Undone

He slid a hand down to her ass, lifting her against him, which made the angle...more. More of everything. Intense and deep and too much, all...more.

He didn’t change his pace.

Maya could feel the remnants of that wallop of an orgasm dancing all along her skin, sinking into her bones, making her feel bright and wild. Time seemed to flatten out on either side of them, and the world narrowed down until there was nothing but that deep, dirty rhythm.

She was aware of everything. How strong he was, that he could hold her so easily and never break that slow, drugging rhythm of his. He smelled like salt and man, something like the sea, and she wanted nothing more than to dip her head and taste him.

But she didn’t, because that felt like intimacy, and whatever strange magic this was, it wasn’t that.

On some level, she thought that was ridiculous because he was inside her—but she couldn’t seem to hold on to the things that danced into her head and then out.

There was only that long, smooth thrust. Then the retreat. Over and over and over again.

He braced his other hand on the wall beside her face. She found herself entranced by the corded beauty of his forearm and the particular glory of all those lean muscles.

She could feel the ache in her thighs, but she didn’t care. She could feel his chest against hers as she arched into him, then away. Each brush made her nipples ache, and she wanted more. Harder. Deeper. More.

Everything—but she didn’t say that, either.

This is sex, she told herself. This is pure fucking.

And it was more than that, she knew with each thick, deep, thrilling surge inside her.

It was an exorcism.

With every thrust, she was made new.

It was her baptism, and every sacrament thereafter, as he slowly, deliberately, pounded her into madness.

But what a sweet madness it was.

“You going to come again?” It took her a moment to realize that was him, talking to her in that growly, dangerous voice that seemed to scour her body the same way he did. Rough and right. “Are you just going to hang out?”

And Maya didn’t know who she was. She never did things like this. She’d never kissed a stranger, much less fucked one up against the wall not even five minutes after laying eyes on him for the first time.

She wasn’t this person.

But maybe that was why it was easy to become as much a stranger to herself as the stranger inside her and smile at him. Wicked and flirtatious and nothing like her at all.

“You can either make me come or you can’t,” she told him, astonished at the words that came out of her own mouth. But she ran with them anyway. “How is that on me?”

“Good point,” he replied, and then everything changed.

He gripped her ass harder and lifted her away from the wall. She flowed against him, then bit her own bottom lip as he took that hand of his from the wall and brought it between them.

“Try this,” he said, his mouth against her neck, and then he did something to her clit with those big, rough fingers of his—

Maya felt like she’d been electrocuted. It was a jolt, a wild burst of light, and then everything exploded.

She was lost in the white light of it, the wild, impossible commotion, but she held on tight until he finally broke that rhythm of his and went a little wild himself.

And when he groaned out his release into the crook of her shoulder, he tipped her right back over that edge for the third time.

He staggered slightly, then caught himself against the wall again, holding her there between his hard body and the stone.

She held on for longer than she should have, maybe. Until she remembered herself.

Or if not herself, exactly, then the facts of the situation.

Total stranger. Random fuck.

Her exorcism was her own business.

She unhooked her legs from around his waist and lowered herself to the ground, shuddering a little at the low noise he made when he pulled out of her as she went.

Her skirt flowed back down over her thighs. He tucked himself away and buttoned himself up again.

And then they were just...staring at each other the way they had outside.

“Hi,” he said, with another flash of that grin of his, and a knowing kind of heat in his too-blue eyes. “I’m Charlie.”

“Maya,” she replied, and then stuck out her hand. The way she always did.

They both stared.

Slowly, with a gleam in his blue eyes that she could only call unholy, Charlie reached down and wrapped his big hand around hers. And how could that be so hot after everything they’d just done? But it was.

Charlie shook her hand. Very deliberately. Up, then down, in a slow movement that reminded her entirely too much of exactly what had happened here.

She felt too warm. Everywhere.

“Nice to meet you,” he said, his voice a low rumble and that crooked grin lodged inside her, somehow. “You want the rest of the tour?”

CHAPTER THREE (#ue80afc6d-7198-5284-8cf5-ff6e507ac2e4)

“HOW’S ITALY?” MELINDA ASKED in her concerned voice, which was exactly like her usual bossy voice, only with a nominal attempt at softness. “More to the point, how are you?”

Maya deeply regretted answering her mobile.

It was another lazy afternoon on the Amalfi coast. She sat out on her terrace in the uncertain, moody weather, wrapped in a whisper-soft throw to ward off the bite of the sea air from below. There was espresso and a selection of freshly baked biscotti and anginetti before her. She had been engaged in a rousing debate with herself—should she slip into her infinity pool, always kept comfortably warm to encourage its use even in a changeable, chilly December? Or stay where she was, tucked up cozily with a deliciously fat paperback at the ready and nothing at all to do?

She really shouldn’t have answered the phone.

“I’m fine,” she said, trying to drag herself out of the sweet daydream she’d been riding for days now, where this was her life and there was nothing for her to do but gaze at the sea, smell the flowers, watch the rain and pay no mind as one hour rolled into the next. “Good, even.”

“You don’t need to put on an act for me, Maya.”

“I’m sitting on a balcony gazing out at the Amalfi coast, which is even more beautiful than it looks in pictures. There’s no acting involved.”