We fly all day across the Pacific, toward a little island near Bali he rented for us alone. At first, when we board the Gulfstream, the adrenaline is running through my veins. I’m reliving the teary farewells from my friends, the hard slaps on the back Saint got from his friends, and my mother’s hug.
I can’t stop reliving any of the things that happened at the wedding.
We partied across the botanical gardens, decorated in hanging tree lights and more white orchids, tables draped in crisp white linens, Tiffany chairs, and Christofle silverware. We dined on a five-course meal worthy of the finest restaurant—and catered by one—and then Malcolm pulled me to the dance floor and into his arms, guests floating around us as we laughed, and drank, and kissed, and stayed close.
He embraced me from behind as we conversed with our guests. “Twenty-four hours,” he whispered in my ear.
“What’s that?”
He brushed a strand of hair back and pulled my back closer against him. “Wedding party, plus the flight to Somewhere. Twenty-four hours left for me to make you mine.”
Now I’m in his arms, on the big bed in the bedroom at the back of the plane. Sunlight streams through the windows as Saint kisses me.
His hands are under my lace top, slipping to touch my skin. I’m seared where he touches. Where his mouth lands. On my mouth, the corners of my mouth, my jaw, my ears, my neck.
“Can it be night already?” I whisper.
“Rachel . . .” and the word is a husky murmur as he eases back to look at me. So hungry, like me. So very frustrated I can feel his need for me like I feel mine. He kisses the corner of my mouth. “I’m not taking my wife for the first time on an airplane. That’s for later.” He flashes out a grin that liquefies me. But I know he knows that the moment we walk through the doors of our Somewhere, I will be all his.
“Come here.” Malcolm spoons me and buries his head in the back of my neck, his arm a vise around my hip. A bottomless peace and satisfaction fill me as our bodies fit together so right, my body covered by his bigger one. It feels perfect, like a clean room. A finished job. An orgasm. God, a cataclysmic orgasm, like the kind this man gives me. My . . . husband.
He’s wearing the wedding ring I gave him, on his long, tanned, strong finger, glinting in perfect platinum as he holds his hand on my hip.
I doze to sleep with a throbbing, relentless ache in my body but a smile in my heart and on my face, and we sleep, and sleep, and then shift positions—him on his back, me on my side, spooning his side, and we sleep again.
We land in a tiny airport that’s hardly an airport at all, but there’s a beautiful car waiting for us, driving us across unpaved paths into the middle of nowhere. It starts raining. One minute there’s sun, the next there’s a storm. I reject the idea as absurd—it’s not in the plan—but then I look out the car window. The heavens suddenly open up and a torrential downpour starts. My dormant brain cells wake up a little when thunder crashes nearby.
Fuuck!
A tropical storm.
The car stops moving on our way up a hill, and I peer out the left window and glimpse a stunning staircase leading up the cliff.
“Car won’t go up, sir.” The driver shifts. “We can wait out the rain . . . a couple of hours, at most . . .”
I can tell by Saint’s flash of frustration that he’s not spending an hour or two hiding from anything. Saint tips him. “We’ll take the stairs.”
He steps into the pouring rain. With one swift move, he scoops me out and into his arms. “Hang on,” he says. He grins tenderly, and I laugh. Wet raindrops fringe his lashes. I grasp his wet neck and ball myself up from the rain, watching, enraptured, as a rivulet of rainwater slides down his throat and to his hard pecs. I want to catch it with my tongue, tongue him up, head to toe.
“We’re going to get a cold!” I shout through the noise of the storm.
He presses his wet nose to my ear. “Maybe. I’ll keep you warm.”
“You’re supposed to carry me through the door, not up a thousand steps.”
“Well, there’s the door.”
I smile as we spot it, still dozens of steps away. The house sits atop a rocky cliff, looking at the sea and surrounded by green foliage swaying in the wind. Nothing but angry clouds above.
Malcolm gets us inside and sets me on my feet. We remove our shoes and leave my classic taupe pumps and his sleek black Guccis on the mat to dry. What is it about bare feet and men in jeans? My husband gets a thousand gold stars for hotness.
He surveys the house like a connoisseur as we both pad barefoot through its rooms. Him in jeans, me in my Vera Wang white skirt and jacket.
We’ll be staying in this high-end Indonesian home, exotic and rustic on the outside, a city man’s dream on the contemporary inside. Wide windows; wood ceiling beams, large and thick; smooth-looking contemporary furniture.
I set about to investigate while Saint welcomes the luggage the driver has lugged up the steps. I see that we have a fully stocked kitchen, macadamia butters and jellies stacked near the coffee and tea offerings.
Walking into the master bathroom, my damp feet squeaking with each step, I peer into the mirror . . . to the reality that I look like hell. My hair wet. My silk shirt caked to my body. My makeup streaked down my face. My Saint’s perfect bride has just vanished—poof, back into the dream I imagined her from.
A heavy sense of inadequacy slaps me.
I scrub my face clean with soap and frantically try to brush my hair with my fingers. But I still don’t look like the perfect, beautiful bride I wanted him to see.
FUCK. ME. RIGHT. HERE.
Urgh!!!!
A messy bride is so not what Saint deserves.
“That will be all,” he says to the driver, then looks at me and closes the door.
Thunder crashes nearby. The wind whistles. There’s a storm outside, billowing trees, fierce, but not as fierce as the storm inside. There’s a storm inside my body, inside this room, and its name is Malcolm Saint. The storm within a storm, his force field protecting me, drawing me in with more power than any sweeping wind.
The tension that has been building all day thickens when he settles all the intensity of his attention on me.
A tingling awareness crawls over my skin. The kind I feel when he is near. I drink in every detail of his physique. The dark figure of him in the spectacularly large house, big and powerful. He stands there, devilishly handsome. Wet from head to toe. Those black jeans he wears so well hanging low on his hips, his muscular torso caked with rain. The scent of his soap reaches me. Suddenly I burn to make him breathless and groan, to feel his big body tighten for me. Quiver for me.
I want to lick his collarbone and feel and taste every inch of his gold velvet skin.
He starts coming forward, his eyes taking a leisurely trek across every inch of my body, as if he’s savoring the sight of me too.
My voice feels thick as cotton when I shake my head and say, “I need . . . to fix myself.”
“You’re perfect.”
“No, really, this isn’t . . . you deserve for me to smell divine . . .” I trail off when Saint stops before me. Between those wet lashes of his, his eyes couldn’t be more admiring or adoring of me.
“You smell like you—your shampoo, your soap, you, and rain.”
“You smell like rain too.”
He pulls the hair out of my face. “This is pretty perfect for me.”
“You, looking at me like this. You’re perfect.” His wet clothes are sticking deliciously to his body. I reach out and squeeze his biceps. Hard as rock. I press up to him, closer. He tugs a button on my blouse open. Kisses there. Below my pulse point, on the little triangle of skin he revealed. He tugs another button open. Kisses there.
I reach out to do the same, freeing one button on his shirt.
He watches me through his lashes as I undo another.
“You want to go first?” He wipes my wet hair away as he asks, voice raspy like tree bark.
I nod.
I’m shivering.
“You cold? Want a bath?”
“No. I want you inside me.” I push at his chest, urging him to lower himself to the nearest chair. I drop at his feet and work the rest of the buttons until I’m able to spread his shirt apart, revealing his muscled abs, his cut torso.
I run my fingers over his shoulders and push his shirt back, watching his chest flex as he shrugs it off.
My fingers wander over all the muscles and skin I just revealed. “Dibs on every part I kiss,” I say.
He watches me, his eyes filling with a raw, deep longing as I lean forward to press kisses on his abs. Up his chest. He lets me, his muscles hardening under my fingers as I lean on him to brush my lips downward now as I unfasten his jeans.
I unzip him, and when he slowly comes to his feet, I’m readily pulling his jeans down his long, muscled, hair-dusted legs.
He’s letting me, watching me, eye-fucking me.
When he’s all golden, wet skin, he lowers himself again and I edge up to press my curves to his hard body. All these muscles are so perfectly natural, produced by sports. Polo. Skydiving. Yachting. The gym. Perfection.
“You missed a spot,” he says huskily, sliding a hand up my back.
I kiss his hard-on as tenderly as I did the rest of him.
His expression is all wicked eyes and devil’s grin. He trails his eyes over my face. “You tired?”
A pulsing knot within me demands more. “Not anymore.”
He eases a tendril of wet hair behind my ear, and then he leans forward and whispers in my ear, “You are going to be really exhausted by the end of the night.”
“Oh god, I’m so turned on right now.”
He leads me up to my feet. “My turn.”
I’m shaking wetly as he towers before me and looks possessively into my eyes. He unzips my damp white skirt. With a long, gentle tug, he eases it off my hips and it hits the floor. The scent of rain mingled with his shampoo invades the air as he opens up my shirt, his fingers slow and easy.
My knees go weak when I hear the long, hot breath he expels as he parts the fabric. Green eyes, violent with lust, admire my lacey, see-through panties and my matching bra. I can see by the way his pupils are dilating that Malcolm hasn’t failed to notice the dusky pink of my nipples through the flimsy material.
His hands, expert and sure, continue easing off my shirt. He misses nothing as he strips my panties down my legs. He unhooks my bra, peeling it off my wet skin. His eyes sweep over me, approving and adoring. And then his hands stroke over my naked shape, drying me.
He ducks his head. His tongue flicks my earlobe, and then he turns my chin and he slides his lips over mine.
“Dibs on my wife,” he rasps, and kisses my mouth, completely and thoroughly. I moan. His hands spread on my back, bringing me close to his naked body as he drops a fervent kiss on the back of my ear. “Dibs on this ear.”
I laugh, so hot and bothered, my arms clench reflexively around his neck. Quakes overtake me as he runs his hands, flat and smooth, all over my curves, drying me some more.
He looks at me with this little smile when the sensations of his touch make me gasp, and his eyes are sparks of heat fixed on my face. They look so heavy, his eyes, his lashes dark, sweeping downward as he dips his head and drags his lips sinuously along my neck, to my collarbone, my shoulders, toward my very pulse point, now fluttering in the nook where the gold R and M necklaces lay nestled.
His tongue dips into the nook and he no doubt tastes the rain there. I shiver, uncontrollably, as the heat inside my body rises. My fingers trail up the wet muscles of his arms.
His lips seduce and sear my damp skin as they roam over my jaw, to my ear, and then head back to my mouth. My hands roam the grooves of his back, damp too. Then he takes my wrists and pulls my hands to my sides, walks me back, and rests them on the wall.
He interlaces our fingers, his grip strong as anchors, and starts to kiss my lips, softly. His body’s still wet, but mine has been dried by his hands. I push upward to feel him, rubbing my breast against his flat chest, the wet making me ache.
“I need . . . god, I need you so much,” I gasp in his ear.
He eases back. He loves foreplay, and he seems determined to make it last. He strokes the knuckles of one hand down my face. “Good so far?”
I’m suddenly overcome with butterflies inside.
I press my nose into his neck and close my eyes and let myself enjoy his fabulously manly smell. “Good. Get closer, Malcolm, please.”
My hands snake up the back of his neck, into his wet hair. His hands rub up my back. Before I know it, I tip my head back, he ducks his, and our lips are fusing together. I press myself to him, wanting him to devour me.
He lifts me to a table, his lids halfway down his eyes as he drinks me in.
Then my tongue is tracing his nipples; first one, in a neat wet circle, then the other. He reaches to brush the wet tendrils of my hair back and peers with intimate intensity into my face while my fingers trail down the ripples of his abs, toward the perfect V that dips into the mat of hair where his massive erection greets me.
“Did you miss me like I missed you, Rachel?” he whispers, cradling my breasts with his hands, thumbs tweaking. Sparks shoot off in me as I hold him in my hand.
I breathlessly nod. “So much.”
I’ve had sex but it’s crazy with him. I’m feverish. He’s calm and collected, but he’s so wired for me, his body hums and crackles with electricity.
He’s hard and ready, the head of his lovely dick already wet, and I nibble his throat as I reach around his lean hips and grab part of his ass to get him closer.
When I rub his erection with the heel of my palm, he mock-chides, “All right, you’re playing dirty now,” lifts me up in his arms, walks us to the room, then lowers me on the plushest bed I’ve ever lain on.
He parts my legs with his hands, urging the inside of my thighs to fall open, and I grow even more restless when his green eyes settle on the part where I most ache.
“You,” I plead. “Not your fingers or your tongue.”
But my Saint is a Sinner, as we’ve already established.
He recklessly dives his head and explores me with his tongue a little, four deep, delicious strokes, then with his fingers, then he eases his hips between my parted legs. I throw my head back, a guttural sound in my throat. Our bodies light up, glowing like firestones.
When he slides the head inside, I rock wantonly and coax him to give me more.
He grabs my hip in one hand to hold me still.
“Oh god. You’re perfect,” I gasp.
He’s thick and huge and pulsing, stretching me. When I’m full enough to burst, squirming and digging my nails into his back and kissing his shoulders, he sets the rhythm. Slow first. The glide of his cock in and out of me wreaks havoc with my body. I start shivering, rubbing his muscles, sucking his jaw, making throaty, unintelligible sounds.
I absorb the feel of him with my hands and body. His powerful legs, his abs and ass as he thrusts, his arms and chest and shoulders as he takes me. And me, soft and warm. Wet and hot. I’m eroticized by the way Saint is spreading me open and making me his wife.
“Malcolm, I’m so hot.”
He groans and growls out, “Wet and hot and just how I like you.”
Soon we’re all instinct. Nails. Teeth. Sucking, kissing, biting, nibbling. He starts driving powerfully into me, fucking me into the bed while I suck fiendishly at his thick, juicy lower lip. He moves his lips, his tongue coming to spar with mine. A fever overtakes us, our bodies pressing and grinding. As we taste and tongue each other, the muscles of his back strain and ripple under my fingers.
He slows the pace, and my toes curl from the pleasure. My body arches and strains as he takes his cock fully out and rubs the head along my folds, over my clit. My eyes roll into the back of my head. When he slides back inside me, I purl in gratitude. “Malcolm.” My eyes flutter open to see the tendons bulging on his neck, the harsh clamp of his jaw.
One animalistic groan from him, one from me—we come at the same time.
He’s warm inside me, gripping me loosely against his body. He moves, whispering to me that he loves me. That he loves me so much.
Limp when we’re done, I start to flush under his gaze. He’s still inside me, and I cup his jaw and whisper in wonder, “Mr. Saint.”
He drinks me up, green eyes looking at me reverently.
“Mrs. Saint.” He rubs the corner of my lips with his thumb and when I press closer to the touch, his eyes grow even more tender. “God, I love you. I love you so much.”
He brushes my hair back and looks into my face.
He strokes my mouth and frowns thoughtfully, an unmistakably playful light in his eyes. “Is it your mouth? You’ve got a spectacular set of lips, Mrs. Saint.”
He’s still frowning even as I smile up at him in delight.
“Your breasts are the perfect size, not too big, not too small, perky and so responsive. These eyes?”
His thumbs brush over my eyelids.
“Silver when you’re angry, dark gray when you’re melting in lust.”
He strokes a hand down my leg next.
“Your long legs, that’s got to be it. Or maybe . . .” His frown deepens as he touches my mouth’s corners. “Your smiles and how genuine they are, the eagerness in your eyes as you watch life unfold around you.”
I’m blushing and laughing, and he rolls to his back and pulls me close, not frowning and not teasing now. But smiling. Smiling so beautifully at me.
“But see, it’s the full package, and the fact that you make me whole. That void we’ve talked about before, it’s gone when I’ve got you with me.”
“Void.” It’s my turn to pretend to be puzzled. “What void? You fill my life to a bursting point.”
Drawing me to him, he sets his head back on the pillow and lets out a long, easy laugh, and I crawl closer and lace my fingers at the back of his neck. “Hold me tight, Malcolm.”
He presses a kiss to my forehead and tightens his hold on me and teasingly confesses, peering into my face, “All the time, I want to squeeze you to pieces, but then I wouldn’t have you anymore. I can’t have that.” His face goes sober, deathly so, and even his voice grows dark. “I can’t have that at all.”
I forgot to tell my mother we’d arrived safely. She’d been nervous when we left, not knowing where we were going, and I promised to let her know the flight went all right.
I lift up my phone. No signal.
“Come here.”
He inserts a chip into his computer.
“I brought technology with me. You get four minutes.”
“Oh, come on. Five.”
“Three now.”
I laugh and open my account and shoot an email to my mother. This brief little glimpse of a computer makes me wonder about that world. If any wedding pictures are out there, of something that’s just his and mine. I can imagine Tahoe telling the world. My friends telling their other friends. The media.
“Do you need to check anything?” I ask, glancing over my shoulder.
“Thirty seconds. Counting down.”
He is making me pay, big-time and with interest.
I slap the laptop shut.
“Fine. I will settle my debt with you, husband.”
I watch him watch me with a smirk as I crawl across the bed and slip into his now-too-familiar arms, the laptop and everything forgotten as I happily make it up to him, and I guess we are just too busy enjoying our Happily Ever After to give a shit.
It’s the middle of the night, and our bodies aren’t yet used to the time change. I’ve been tossing and turning for a few hours, while Malcolm stirs when I move and simply puts his hand on my waist—to still me or calm me or maybe to push my restless little body off the bed. He’s pulled me closer though, and tighter.
He’s almost crushing me now. Malcolm is spread out beside me, one arm folded under the pillow, his body facedown, neck twisted so his face is dipped into my neck.
I ease off with a breathless huff, then I kiss the disheveled dark hair before I walk naked to the window, trying to guess the time. A sliver of light steals through the green foliage out the window.
We’re in the middle of nowhere. We’re somewhere that doesn’t exist anywhere else. Turns out Saint bought this house as a permanent getaway for us, with a brand-new bed, brand-new furniture, brand-new everything.
There’s nothing within miles. The staff isn’t supposed to check in for days. Just him and me for the most perfect, hormone-indulging days.
If peace needed a dwelling in the world, this is where it would hide. If I could freeze a moment in time, I would choose the exact moment when he walks up behind me, wraps his arms around me, and kisses the back of my neck. When he says in the husky voice of a very-well-satisfied man, “Good morning, wife.”
When I turn, bedroom green eyes look down at me as he snakes an arm around me and pulls me close . . . right into the spot. My favorite spot; the home base to baseball, the eye of any hurricane, the still center of the earth out from which everything spins. Right here. In two arms. Held by one man. My spot to come back after a spin. My spot to laugh, and love, and Sin.
