Consumed by Fire

  Claudia didn’t follow him up the winding stairs to the first floor. She didn’t see him head up to the second, and then up, up into the steamy third floor of the old hotel with its ancient walls and the sighs of a thousand lovers lingering within them. The hotel wasn’t full, and Evangeline was the only guest in the cheaper quarters on the third floor. Silvio never stinted on information, even when it involved another guest. A very practical man, Silvio was.

  Bishop reached the top floor and proceeded to unfasten his tie, stripping it from his shirt. How did she stand it up here? It was like a steam bath. He heard the loud thumping of an old fan from one of the rooms—that would be hers. Anything that made noise was an advantage in his profession, but the windows in the hall and the ancient skylights overhead were open to the night breeze and the sounds below, and he knew from experience that Italian police sirens were very loud. She would hear them, and she would wonder. And she would ask.

  Her door opened. She was barefoot but still dressed, and she had clothes and towels over her arm. She froze when she saw him.

  He didn’t move either. He had been working her all evening, knowing just what to say to put her at ease, the best way to throw off her equilibrium, and he’d felt the pull between them with reluctant acceptance. He’d done everything he could to make her want him. Unfortunately he was far from immune from those desires. He wanted to push her back into her bedroom, down on the narrow bed he could see behind her, and fuck her blind. He wanted her naked breasts against him, her legs wrapped around his hips; he wanted to lose himself, just for tonight, in the sweetness she tried to hide.

  Instead he was supposed to kill her?

  Not this time. This was one piece of collateral damage who wasn’t going to be sacrificed to the angry gods of world safety. One young woman wasn’t going to make any difference in the long run, and if it came to a showdown with Claudia there was more than a good chance he would win.

  None of this showed on his face. He stood in the shadows, but she knew exactly who he was, and she hadn’t retreated into her room and slammed the door. She stayed where she was, looking at him, and he realized she didn’t know what to do next. What an odd creature, this woman who didn’t know how to claim her own sexuality. There was so much he could show her. If he had the time.

  He didn’t even understand why she was so attractive to him. She was far from his normal type, with her flyaway hair and stubborn mouth. He’d fucked women for business and for pleasure, and he was sure he could come up with a good justification to take this one to bed. He just wasn’t sure why he wanted to.

  Maybe it was because he might have to kill her, and he didn’t want to do it until he was sure it was necessary. It was hard for a woman to hide anything when she was enjoying the best sex of her life, which he intended to give her. If she had to die, then at least she’d die happy, not even knowing what happened to her. If he decided she could live, then there was no way he was going to let Claudia’s strong hands and perfect marksmanship get anywhere near her.

  The only problem being, Claudia didn’t take no for an answer.

  “What are you doing here?” He could hear a faint tremor in Evangeline’s voice. Christ, she couldn’t be a virgin, could she? No, he would have picked up on that much uncertainty. She just wasn’t used to hookups, to casual encounters, to instant attraction, to accepting sex as just one more appetite to be assuaged. She was a romantic, he realized. And he was hardheaded and practical, no handsome prince to seduce her.

  He said nothing. If she backed into her room he would follow her, if she came out he would take her. Her life might hang in the balance of that small decision.

  She stepped forward into the deserted hallway, closing the door behind her. “I was going to take a shower,” she said, still with that trace of nervousness. “It’s really too late for a walk. Besides, I spent most of the day on my feet.”

  “I can take care of that,” he said softly. The bathing room was next to her room, and no one else would be sharing it. He crossed the hallway, slowly, deliberately, and she didn’t retreat, even though he could sense that half of her wanted to. Her arms were full of her clothes when he caught her shoulders in his hard hands. Slender shoulders, delicate. He leaned down and pressed his mouth against the crook of her neck, breathing in her scent. In the distance he could hear the first jarring notes of the carabinieri’s Klaxon, and he slid his hands up her neck, covering her ears with his palms as he moved his head and kissed her.

  Chapter Three

  His mouth on hers was a shock. It was no tentative kiss, no preliminary exploration. The mouth that covered hers was open, carnal, wet, and for a moment she was too startled to do anything but stand there clutching her clothes to her breast like an idiot. He was cupping her face in his beautiful hands, blocking out everything but his mouth, his body up against hers, and then he lifted his head, his deep brown eyes glittering in the darkness. “You want this,” he said, no longer sounding lazy. It wasn’t a question, and she couldn’t nod if she wanted to, not with him holding her head still for his kisses, so she had to be brave.

  “Yes,” she said, too caught up in the mesmerizing feel of his body against hers to be shocked at herself. “I want this.”

  His slow smile was brief, and then he covered her mouth again, pushing her up against the wall, and she kissed him back. She could hear the heavy rain begin, and in the distance a police siren, and then nothing mattered as he pushed open the door to the bathing room and angled her inside.

  “This isn’t my . . .” she began, puzzled, but he hushed her, pulling the towels and the nightgown from her arm and tossing them in the corner.

  The shared bath for the third-floor guests was one large wet room, covered with marble tiles, and Silvio had proudly shown her the new overhead rainshower, as well as the many spray options now available in the most recent upgrade. She didn’t pay any attention. The sounds of the sirens were growing louder, and she vaguely wondered what had happened, until James pushed her against the wall, both of them fully clothed, and turned on the spray overhead, drenching them, drowning out the noise and any other thoughts.

  She tilted back her head and laughed, suddenly happy. This was ridiculous, crazy, and she didn’t care. If she was going to throw caution to the wind for a night of passion, then the wilder the better. She could do this and take joy in it.

  He moved his mouth down her neck, leaving a trail of tiny bites in his path. The knit dress was stretching in the water, soaked, and he pulled it over her head before she realized what he was doing, so that she stood there in nothing but a skimpy black lace bra and panties.

  He paused, looking down at her appreciatively. “That’s encouraging,” he whispered in her ear, letting his teeth take hold of her earlobe and biting down, so that she arched against him with a soft moan. “You must have known this was coming.”

  She could protest—but this wasn’t the kind of underwear she usually wore, and there was no need to wear it under the black dress. She’d chosen it deliberately, whether she realized it or not. He moved back, pulling her under the full stream of the shower, his thumbs brushing her cheeks, pushing back her long wet hair as he kissed her eyelids, licked the water from her cheekbones and her mouth.

  She reached up and tried to unfasten the buttons to his shirt, but the fabric was wet and stubborn. She needed to feel his skin against her. She yanked it in frustration, and he laughed softly against her neck. “Patience, Angel,” he whispered, covering her frantic hands with his. “I’ll take care of it.”

  He released her, only for a moment, as he simply ripped the shirt open and yanked it off. She knew what kind of strength was needed to tear that wet linen, and she shivered.

  “Are you cold?” he whispered, reaching behind them, and the shower heated up as he turned the dials, apparently knowing from instinct how to adjust them. He pulled his belt free and threw it in the corner, where the heavy metal buckl
e clanged against the tile. She half expected him to yank down his pants, but instead he put his hands on her, pushing her back beneath the water where nothing existed but his mouth, his touch.

  She closed her eyes as his hands slid around her, and a moment later her bra came free, falling down between them. Her small breasts were tight and pebbled against his smooth skin, despite the warmth of the water. She felt his fingers on them, tugging, rubbing, and she heard a quiet moan of pleasure that echoed in the tiled room and knew it could only have come from her. His head moved down, his mouth latching onto her nipple, sucking, and she felt a spasm of reaction between her legs. She liked this. Men had always been so gentle with her breasts, so tender, and she’d felt nothing.

  James Bishop was rough, demanding, and she could no more resist those demands than she could fly. He moved to her other breast, leaving the first distended and needy, and when she felt his teeth on her a spasm rocked her body, shocking her.

  He pushed his hand down her stomach, beneath the black lace of her panties, finding her entrance without fumbling. Finding her clitoris when every other man had had to search. He knew where it was, and he knew what to do with it, rubbing his thumb across it, his mouth catching hers again as she cried out.

  She fell back against the cool tile wall, and he followed her, reaching up to tilt the shower spray so that it poured down on them, drowning everything out but touch.

  “Stay like that,” he growled, and she blinked her eyes open for a moment, just long enough to see him sink to his knees in front of her, sliding the panties down her legs until they rested around her ankles. She stepped out of them, kicking them away, as he put his hands on her thighs and held them apart as his tongue touched her. A shudder ran through her. This was too much—this was more sex than she’d had in her last few months with Lester, and James wasn’t stopping. He licked and sucked and bit at her clitoris as two long fingers slid inside her, filling her, and she couldn’t stifle her sudden shriek of . . . was it passion? Fear? Need?

  None of it mattered—she was well past the point of second thoughts. He was so good, so adept at this that she came immediately, her body jolting in reaction, a hard, sharp orgasm that was over too quickly, and she felt a wave of disappointment. She knew her body—she was done, and she’d been so turned on she’d been unable to hold back. She tilted her head back, letting the warm water splash down on her, waiting for her body to return to stillness.

  He must have felt her climax, but he didn’t move away from her. If he was expecting more response from her it wouldn’t . . .

  The next orgasm slammed into her like a freight train, and she screamed, every inch of her skin prickling, burning, as she arched back against the wall, shaking so hard she thought she might fall apart. He surged upward, covering her mouth with his, and she could taste herself as he swallowed her cries. When her hard spasms subsided into flutters he lifted his mouth. “You don’t want to alert the entire villa, do you?” he said with a soft laugh. “When you need to scream again just bite me.”

  When, he said. Not if. She shivered in his arms. “I can’t . . .” she began in a raw voice.

  “Oh, yes, you can,” he said. “You can’t even imagine how much you can.” He took her hand and placed it on his fly, and he was so damned hard she felt another shiver dance over her body. She wanted this. This part of him, and all of him besides. She wanted his cock, and she wanted it inside her.

  She reached for the button, but he’d already unfastened it, and she just had to manage the zipper in the wet fabric. It stuck, of course, but he had narrow hips and she simply shoved his pants down, his cock jutting forward.

  “While you’re down there,” he said beneath the pounding water, “take me in your mouth.”

  Sudden fear sliced through her, and she shook her head, trying to draw away. He caught her, pulling her up against him, moving her back against the tile, kissing her with such wicked intensity that her temporary panic melted away, and heat steamed through her body.

  “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” he whispered in her ear, then sank his teeth onto her earlobe, and she wanted to arch up against him.

  “I’m sorry . . .”

  “Shhhh,” he quieted her. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. No rules, just what feels good. And what I want now is you. I’m going to fuck you, fuck you fast and hard, and you’re going to take it, aren’t you?” His voice was low, intense, and he was doing something with his hand. It took her a moment to realize he was sheathing himself with a condom; she had no idea where it had come from and she didn’t care. “You’re going to let me fuck you blind, and when you come you’re going to put your mouth on me and scream into my skin until you can’t scream anymore. And then I’m going to take you into the tiny bed in your room and we’ll do it all over again.”

  She stared at him, the water splashing down over them, clinging to his long, long eyelashes, and she knew she’d do almost anything he wanted. Even . . . that. “Yes,” she said.

  He slid an arm under her butt and hauled her up, pressing her against the wall, pulling her legs around him. She only had a moment to savor the feel of him against her, and then he pushed into her, hard, as he’d promised, and she started to come again.

  “Not yet,” he growled in her ear. “Don’t come yet.”

  “I don’t . . . know if I . . . can help it,” she gasped.

  “You can.” He punctuated his words with a hard thrust that pushed her up against the wet, slippery wall. “You can do exactly what I tell you to do. You’re going to let me fuck you, and you’re going to fuck me back, and when I tell you to come then you will.”

  She wanted to tell him it didn’t work that way, but she was past words. The pulse of him, the push of him, each time rocking her hard against the tile wall, was turning her brain to mush and her body into nothing but a mass of sensations. She could feel her climax struggling to break free, and she tried to think of something else, to prolong it, but all she could think of was him, inside her, that hard, veined part of him. She trembled on the edge as he thrust into her, again and again and again, their bodies slapping together, slapping against the wet tile, until she was panting, gasping for breath, suddenly afraid of where she was going, afraid of losing everything, of never coming back from this cataclysmic storm of desire.

  He hauled her up tighter against him, going deeper than he had before, so deep she cried out with pleasure tinged with pain, her body beginning to spasm around his cock.

  “Not yet,” he said. “Not yet.”

  Her eyes had been closed in the darkened bathing room, but she opened them beneath the tumbling water, wanting to see his face as he took her. His eyes would be closed and he would be in some other universe, lost in the journey to completion.

  But his eyes were open. Staring at her, so dark, so dark. “That’s right,” he whispered. “Look at me. Watch me as you fuck me. I’m not one of your polite academics, Angel. I’m something you’ve never seen before, and you need to know who you’re with.”

  As if she could forget, she thought weakly, staring at him, into his eyes, shaking so hard she thought she would fall apart. She tightened her grip on his shoulders, and he moved closer still, his strong, wet body covering hers, and he was slamming into her, again and again and again.

  “Put your mouth on my shoulder,” he whispered in a tight voice. She obeyed immediately, licking the water off his skin. “Bite,” he said, slamming her back against the tile, going rigid in her arms, and her pent-up release erupted, a scream started in the back of her throat, and mindless, blind, she sank her teeth into his shoulder, harder as each wave hit her, an endless trail of climaxes, each one stronger than the last, until she was sobbing, she could taste blood, and he was still thrusting inside her, slowing almost imperceptibly.

  She let go of him, her head falling back with a gasp as she shuddered helplessly. He pulled her against him,
and she let her forehead rest against his shoulder as he held her, his hands surprisingly gentle as they stroked her back.

  Which was beginning to hurt, she realized dazedly. Everything was beginning to hurt, though she cried out in distress when he pulled free from her and tried to set her on her feet.

  She couldn’t stand. She sank to the wet floor in a little heap of exhaustion and overstimulation and closed her eyes. Would he leave her now? Walk out of the place in wet clothes? Or stark naked—she could see him being arrogant enough to do that. She didn’t like arrogant men. She couldn’t think of anyone but him.

  He was standing over her. He’d removed the condom, and his cock was at eye level, still erect. She had just enough strength left to lift her head and look at him.