take what he wanted.
“So fucking sexy, baby. Spread your legs. I’m
hungry.” His callused hands grasped her ass and angled her back as
he dropped to his knees to access her.
He nipped her left cheek, making her
gasp.
A dark chuckle filled with greed echoed from
him. “Sorry, baby, that was all for me, but I promise the rest of
this will be for you.” Then, with the sinful glide of his tongue
teasing her opening, Sienna shook with fevered need.
Gathering the wet heat between her lips with
his fingers while his tongue continued to feast, he tempted her
clit, drawing tiny figure eights until her entire body begged for
release from the heavenly torture. Her legs trembled, and with
another deep stab of his tongue inside of her she flooded his mouth
with liquid sex.
Jerking his finger from her clitoris he
proceeded to suck the nectar he’d forced from deep within her. All
too soon he stood and traced over the tattoo that ran from high on
her waist down over her ass. “So damn sexy. You are perfect. I need
you, Sienna. I need you every single day. Can you take me, baby, or
do you need a little more?” His fingers sought to find out if she
was primed. He pulled away for a split second and she heard his
jeans and boxers hit the floor then he returned adding another
finger to her opening.
Desperate and more than prepared, Sienna
rocked her hips against his hand. Her body gripped his fingers and
pulled them deeper hungry for more.
“So ready, baby. You know you need it, don’t
you?” She was so wet Ryan almost lost it all then and there. Every
rasp of his rough hands against her soft, pliant ass made her drip
until her thighs were slicked with her heat. Staring at her shaking
that sexy ass, mesmerized by the way the tattooed bird appeared to
fly with the rise and fall of her hips, he tore open a condom and
sheathed his cock.
He’d intended to draw this out, but dammit
she was too much. He’d never get enough. And she wanted him raw. He
could read her desires in the heat that flowed from her skin and
filled his hands and from the hunger that poured into his mouth
from her cream on his tongue. The way her body responded to him was
all-encompassing. Feeling the sublime ripples and tugs of her pussy
around him consumed his mind.
Grasping her hips, halting their rolling
revolutions, he stood behind her and ravaged her silken channel in
one forceful thrust. He groaned from the sheer ecstasy as she took
him in.
Sienna’s body trembled from his size. Nothing
would ever feel as good as the silk-covered steel that filled her
to overflowing. She arched her back, desperate for him to go
deeper, to own her in entirety, to tame her wild soul.
“Oh, hell yeah, baby. Just like that. Keep
that sexy ass up for me. You feel so damn good.” He groaned his
elation as he continued to pound and pull away. His body commanded
requisition. Every fantasy lay out before him, a decadent feast
after a long drought. More than he’d ever believed he could again
call his own.
Arching her back, she turned her head to
stare into his eyes. Their glazed expressions, masked in pure
delectation, met, and the love between them ignited and bound them
as one.
Her body quaked and pitched from his force.
She fell forward on the bed as the orgasm consumed her. He followed
her down, surrendering all of the horrors they’d endured,
shattering through the manacles of pain that had enslaved them. He
lost it all with her. Their releases drowned the torturous life
they’d lived for far too long.
Ryan’s eyes clouded, and his mind spun as his
body jerked. His cock gave another fierce throb. He groaned from
the heady magic of it all.
Working within the bliss-filled haze of
perfection that she’d provided him, he dispensed with the condom
and drew her body, now limp and sated, into his arms.
“I love you, and that was incredible.” He
made his breathless vow, still unable to believe all he’d been
given. Every time they made love was somehow more awe-inspiring
than the time before.
“I love you, too, and I think I may need to
tell you something.” Fear seemed to be waging war against the
sleepy satisfaction he’d longed to bring her. “But I’m scared that
you’ll blame yourself, and none of it was your fault. Promise you
won’t think this is your fault.”
Refusing to agree to that stipulation, Ryan
ran his hands through her long hair, mussed from their passion.
“Just tell me, baby.”