Unconditional (17 page)

And then he pressed his knee to the bed between my thighs and pressed me back to the mattress without breaking the kiss.

Holy. Fuck.

Ribbons of tight heat and searing pleasure unfurled through me. I whimpered into his mouth, smoothed my palms up his chest and scraped my nails across his shoulders.

He covered my body with his, supporting his weight with an elbow even as his groin aligned with my sex. He was long and hard and so goddamn there, right there, his denim-trapped erection nestled against my sex. I whimpered again, rolling my hips as I fisted my hands in his hair at the back of his head.

He groaned, pushing his bulge harder to the curve of my sex. My head swam, and it had nothing to do with Parkinson’s or my injury and everything to do with the molten desire flowing through me. I dragged my hands down his back, teasing his tongue with my own as I rubbed my pussy against his erection.

“Fuck, Maci,” he rasped against my lips, “I’ve wanted to do this…”

He didn’t finish. Instead, he continued kissing me as if he couldn’t stand our lips and tongues being apart long enough to form words. I understood that notion. I couldn’t get enough of kissing him either. Every nerve ending in my body sizzled with building heat. My very core, the center of what made me a woman, throbbed and ached and craved him. All of him.

Bunching my hands in his shirt at the small of his back, I tugged the material free of his waistband. I wanted to feel his skin under my palms. No, I needed to feel it. I needed more flesh-to-flesh contact.

He groaned into my mouth when my fingers touched his skin. He rammed his cock harder to my sex, our clothes separating us with infuriating resistance. I raked my nails over his back, up the line of his spine. He rolled his hips again, ravishing my mouth as he did so. The pressure of his engorged length on my pussy and his savage tongue rolling over mine sent liquid heat to my core and I broke our kiss, rolling my head to the side, desperate for air.

It was so good. So goddamn good. I’ve never been kissed like it.

He took advantage of the moment by searing a line with his lips down the line of my throat, up to my ear, down to my collarbone. I writhed beneath him, alive with sensations too wicked and incredible to deny. He continued to explore my throat with his lips and teeth, tiny nips and sucks of my flesh that left me breathless. I rolled my head, wrapping my leg around his hip as I did so. I wanted him inside me. There was no denying it.

He ground against me again, levering his upper body away from mine. I cried out in protest and clawed at his back.

He growled, the sound low and wonderfully dominating, and moved his hand to the top button of my shirt.

Oh boy.

My sex flooded with heat. My heart slammed fast in my throat. My breath stole in my throat.

He popped the first button open, tasting the skin he’d exposed with a flick of his tongue.

I let out a gasp and tightened my leg around his hip. “Yes,” I moaned, unsure if he was waiting for permission to go further.

Raph released the next button and nipped at the flesh between my breasts.

I shivered. “Oh God, Raph,” I rasped, staring blindly at the ceiling of my room, digging my nails into his back through his shirt.

He shifted between my thighs a little and, lips charting a journey up to my chin, popped open the next button, the one that would allow my bra-covered breasts to be revealed.

A shudder claimed my body. Tight and primitive. Any thoughts of my condition, my future self, shattered in that moment. I was a creature born for the pleasure Raph awoke in me, that was all. His creature.

I arched my spine, offering him what he’d exposed.

He took my offering with his mouth, capturing my taut right nipple through the lace of my bra.

“Oh God,” I repeated, though far less breathy and far louder. “God, that feels…”

He sucked harder, drawing the pebble of my nipple deeper past his lips, rolling his tongue over its tip.

I scraped at his back, eyes closed, head swirling with intense colors, body thrumming with just as intense a need. The solid pole of his arousal pressed to my sex only heightened my response to his worship of my breast. Was it possible to have an orgasm without anything actually being inside me? Was it? Cause it sure as hell felt like I was about to have one.

“Raph.” His name fell from my lips on a hitching moan. “Raph, I w-want you…oh God, please…so…”

I was making no sense, and yet Raph knew exactly what I wanted.

He dragged his mouth across the expanse of skin between my breasts and captured my other nipple with his lips, sucking it hard enough to hurt. I cried out, the sensation a wicked mix of pain and pleasure.

He covered the breast he’d only just been feasting on with his hand, kneading it with increasing speed as he sucked on my nipple. I moaned and arched and writhed beneath him, working his shirt higher up his torso.

He raised his head from my breast and tore the rest of my shirt open.

I let out a shocked cry. And then a shaky moan as he moved his fingers to the bra clasp between my breasts.

I gazed up at him, knowing what he was about to do next.

He did it. Nostrils flaring, stare locked with mine, he released the little clasp and the cups of my bra slid from my breasts.

With a ragged breath, I closed my eyes.

I felt him stroke his tongue over my right nipple first. Followed by his lips encircling the puckered tip of flesh.

A soft whimper sounded at the back of my throat. I buried my fingers in his hair.

He drew deeper on his prize, the action slow and deliberate and thorough. Shards of wet tension shot through me, sinking into the pit of my belly and lower. My sex contracted, squeezing something that wasn’t there.

Yet.

With equal purpose, he covered my other breast with his hand, his fingers trailing over the swell of my flesh to the very tip of my nipple in such a way I felt sure I was going to melt into a puddle of bliss.

He worshipped my breasts that way for a long time, his mouth alternating between nipples, propelling me higher and higher to a place I’d seldom been.

You’ve probably worked out by now I’m not lacking in the vocabulary department, nor the ability to describe the situations around me, but there were no words for the pleasure Raph awoke in me just by sucking and touching my breasts. Nor for the building tension in my core.

I knew it wasn’t an orgasm about to crash over me, it couldn’t be. He hadn’t once touched me down there, the place Heather called her hot button when she’d been describing her fantasies about Robert Pattinson, but it sure as hell felt like an orgasm. A big one. Rushing at me. Turning my blood to molten pleasure. Turning my very soul to—

I came.

Yep. I came.

My orgasm hit me hard, powerful and taking me completely by surprise. I let out a moan, rammed my pussy harder to Raph’s trapped erection and clawed at his back.

And what did he do? Did he stop? Did he gloat about his prowess? No, he continued to suck and tease and play with my nipples until I shook and trembled and whimpered for mercy. And then, only then, did he raise his head from my chest and gaze down at me.

“Tell me you’re not going out with Osmond,” he said, the words a choked plea. “I know I should have asked this before now, given what…what we’ve just been doing, but please tell me—”

I pulled his head to mine and crushed the rest of his question with a savage kiss. I didn’t want to talk or think about Brendon. I just wanted Raph. Wanted him hard. Now.

I kissed him with a ferocity I’ve never felt before, my hands fumbling at his clothes as I did so. I wanted him naked. I wanted him in my bed, naked, slicked in sweat and sliding in and out of me.

I found the top button of his shirt and tugged at it without success. I let out a frustrated growl and tried again.

He shifted between my thighs, holding his weight above me with his hands even as he continued to kiss me.

I fought with the top button. Growled again when my fingers didn’t achieve the simple task.

“Let me,” he rasped against my lips, moving his right hand to where mine were on his shirt. “I can do it.”

Something cold and dark stirred in the deep recesses of my soul. A thick beat throbbed in my temples. A suffocating vise clamped my chest.

“So can I,” I said, closing my fingers around his wrist. Damn, I was shaking. Badly. Was that why I couldn’t undo his button? Oh God, please don’t let it be because of my condition. Please. I didn’t want to be shaking. Not now. Not—

Raph raised his head and gazed down at me, his nostrils flaring, his eyes unreadable. “I—”

Someone knocked at my door.

Insta-Fame Sucks

The third rap had barely finished when my door was flung open and Heather charged into the room, hand pressed flat over her eyes, her grin wide.

“Two things,” she burst out, stopping a few steps from the end of my bed. “One, you’re on all the breakfast news programs now. And two, The Biceps is on his way here. Also now.”

Raph jerked away from me. Just like that. Our eyes connected for a split second and then he was straightening from my bed, his wrist pulling free of my weak grip. “I’m going.”

What the fuck? Struggling into a sitting position, a turbulent thundercloud of confused irritation, I frowned up at him. “What do you mean going?”

Not exactly my smartest question, but he’d thrown me for a loop.

A soft gasp at the end of the bed made me shoot Heather a quick glance in time to see her snap her spread fingers back together again over her eyes.

“Damage control,” Raph replied with a grunt. “Plus, I didn’t let Horn know where I was going to be for the night and if he discovers I’m not in my room, he’ll panic.”

The answer made me frown more. “Is that the only reason?”

He studied me. “Should there be another?” A flash of frustration crossed his face and he shook his head. “Unless you want Osmond to see you half-naked, I suggest you fix your shirt up.”

And with that, he turned on his heel and left.

I blinked. I confess, I had no clue what was going on. How had we gone from hot, oh-my-God-I’m-having-an-orgasm making out to this?

I thought of his question about Brendon and the fact I didn’t give him an answer. Did Raph really think I’d have done what I did with him if I was going out with someone else? Or was his sudden departure about something else? My head filled with the last few moments before Heather had knocked on the door…my shaking hands, his insistence on unbuttoning his shirt.

My stomach knotted. Was he taking off because he realized he was making out with someone whose hands didn’t work properly? Or was he as impatient to be naked with me as I was with him? Or was it just as he’d said—damage control? With this new media attention, was he going to need to make some kind of statement? Answer to someone? Have a conversation with a royal advisor?

Who knew being involved with a celebrity could be so goddamn confusing.

“Is he gone?”

I started at Heather’s question. Letting out a sigh, I turned my attention to my unbuttoned, disheveled shirt. “Yeah.”

When I looked up, my shirt once again in an acceptable state, Heather was grinning at me. “Did you ask him if he wanted to have a three-way with you and The Biceps?”

I threw a pillow at her.

She laughed, caught the feather-filled projectile and threw it back at me. “Where’s your remote?” she asked, dropping on the bed beside me. “How’s your head, by the way? Did Raph kiss it bet— Ahh, there it is.” Snatching up the remote control to the small television Mackellar House had provided for my stay, she pointed it at the TV and pressed the
on
button.

Two perpetually cheery breakfast show anchors in a vividly colorful studio set filled the screen, the coiffed woman waving her hands about her head as an image of a man wresting a crocodile played on the large screen behind them.

“Am I really on TV?” I crossed my legs into a Buddha position, forcing myself to focus on the television. I didn’t want to think about what had sent Raph running so quickly from my room. Not at the moment. I needed to digest it alone. And after I’d taken my meds. It was smarter that way.

“You are.” Heather gave me a nudge with her hip and positioned herself beside me. “You look awesome, by the way. Shocked, but—oh, look, look, there you are!”

I stared at the screen. A hot prickle of shame flooded through me.

There I was on television, captured in shaky footage—how appropriate—gaping at Brendon and Raph as Brendon punched Raph on the Mackellar House footpath.

The footage continued long enough to show Raph stagger back a step. Long enough to show Brendon bearing down on him, angry contempt on his face. I could see the word Parkinson’s form on Brendon’s lips—a word I could never, ever escape—a second before Mr. Horn slammed into Brendon, driving him sideways, and then the footage started all over again from the beginning.

“Australian brother to the future Queen of Delvania.” The voice of the female anchor suddenly filled my room and I realized—on a distant level not befuddled by the whole surreal situation—that Heather had turned up the volume. “But at this point in time we don’t really know why the university’s gym manager hit him.”

“Two big young men like that?” the male anchor said as video Brendon smashed his fist against video Raph’s jaw once more. “I’m betting it had something to do with the girl—”

“An American student here on scholarship, apparently,” his co-anchor interjected, the tone of her voice so full of innuendo I wanted to throw up.

“With the
American
girl,” the male anchor went on, his tone as suggestive as that of his female presenter. “Oh, and there’s the bodyguard, taking the big guy out. Damn, that’s an impressive tackle. Can we see that again in slow motion?”

“It
was
a good tackle.”

At the sound of Brendon’s humored chuckle, I let out a squeal, jerking my stare from the television to where he now stood leaning against my room’s doorframe.

He ran a slow gaze over me, worry flirting with mirth in his eyes. “How you feeling, Plenty, Ohio?”