Page 116 of Dagger in the Sea

Her breathing got heavier, her eyes darker. Heat spiraled in my chest.

“Say it, say it again, dammit.”

She took in a breath on a hiss. “I want you.”

“Again.”

“I wa—”

I claimed her lips, my pulse spiked as my fingers dove in her hot silk, claimingher.

Her hips rocked into my touch. I touched her secret hollows, and her molten eyes burned into mine; we met in that sliver between raw truth and madness. A fever rose inside me, and I wanted more of it. Craved it. Her cries echoed in the stone ruins around us. Clutching my arms, she ground into my hand, her low moans stirring a foreign ache inside me. I would give her whatever she needed. And she needed. Oh, she needed.

“Yes,” I whispered against her skin. Her jaw slackened, her eyes gleamed and their fierce light heated my skin. “Stay with me, baby. Feel it. Take it as it comes at you. A wave in the sea, a turn in the road.” I nipped at the delicate skin under her jaw. “Take it.”

She trembled in my hold, inside and out, and with a sharp cry and eyes clenching shut, she burst on my fingers, my face buried in her warm throat. My Aphrodite had come, had danced in the rhythms of the pleasure I’d composed for her, and she soared in my arms and took me with her. I had given that to her, given itbackto her. She’d tasted the wine again after so long.

My wine.

We held each other, my heart careening wildly in my chest.

I wanted to drink more wine from her.

My hand cupped her pulsing wet pussy. Claiming, treasuring. Owning it. Yes, this pussy was mine now, this glorious body.Adri.

She took my mouth, and we sealed that pact.

That morning on that rocky bluff, high above ancient blue waters, in the stony ruins of conquerors’ ambitions and pirates’ bloodlust, we held each other, breathing in the salty sweet sea air, and listened to our hearts whisper of what had been, and hum with what could be.

32

Turo

As promised,Adri made us Greek coffee once we got back to the house. “You like it?” she asked, sipping from her small cup as she sat down with me at the kitchen table.

“Hmm.” I took another long sip of the sweet coffee and held her gaze, my tongue swiping at my lip from a trace of the thickcrema.

“Mind you, don’t drink it to the very end. The coffee settles at the bottom of the cup into a mud,” she said.

Her blue gray eyes were filled with a tense kind of vulnerability. The knowledge of our intimacy, my touch on her, her sharing that part of herself with me—that part she hadn’t shared in so long with anyone. She didn’t seem embarrassed or awkward, but pleased.

That unabashed look in those eyes told me something else. Those eyes lingered on me, swimming with warmth and fascination, and I’d put that there. Heat circled through my chest and it had nothing to do with the hot coffee I was drinking. This was intimacy, wasn’t it? Delicate and intense, shared, private.

I wanted more.

“What’s the plan for today?” I asked.

“Beach.”

“Ah.” I took another sip. “And maybe after…beach?”

“Yes, good idea.” Her lips formed that sexy grin. “And then we could…beach.”

We finished our coffee, changed, and stopped at a bakery for sesame seeded goodies and bottles of water to bring with us. My eyes moved around the small store, the open doorway as she placed our order. A man in jeans and a brown leather jacket stood across the street smoking and watching the bakery. His gaze suddenly shifted down the road. I’d noticed him earlier a few blocks from the house.

“We’re going to hire a boat to take us to a remote beach just north of Chóra,” Adri said as we left the bakery.

Áxla, she told me, was probably the finest beach on the island and not too far away. Driving there was next to impossible as the dirt road that led there was even more insane than the road to Vitáli. Fantastic.

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