Red Red Wine (Tastes of Seduction) (20 page)

The scent of cinnamon wafted to his nose. Cinnamon and spice, and God, yes, all things nice.

“I was terrified you wouldn’t come. Scared Blake wouldn’t convince you.”

What the…? “Tori?”

Christ, was it really her? Or just some figment of his desperate imagination? No way Tori was standing before him, her arms wrapped around his neck. It must be Maria, from reception, investigating who was stupid enough to be out here at midnight.

But if it was Maria, why was Andrew pulling her closer and holding her so damn tight? And why did his chest respond like he’d been given a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart?

“God, Ando, I missed you so much. Never realized until I saw your picture in the paper yesterday. And then it hit me. All of it. You, me, us. Our weekend together. How…how very much you came to mean to me in five days.”

The woman in his arms was neither a figment of his imagination nor a stranger. Though his head still battled with the idea that Tori was here, his body reacted to her proximity, tightening all over.

“Waiting until midnight almost killed me. But I knew if you were here, you’d come to the gazebo now. You wouldn’t come earlier.”

Instinctively, he held her closer, but drew his head back so he could look down at her, convince himself he really had her back in his arms. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you. Came to tell you I love you.” The words spilled from her mouth in a chaotic rush. “I should have told you then, three months ago, but honestly, until yesterday I never realized, didn’t understand what we had together.”

Holy. Fuck. “W—” He broke off, his voice too hoarse to speak. “What did you just say?”

“That I should have told you months ago. When we were first together. But I was so confused back then. So blinded by what Declan had done to me.”

“Tori, slow down.” She spoke too fast. He felt like he’d been hit by a cyclone. A whirlwind of stunning woman who looked like heaven and smelled like happiness. “Say it again. Tell me what you should have told me three months ago.”

Tori took a deep breath and brought her hand to Andrew’s cheek. She smiled up at him, so beautifully she almost brought his racing heart to a standstill. “That I love you, Ando. I fell hopelessly and stupidly in love with you the night you found me in this gazebo, and being alone these last twelve weeks only reinforced how much I missed you while we were apart.”

Andrew tried to respond. Honestly, he tried. But her words had him so bewildered he could not think a rational thought. So he stopped trying and kissed her instead. Just molded his mouth to hers and kissed the woman he’d ached for.

And she kissed him right back. With no hesitation or reluctance. She opened her mouth to his and welcomed his tongue.

They kissed for a very long time, until her hands left his back and his cheek, and worked urgently at his clothing, shoving his jacket aside, searching for his zipper.

It was cold out here. Too cold to do this. His dick would shrink the second the frigid air touched it.

Only it didn’t.

Tori’s hot little hands were all over him, holding him, stroking over his length, sending heat searing through his body. Yeah, the night might be frigid, but he wasn’t. With just her touch, he was ready for her. Throbbing for her. Or maybe he’d been ready for her since she drove away that day. Left him behind.

“I need you, Ando. Have to have you inside me now. It’s been too long.”

If there’d been a wall beside him, Andrew would have smacked his head against it. Repeatedly. “No…condom.”

“Don’t care.” She shuffled into him, stepping without stopping, forcing him to either lose his balance and fall, or walk backwards in time with her pacing.

He took several unsteady steps. “Have to care, Tor. Can’t take a chance.” Fuck, he wanted to. His dick was full to bursting with the want. Three months was a damn long time to go without a woman. No, scrap that. To go without Tori. He’d ached for her every minute of those three months apart. Having her this close, this ready? It did his head in. Made him see stars.

One-handed, she pushed his jeans over his hips. “I’m on the pill. So long as you’re clean, we’re good.”

She shoved him backwards, and this time, thrown by her words, he did lose his balance. His legs gave in and he stumbled, then thanked Christ the bench behind him broke his fall. The wood was icy, and his ass took the brunt of the cold, but Tori had him so hot, he suspected the bench would soon start to steam.

“I’m clean, sweetheart.” And never had he been more grateful for the fact.

“I knew you would be.” A thud reverberated softly, and Tori’s shoe hit the floor. The other followed closely. Then she released him, and cold air hit his dick. He hardly noticed. Tori was struggling out of her jeans, pushing them over her hips, dancing this way, then that, and then she was free and climbing on his lap.

Fuck, he was hard. He doubted more than a minute or two had passed since she’d barreled into him, and here they were, inches away from finding each other again.

She draped something over his shoulders. “For you.”

Her scent hit him hard in the gut. Not cinnamon. No, the aroma of Tori aroused. “Your knickers?”

She lowered herself, rolled her hips, and slick warmth stroked his bare erection. “I bought a bunch of them today. Lace and silk, just for you.”

Andrew was dumbstruck. The sensation of her pussy against his unsheathed skin made him burn.

He grabbed her hips, rolled them again and groaned as her slick flesh skimmed the length of his dick.

Tori panted in his ear.

He could do this for hours. Maybe even for a lifetime. So long as it was Tori’s hot, wet cunt rolling over his bare dick, he could do it forever.

Her underwear and the scent of her desire made him crazy. Addled his lust-filled brain. He couldn’t think. Hell, he could barely string a sentence together. He had a million questions, needed a million answers, but right now, the only answer he sought lay hidden in the depths of her silken pussy.

This time when he rolled her hips, he angled them just so and shoved his own hips up. Tori came down right over his cock, her wet, tight heat enveloping him.

The moan she let out was long and breathless, and she’d barely touched base when she pulled off him again, only to rock back down.

Sensation like nothing he’d experienced before rocketed through him. Already his balls were bursting, tight stones at the bottom of his throbbing shaft, all set to erupt any second. Was this real? Was it happening? Was she truly here, on his lap, owning him?

“God, Ando, I waited so long for this. Dreamed about it at night.”

“Not…the…only one.” She’d been his jerk-off fantasy since the minute he’d laid eyes on her. But jerking off to memories did not give the satisfaction or the pleasure the real-life woman did.

Jerking off was a necessary avenue of relieving sexual tension. A meaningless physical act. This? Here? Now?

There was nothing meaningless about it. It filled every part of him, every cell in his body. This wasn’t just a physiological reaction to a basic bodily need. It was as essential as breathing. Tori was his oxygen and his lifeline. When she was around, he breathed. More than that, he lived.

And right now, he’d never felt more alive.

Tori danced on his lap, gliding down the length of his shaft, squeezing him with her tight muscles and slick heat, then pulling off—only to glide back down again.

He wasn’t going to last, didn’t have a chance. It had been too long without her, she was riding him bare, and…she loved him.
Christ, she loved him
. A man didn’t stand a hope in hell against those kind of odds.

“Too good, Tor,” he managed to choke out. “Needed you too long…”

“Tell me you’re close, Ando.” She danced faster.

Stars collided on the inside of his eyelids. “A-almost there.”

Shit, it was all happening so quickly. He wanted to savor the encounter. Prolong it. Make it a forever thing. But how could he endure when she ravished his body and heart?

He drew his hand from her hip to her mound, found her clit with his thumb and pressed down gently.

“Oh, God, Andrew…
God
!” Tori broke. Her inner walls clenched down hard on his cock, grabbing him, squeezing, releasing and grabbing all over again.

It was too good. Too much for any man to bear.

His orgasm ripped through him. And what an orgasm. Like nothing he’d ever experienced before. Her naked heat, her clenching muscles, her loud cries. They slayed him.

Long before the final shudders of ecstasy passed, Andrew let go of every one of the walls he’d built around his heart the day Tori had begged him not to fall in love with her.

He just let them go, and fell, finally and fully, for the woman on his lap.

Andrew stoked the fire, ensuring the flames burned bright once again. Then he stripped Tori of every last one of her clothes, stripped himself, and pulled her down with him on the couch.

They lay skin to skin, listening to the wood pop and sizzle.

For a brief moment, he wondered again if this was real, if Tori actually lay beside him. Holding her again, together after all this time, seemed surreal.

Maybe she wasn’t here, and he’d fallen asleep and dreamt the whole thing. To test, he instructed his arms to open and release his hold on her. Instead of letting go, they held her tighter. “Tor?”

“Mmmm?” She nuzzled her nose into his neck.

“What are you doing here?”

“Snuggling.”

“Not here, here. Here, as in the Hunter Valley.” She’d mentioned something about the photo in the paper. And something about…Blake?

“I came to see you.” She let out a husky sigh. “I’d hoped you’d be at the gazebo tonight.”

“I couldn’t stay away. Tried, but my feet took me there anyway.”

“I’m glad they did, otherwise I would have had to charm the receptionist out of a key for your room. And honestly? The last time I did that, it didn’t work out so well.”

“I’m glad too.” As if
glad
covered the magnitude of his elation. “But what if I hadn’t been there?” What if he hadn’t been in the Hunter at all? The odds of them both being back here, on the same night, where what? A million to one? More?

“Blake promised me you would be.”

Excuse me?
“Blake Seymour?”

“Yeah. Your partner.”

“You know him?” Jesus, this was getting more surreal with every passing moment.

“No. Well, I didn’t until yesterday, but then I phoned him, and we chatted.”

“You phoned my partner to chat?”

“Yep.”

“But… Why?”

“Duh. So I could see you again.” She pressed a kiss to his neck.

Despite the heat from the fire and her body, shivers raced down his back.

“Remember last time, I asked how you’d gotten here and why you were alone? You told me Blake had given you keys to this suite and kicked you out of the office.”

“Yeah.”

“I called him yesterday to ask if he’d do it again.”

“You what?”

“Asked Blake to lock you out of your office and send you back to the Hunter.”

Bloody hell. “How did you know Blake was my partner?”

“I saw the article in the paper yesterday and put two and two together.”

“You set the whole thing up?”

“I did.”

Genius. Pure genius. “You could just have phoned me instead of Blake.”

“I could have. But I didn’t have your number, so I didn’t know how to get hold of you. And when Janine pointed out I could call your offices, the idea just kind of popped into my head.” She looked into his eyes. “I figured if I was going to tell you I love you, I might as well go the distance and tell you in the place I fell in love with you.”

A ray of happiness shot through him, so intense it seared every inch of his heart. “I fell in love with you too.”

Her smile was dazzling. “In the gazebo?”

“In the car park. The minute I laid eyes on you.”

She let out a laugh of delight. “It was my ass, wasn’t it? One look and you were hooked.”

“Hey, I told you then it was sexiest in the Hunter.”

“You did.” This time her smile was more pensive. “It took a while for me to realize, Ando. Three months passed before I could see what I should have seen in the car park on the last day.”

“What was that?”

“You, and how much you’d come to mean to me. I think that deep inside I knew all along. But I had to work through my issues with Declan. I had to know for sure I was over him before I could acknowledge my feelings for you.”

“Are you over him?”

“Completely. Our relationship is nothing more than a sad memory.”

He ran his hand through her hair. “I’m sorry it makes you sad.” But he wasn’t sorry Declan was just a memory. Tori could have married the man.

The thought made him shudder.

“Don’t be. It was a lesson learned. A life experience. You were right, you know?”