Starfire (Erotic Romance) (Peaches Monroe) (28 page)

“Smells like wine in here,” my mother said to the woman checking us in at the front desk. “Do they make the wine right inside this building?”

The woman smiled politely. “This is a fully-functioning winery! You’ll notice when you turn on the taps in your room, that red and white comes out of the spigot.” She looked down at the computer. “Oh, there’s a note on here that you’d prefer hot and cold water, so I’ll just flip the switch.”

My father and mother turned slowly toward me, both of them with confused/amused smiles.

“Interesting place,” my father said.

The woman continued with some more joking information about the resort, including a bit about the frames of the beds being made from cork, in case of grape juice floods.

The resort wasn’t at all as formal as I’d expected.

As we walked toward our rooms, through beautiful hallways dotted with portholes in the floor that revealed glimpses of the working winery below, I silently awarded Dalton Deangelo ten points. Say what you will about the guy, he picked a great location for our families to meet.

My parents went into their suite, saying they needed two hours to “freshen up” before we were to meet for lunch in the dining room.

How they needed two hours to “freshen up” after a flight that was barely that long would have been anyone’s guess… if not for my mother’s giggles and not-so-subtle whispers to my father.

They went off to do old-married-people things, and I checked into my room, looking forward to having a nap.

As I opened the door, two things surprised me:

1. Vern was a genius butler and had somehow gotten my bag into my room ahead of me.

2. There was a shocking blood trail leading to the bed.

WAIT! No, it wasn’t a blood trail at all, but dark red flower petals. And I was not alone in the room.

CHAPTER 26

“Don’t be scared,” said the man reclining on the large bed. “It’s just me. Your soon-to-be husband. I wore your favorite shirt.”

He stuck his finger out through one of the holes of his gray T-shirt with the graffiti-style print.

“You look weird. Are you wearing eyeliner?”

He laughed and rubbed his eyelids. “It’s pronounced
guyliner.
Don’t you read
In Style
?”

I stood awkwardly next to my luggage, fiddling with the handle. Damn it, but just seeing Dalton Deangelo’s lean, sexy body sprawled out on the bed was causing a panic in my panties.

“Why are you over there?” he asked. “Don’t you want to see where the rose petals lead?”

The line of red petals ran from the door, around the bed. Unlike the fancy suite in San Francisco, this was a modest single room, with the bed in the middle of the room and a small sitting area over in the corner. I kicked off my shoes and walked along the plush carpet, over to the other side of the bed, where I found a red pile of stuff: more petals, and some fabric. I bent over and picked up the fabric, shaking it out.

“Boxers?”

“Yes,” he replied, his voice low and growly.

“I don’t get it.”

“You will.” He grabbed me and pulled me onto the bed with him.

Howling with laughter, I said, “Honestly, I don’t get it.”

He wrestled with me and pushed me onto my back. He grabbed the hem of my T-shirt and paused to look me in the eyes for one second, flashing a warning with his emerald green eyes, then he ripped the fabric, exposing my front.

“No, you didn’t!” I gasped.

He was smirking, still playing, but I didn’t find his ripping of my nice shirt nearly as amusing. He straddled me, resting his butt comfortably on the area about my hipbones.

I stuck my thumb and finger into the holes of his designer shirt, and gave him a little dose of his own medicine.

“Hotter,” he said.

I clawed at the neckline of his shirt and tried to rip there, but the fabric was too tough.

“Colder,” he said.

We were playing the hotter-colder game again? I had a pretty good idea now where the rose petals led.

I reached down and unfastened the button of his jeans. A damp clump of red rose petals fell out, revealing his bare skin and the smattering of hair that led down from his navel.

“You’re not wearing any underwear,” I said. That meant the boxers on the floor were his, and the rest of the rose petals were… falling out as I unzipped his jeans and loosened everything.

He was already quite hard from the squirming, and the touch of my fingertips quickly brought him to full attention.

“I bought you a dozen roses,” he whispered.

“And then, apparently, you fucked them.”

He grinned, that devious vampire smirk making its first appearance of the day. The panic in my panties turned into a full-scale fire drill.

“That’s right,” he said. “I fucked all your pretty roses, and now I’m going to do the same to you.”

I thumbed over the tip of his cock, the gleaming bead of liquid slick under my touch.

“You’ll have to settle for a hand job,” I said. “My parents are down the hall.”

“I’ve been up all night, working overtime on set. That’s why I still have a bit of eyeliner on. I took something to keep me awake, and now I can’t settle down until I get what I want.”

I wrapped my hand around his shaft and stroked up and down. “You can’t always get what you want.”

He grabbed my wrist and pulled my hand away, then climbed off me to remove his jeans and what remained of his tattered shirt.

“Get your clothes off,” he commanded.

“No.” The panic in my panties had turned into a party, and I wanted him to fuck me. I wanted him with every nerve ending and every inch of skin, especially the inches that wrapped inside me, but… the word
no
kept coming out of my mouth. I liked how that word made him scowl.

He said, “What will it take to make you say yes?”

“A little conversation might be nice. You could ask how my flight was.”

He finished kicking off his own clothes and arranged himself on the bed, lying on his side next to me.

With one gorgeous, dark eyebrow raised, he growled, “How was your flight, my darling?”

“Not bad. A girl could get used to flying.” I pulled off my torn shirt and cast it aside.

He nodded, catching on to the rules of the game.

“Did the staff here tell you about the wine that comes out of the taps?”

“Yes, they did.” I unbuttoned my lightweight travel chinos and slipped them off, so I was down to my bra and panties. “I’m on birth control now, by the way. Speaking of things spurting out of taps.”

He put his hand on my leg, but I swatted him away.

“But are you still fucking that other guy? Austin?”

“Adrian? For the record, I’ve never actually fucked him, but I might.”

He glowered at me, but didn’t say anything until I unfastened my bra and slipped it off.

“Nice watch,” he said.

“My fiancé bought it for me.”

“On second thought, that watch won’t go with your ring.”

I blinked, trying not to let on I’d completely forgotten about the ring, during my hectic week of moving the store.

“I’m a stylish girl. I can pull off anything,” I said.

“Pull off those panties.” He sniffed the air. “I want to bury my face in there.”

Sighing, I said, “If only someone would ask me one more question.”

“Would you like me to fuck you two times before we have lunch with our families, or just once?”

I ran my fingertip under the waistband of my panties. “You can do better.”

“Fine.” He looked up at the ceiling, as though searching for clues.

We were both lying on our sides now, inches of space between our bodies. I reached over and walked my fingers up along his side, feeling his firm muscles and his ribs.

He asked, “When you were a kid, who did you want to be when you grew up?”

I batted my eyelashes. “I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher, until I spent some time with a real four-year-old. Then I wanted to work in finance, or marketing, because it sounded glamorous.”

“Who do you want to be now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Wrong answer.” He reached over and yanked my panties down himself.

A few seconds later, my legs were apart and he was chin-deep in my pussy, setting off all the fire alarms.

I gasped as he drove his tongue deep, then long.

Between ragged gasps, I asked, “What was the right answer?”

He growled, and continued to torment my clit with his lips and tongue.

I grabbed hold of his hair with one hand, my breast with the other, and writhed atop the bed.

“I’m going to come,” I moaned.

He pulled his head up and wiped his chin with the back of his hand. Moving like a jungle cat, he crawled up along me, his torso over mine.

He blew across my nipple, then gave it a lick.

“Who do you want to be?” he asked again.

“I don’t know.”

He latched onto my nipple, sucking hard.

I shook with pleasure.

“I don’t know,” I repeated, moaning.

He pulled away, then blew on my wet nipple.

“The correct answer is… Mrs. Dalton Deangelo.”

With a thrust of his hips, he slid the full length of his cock into me at once.

My eyes rolled up and my back arched, then I went limp with pleasure as he thrust into me, again and again.

I moaned some religious things, and then some even more profane things, and then I started to come, my legs wrapped tightly around his hips to keep him close as I shook with pleasure.

My inner tremblings set him off, and he thrust deeper than ever, jetting inside me, hot and creamy.

After climax, we continued moving together, rocking slowly, coaxing more pleasure from each other’s bodies.

We stopped moving, and by the look of his heavy eyelids, Dalton was threatening to fall into a post-coitus slumber, right on top of me.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” I said, and I pushed him off me.

He staggered off to the shower.

I gave him a few minutes’ head start, then I tried to figure out how to get in there to join him without making an absolute disaster of the sheets. Finally—and I’m so glad there were no witnesses—I squirmed off the bed with my hand cupped between my legs, and walked into the bathroom that way. I’d not had a guy come inside me in many years—the unplanned pregnancy being one of the last times. The doctor had assured me this new birth control was effective immediately, but I still felt weird, and tried to squeeze it all out into the toilet.

“Everything okay?” Dalton called out from the other side of the shower curtain.

“I’m not pooping!” I clapped both of my hands to my face. Damn it, that’s exactly what I’d say if I
was
pooping.
Why am I such an idiot?
And why am I talking about this? Let’s just pretend I didn’t mention the toilet, at all.

In summary, Dalton and I had the hot sex, we came together, and then, magically we were in the shower, just like sexy people in sexy TV shows.

Inside the steamy shower, Dalton poured some shampoo into his palms and offered to wash my hair.

And then, just like sexy people in sexy TV shows, we had a very sexy shower together, rubbing bubbles on each other’s sexy bodies and not doing anything awkward or embarrassing.

~

After the shower, I blow-dried my hair while Dalton started getting ready for lunch.

When I came out of the bathroom, I discovered he had opened my suitcase and taken out my clothes. My first instinct was to whoop his ass for touching my stuff, but then I realized he’d set my clothes out in outfits, the way he’d arranged his clothes in San Francisco. And it was so fucking cute.

He adjusted the boxer shorts he wore on his otherwise gorgeous and naked body. He pointed to his green shirt and my green shirt. “These? Or are the colors too similar? Like we’re on some sports team?”

“You mean the Room Twelve sport-fuck champions?”

He frowned. “Your gray shirt is nice, but somebody ripped up my favorite gray shirt.”

Was he stalling for time, or really that worried about our clothes?

I wondered if he was nervous about me meeting his father, so I said, in a way I thought might be reassuring, “For the record, neither I nor anyone in my family has watched videos of your father. My mother swore she hasn’t. But she may have
questions
.”

He hunched forward. “Is it hot in here?”

“Not really.”

He leaned over, his breathing labored. “Can you open the window?”

“I can turn up the air conditioning.”

He began gasping. “Window.”

I ran for the window and opened the sheer curtains and then fumbled for the handle, praying nobody outside could see me in my underwear.

When I turned around, I found Dalton sitting on the carpet, his spine curved and his head between his knees.

What was this new side of him all about? He’d gone so quickly from joking about fucking a dozen roses to being a nervous wreck. I thought being overwhelmed with emotion was my job.

“Dalton?”

He just kept rocking.

I sat behind him and rubbed his back. His skin felt feverishly warm. “You’re having a panic attack. I used to get these at college. You’re okay. Just keep breathing.”

Between gasps, he said, “I can’t breathe.”

I put my arm around him, the way other people had comforted me when I got upset. “I’m right here, and we’re not going to move or do anything until you feel ready. Want me to cancel lunch?”

He rocked forward and back, emitting no words, just a low groan.

“Can I get you some water?” I asked.

He shrugged away my hand, flinching from my touch.

I stood up, not sure what to do next. My mother was just down the hall. What would she do? It was almost one o’clock already, and I could sense my mother getting ready to knock on our door for lunch.

Dalton kept rocking, lost in his own world.

I grabbed the bedspread and tossed the clothes off, then carefully draped the bedspread, fuzzy side down, over Dalton.

“You’re getting a Time Out,” I said gently. “For as long as you need, and nobody’s going to bug you.”

I stood with my hands on my hips, wondering if I was doing the right thing. Should I be calling for medical assistance? Or trying to find Vern?