Page 34 of Always

“The dress...” Anika gasped.

“I’ll buy you a hundred more,” Marco said fiercely.

He cupped her breasts in his hands, and Anika couldn’t help moaning. She wasn’t sure if she was ready for this, but on the other hand, it had been too long since she’d been with anyone. Every place he touched her was on fire, and her heart was racing like mad. Though her mind wasn’t certain, her body wanted it badly.

Marco dropped down to his knees in front of her. He grabbed the skirt of her dress of either side of the slit and tore upwards. The thin silk parted easily, splitting all the way up to her waist. Pulling her panties to the side, Marco put his face between her legs.

Anika cried out, and her legs buckled.

With her thighs over his shoulders, Marco picked her up easily and carried her to his bed. He dropped her on top of the covers and knelt between her legs again. Within minutes he had brought her to climax, Anika crying out so loudly she was sure they would hear her halfway across the hotel. She didn’t know if it was his cosmopolitan upbringing, or simply the number of women Marco had been with, but he certainly knew what he was doing.

Without giving her a moment to recover, Marco unfastened of his pants and climbed on top of her. Ferociously kissing her, he thrust inside of her. She was still so sensitive that she could barely stand it, but Marco seemed determined to take her through every position in the Kama Sutra.

He was a skillful lover, determined to tease every ounce of pleasure out of her body. And he was handsome, his dark wavy hair loose around his face, and his richly tanned skin gleaming in the candlelight.

But it was strange, Anika almost felt as if she were watching herself be ravaged on the bed from a distance. She knew Marco was attractive, and she knew he was making her body feel good, but she never quite lost herself in the moment.

This was a problem she had experienced before, with the other lovers she’d had since James. She knew it wasn’t fair to compare men to each other. Especially not when she was comparing them to her first love. Probably she was idealizing her experiences with James – sex couldn’t possibly be as all-encompassing, as transcendent as she remembered it.

It wasn’t fair to expect that of anyone.

Still, as Marco pulled her on top of him, Anika couldn’t help closing her eyes and remembering a different day, a long time ago.

It was winter. She had stayed on campus over Thanksgiving break, because Bennet and Stella had gone to Morocco, and she didn’t want to join them. The dorms had been mostly empty. The heat had gone out on her floor.

She’d thought about staying in a hotel instead, but she didn’t want to pack up all her textbooks. So she just wrapped herself up in a blanket with a pair of fingerless gloves on her hands, so she could still turn the pages of her biology book.

James had gone home to see his family. He had invited her to join him, and she soon wished that she’d tagged along – it was lonely in the empty dorms. But she really did have a lot of work to do.

Immersed in the paragraph she was reading, she was startled by a tap on the window. She knew at once that it had to be James. He often scaled the fire escape instead of waiting to be buzzed in.

She saw his face, red with cold and grinning on the other side of the glass.

She was so surprised and happy that she could hardly speak. She’d pushed open the window to let him inside. It was horrible weather out, the snow blowing in onto her bed. James was half frozen.

“What are you doing here?” she’d cried,

He shrugged.

‘I just missed you too much.”

She’d stripped off his coat, which was stiff with sleet. Soon they were stripping off all their clothes, kissing and touching every inch of each other. And Anika had climbed on top of him. She’d forgotten to close the window. The snow drifted in, settling on her bare skin. But there was so much heat between her and James that they didn’t even notice it.

It was the worst possible circumstances. A dank, ugly dorm room. A narrow, hard bed. The wind howling and snow blowing in the window.

Contrast that to a gorgeous hotel suite in Aruba, with a soft sea breeze and elegant candlelight.

It shouldn’t have been difficult for Anika to stay in the present. To focus on the handsome man in her bed.

Yet she kept closing her eyes, allowing herself to drift back to another time and place.

And that’s what she was thinking about when the next climax rolled over her, as powerful and relentless as a November storm in New York. She was thinking about a different man underneath of her, a different set of hands locked tight around her waist.

And then she was back to Aruba again. Marco was tensing and shuddering beneath her, his hands gripping her hips. He groaned, and released her.

Anika lay next to him in the luxurious bed, their heads on down pillows, their bodies wrapped in twelve-hundred thread-count sheets.

“God, that was incredible,” Marco said.

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