I traced the shape of each lip again and again, staying clear of her clit for now. I listened to her breathing and felt her movements under my hands. Only when she was panting and gasping and grinding her head into the pillow did I flick my tongue over the hidden little nub for the first time. I closed my mouth around it and sucked and she went wild.
Very slowly, I parted her folds with a finger and then slid it up into her. God, the warm, silken pressure of her around me, so smoothand perfect. I began to pump slowly at her while I wrote the alphabet with my tongue on her clit.
I heard her grab the headboard of the bed. Her breathing was coming fast, now, and I could feel her thighs twitching. She was instinctively moving to lock them closed around my head, but her banged-up hip was forcing her to keep them open. In a way, that made it even better. That little bit of helplessness, the fact she had to just surrender to my mouth.
I added a second finger and curled them into her until I found that secret place that made her groan low in her throat and arch her back. My tongue moved faster, sliding over her clit again and again, taking her higher and higher, then pulling back just before she could reach the summit. I teased her like that for a half hour, until she writhed and cried out my name and finally clawed at my shoulders and begged me. Only then did I speed up my fingers, fucking her deep and circling that secret spot. Only then did I go crazy on that firm little nub, lashing it with my tongue and this time not stopping. Only then did I take her nipples between finger and thumb and pinch….
She came, rocking the bed and banging the headboard against the wall, her whole body going tense as a bowstring. I felt the shudders run through her, loving the way she arched her back and pushed her breasts up into my hands, the way her pussy contracted around my fingers. At the very end, I moved up the bed and kissed her, my fingers still inside her, feeling the last tremors squeeze me even as she panted against my lips.
Seconds later, the door buzzer went and I rewrapped her in the towel and left her cuddled there while I paid the pizza guy. We found a position that was comfortable for her—me sitting up in the bed with her between my legs and lying back against my chest—and I fed her pizza like that, and we drank cold beers and watched late-night TV until the early hours.
31
SYLVIE
I yawnedand stretched and looked at the ceiling, trying to remember where I was.
Aedan.Aedan’s place. And then the pain returned, throbbing from my hip and my cheeks, and it all came back to me.
He was still sleeping, spooning me from behind. The feel of his naked body against mine was incredible—hard, warm muscle kissing up against my back, nestled against every inch of me from shoulder to ankle. I wanted to never move. But I had to see.
I gently lifted his arm off me and slipped out of bed. In the half-light of dawn, I checked the mirror.
Eurgh!The bruises seemed to have gotten darker overnight, finishing their parade of colors to settle on ugly purples and greens. The one on my hip was the worst, but at least that would be covered up. My face, though….
I knew I couldn’t show up for work like this. What the hell would I say—that I’d been mugged? I couldn’t be around hotel guests with my face all banged up. My manager would be outwardly sympathetic, but would quietly stop giving me shifts. I’d be branded astrouble.I’d have to call in sick, instead.
No one at the hotel knew what was going on. I’d told them onlythat my brother was ill, and that I needed to look after him. A few of the other maids had asked what was happening with me, commenting that I looked different since I’d started training. I’d been tempted to confide in them but, every time I opened my mouth, I’d stopped. There just seemed to be a yawning gulf between their safe little world—the one I used to inhabit—and mine. The only people I felt close to, now, were Aedan and my sleeping brother. And the doctor at the hospital, Heather. She’d spent more time with me than she probably had time for, sitting next to me while I held Alec’s hand. If I came through this, I really owed her a thank you.
IfI came through it.
I was walking back to the bed when I heard it. A hard tap at the window, as if someone wanted to come in.
We were five floors up.
I stared at the ragged curtain that covered the glass. The sound came again. Something hard was banging against the pane. A tree? We were right by the docks—there wasn’t a tree for miles.
I moved right up to the window, putting my arm over my naked breasts. I told myself it must be a washing line or a cable or something, swaying in the wind, and tugged the curtain back.
A face stared back at me, pressed right up against the other of the glass. Snow white, with two gleaming, beady eyes. I froze.
It opened its mouth and screeched at me. I screamed and staggered back, knocking the back of my legs against the bed and landing on Aedan’s sleeping form. He grunted. Outside, the monster was battering at the glass, screeching and....
...flapping?
“Oh,” said Aedan, sitting up. “You’ve met.”
The thing was still staring at me through the glass. I grabbed the covers and wound them around me. “What is it?”
He looked bemused. “It’s a seagull.”
“That’s not a seagull! It’s the size of a—a—“ I tried to think of a big bird. A vulture? A buzzard? “It’s a freakin’ pterodactyl!”
“Yeah, I think its mother slept with an albatross or something.” He got up and walked over to the window, completely at home in hisnakedness, and opened it. The gull—or whatever the hell it was—gave a last screech of satisfaction and then quieted down. It eyed me.
Hungrily.
“It’s kind of sad,” said Aedan. “His wing’s weak on one side—I think he must have been in a fight or something. He can fly, but not fast. So whenever the other birds see food, he always gets there last and there’s nothing left.” He dug around in an old pizza box and found a crust, then threw it to the bird. It snapped it out of the air and gulped it down without chewing, then screeched for more.
