Roman drove them back to the house and was holding the door of the garage open for Adán when he saw Cenobia pause beside a mint-condition ’55 Ford Thunderbird Roadster convertible, its pale, powder-turquoise flanks gleaming under the halogen lights.
“Hola, bonita,” she sighed to the car, running a finger along its right tailfin.
All the hairs stood up on the back of his neck.
“Do you want to take it out?” he asked without knowing the words were coming.
Cenobia looked at him, eyes wide. “Would Roxanne mind?”
“Her lawyer restored this car and gave it to her,” Roman said. “He put in an upgraded Thunderbird Special V8 engine. You should hear the sound of it.”
Cenobia moaned and Roman casually moved so that his hips were turned away from Adán.
“Yes!” Adán said.
“No,” Bartolo replied, stepping into the garage. One look at his face made it clear that, this time, he was not budging. “You have school, señor.”
The three adults had found enough books in Roxanne and Mateo’s library to keep up a nominal level of education for the boy.
“We will practice again tomorrow, Adán,” Cenobia said. “Te lo prometo.”
With the promise of more driving lessons and more time with his sister keeping the smile on the kid’s face as Bartolo dragged him out, Roman tossed the keys from the key locker to Cenobia. She settled into the driver’s seat and lit up when the car roared on then settled into a grumbling purr that throbbed through the garage.
Roman got into the passenger seat and draped his forearms over his lap. She drove them out of the garage and down the long driveway, pausing where the driveway met the road and looking in both directions.
The grey November day was windy and threatening rain but unseasonably warm. She lowered her window. Roman rolled his down, too.
“No one else is going to be on these roads?”
He shook his head. “Not as long as we stay on Medina property.”
“Ay, que bueno,” she said. She eased the car out onto the road, gave the car some gas and then ambled along, aiming away from the lake and into the woods. Roman rested his forearm in the open window, his denim shirtsleeve rolled up, the air balmy against his skin.
And then he was shoved back against his seat as she opened it up.
She focused on the road, shifting the manual transmission smoothly without a hint of a hitch, faster and faster, until the trees looked like they were whipping not because of the wind, but because of the Thunderbird’s trajectory. She followed the slight raises and dips of the well-maintained private road like she was on rails, never wavering from perfect center. She slowed down for the first turn, testing the car’s responsiveness, and that’s when Roman noticed she was braking with her left foot.
When she whipped around the next turn, fast and in total dominance of the pretty car, Roman got hard.
“Who rebuilt this?” she shouted over the roar of the wind and motor, the curls of her ponytail dancing. “Roxanne’s lawyer? I’ll have to contact him. He’s got the front and rear drive balanced perfectly. It’s always more effective in older cars without the electronic clutch pack, but he’s an artist.”
Her feet in a pair of black Converse looked like they were fingers on a keyboard, quickly typing over the clutch, brake, and gas to tell the car what she wanted it to do. Sometimes she skipped the clutch entirely and relied on the RPMs to give her an opportunity to shift.
Roman needed to get his jaw out of his lap. “Where’d you learn to drive like this?” he finally got out as they took another cock-stroking turn.
“I grew up on test tracks,” she said, grinning. Her hands gripped the turquoise-and-white ball of the shifter like a scepter, loose but with authority. “I went on a couple dates with a master sergeant in the Fuerzas Armadas and he showed me some tricks.”
Roman didn’t want to think about the tricks the man had wanted to show her, not when she’d looked like this, hair whipping, cheeks flushed, lips wide with a daring, devilish smile.
“So you just love cars,” he shouted, feeling that grin that didn’t come out too often crack his face. “If you’d been born into a family of candlemakers, you still would have gone and made cars.”
She downshifted and slowed down, looked at him for a second longer than she could have at breakneck speed. “I guess I do,” she said. Now they were able to speak at a normal volume. “I like how all the intricate pieces fit together to make a smooth-running whole. It’s like an equation, isn’t it?”
“Or a company,” he said.
She smiled. “Or a kingdom.”
Roman could smell the rain in the warm air whooshing through the car.
“Do you love being a soldier?”
What a question. Roman focused on the straight road and the oak and hickory trees hanging over the lane, clinging to their last bits of fall color. He looked ahead, saw the gentle slope and its unpredictable next rise.
“I do,” he said.
This fast drive with the windows open felt cleansing.
“I’m good at it. It comes naturally. I feel guilty ’cause I like it.”
Not the killing. Never the killing. But he liked the calm before the target revealed itself, the instant assessment, the rapid response, the variety of combat, the coordination with a team. He liked the sensation of racing blood and pounding heart and crystal-clear mind.
He liked knowing he was the perfect tool for the craft.
“I still take part in the Sheppard Security training exercises because I’d look like a real jackass as the prince who had to jump out of planes to feed a need.”
“You want to charge into what everyone else avoids,” she said succinctly. “Every person you’ve saved is grateful you’ve embraced your innate talents.”
Cenobia made it sound so easy.
He made a decision.
“Pull over and let me drive,” he said. “I want to show you something.”
They changed places and Roman turned around and aimed them back towards the lake. Roman pointed out landmarks as he drove: the hiking trail where he and Sofia had briefly lost the dog, and the twins almost killed them; the fishing pier where he’d taught Aish how to bait a worm, and the LA-born trust-fund rock star had been very ew-ugh about the whole thing; the horseshoe court where Roxanne had succinctly kicked his and Mateo’s ass, although she’d been cheating because she’d been hugely pregnant and had brought out the good scotch.
“I’m not kiddin’,” Roman said as he pulled up to the spot he wanted to show her. He had her laughing too much for her to notice the gentle rise they’d been driving up. He loved that grumpy-ol’ him could make her laugh. “I still dream about that scotch.”
As he put the car in park, she finally looked out the windshield. “Mira,” she breathed. “Maravillosa.”
He leaned across her to unlatch the convertible’s soft top, unlatched his side, and then pushed a button. The white top accordioned back, letting in warm air, and disappeared behind the seat.
He turned off the car then patted the top of the white bench. “Sit up here for the best view,” he said.
She scrambled up, her feet in the seat, and sighed again happily.
There weren’t many hills in this part of southeast Kansas, but there were natural flint cliffs around this manmade lake. A little gravel road wound through trees until it ended here, higher than one would have imagined, with a view of the cliffs and the water. Right now, the lake reflected the cloud-heavy sky, made it look like a bowl filled with the heavens.
The air was rain-thick and warm; it was getting ready to storm. But Roman wasn’t ready to go back. Not when Cenobia was looking around with that smile on her face, the heavy copse of trees protecting them from the wind.
“Hey, I was wonderin’,” he said. He looked down and saw the dark skin of her ankle exposed between sneaker and rolled-up jeans. He slid his thumb and forefinger around the delicate bones and tender skin, cuffing it. “What’s a good girl like you know about a prince’s dirty mouth?”
Her foot twitched in his hold.
He looked into her surprised wide eyes and waited patiently for a response.
“P-practically nothing,” she finally got out.
“I figured,” he drawled, solemn and straight faced. He held her jeans-covered calf in the cup of his palm and slowly rubbed it—her, her flesh and her warmth—up to the bend of her knee. “I mean, how many princes could you know?”
He smoothed his hand over her knee, and those pretty mauve lips fell open.
“Even if there’d been a dozen of ’em...” He shifted up onto his knees as he lightly stroked up her firm thigh and leaned close to her. “They won’t have a mouth like mine.”
She let out the tiniest little gasp and her breasts were rising and falling fast in that fuzzy pink sweater. I love your voice, she’d moaned to him last night, and now she knew what he was doing with it. Seducing her. Initiating this. Touching first for the very first time.
He was a soldier, and she’d reminded him that he was damned good at his job. That he liked it. That he liked helping people.
And she’d asked him to help her.
Every person you’ve saved is grateful you’ve embraced your innate talents.
If one of his talents wasn’t helping the worthiest, bravest, most daring woman he’d ever known learn pleasure and revel in the gift of her beautiful body, then what was the point. She’d stated clearly, plainly, what she wanted, and he could do this for her, during this weird time-out time with few responsibilities and fewer eyes. That dance of bodies he got to learn as a teen experimenting in back seats was ruined for her. He would take her through it slowly, carefully, with her pleasure being his only mission.
Then he would let her go.
The breeze had stopped rustling the leaves and no birds chittered or squawked.
“There’s a lot I can do with my lips...” He gently pushed her thighs apart and got between them, staring her down. “...And tongue...” He held her hips in his hands and scooted her forward, the metal squeaking beneath her. “...And teeth.” He nestled against her, let her feel the hardness of his chest and cock through denim, let her know he could take care of her in all ways.
Leaving the playground didn’t mean he’d stopped hearing about his mouth. Women praised it. Assholes said it looked good for cock sucking. Some decent guys sighed with a tear in their eye when Roman let them down gently.
But never in a million years had he imagined that Cenobia was having her own filthy fantasies about the feature that had given him so much trouble. Holding her close and looking into her dark eyes swirling with lust and overwhelm and hope, he ran his teeth slowly over his bottom lip now, and got a gut jolt at the helpless, hungry way she watched him do it.
“You want me to show you what a prince can do with his dirty mouth?” he purred, looking down at her through his heavy lids.
“Dios mío, por favor,” she moaned.
He smiled lazily, like he was going to take all day with her, when giving himself the go-ahead made him desperate. He lowered his mouth and kissed her, kissed her the way he wanted to at the breakfast table and in the shower and after she’d made her brother beam and when she’d put the pedal to the medal. He kissed her first, kissed her without a request from her, kissed with lips and tongue and teeth, holding her face in his hands so she couldn’t get away, kissed with claim and ownership and the glory of finally giving himself permission to do it.
But a storm was in the air and their time was short. He ripped away from her succulent mouth to nip at her ear. “I trust you,” he breathed into it. “I trust you’ll tell me if I do anything that makes you uncomfortable.”
“Te lo prometo,” she sighed against him.
Her throat was long and dark and got him that much closer to the sweetness of her as he kissed and sucked at it, the smell of her pulsing through him. He dragged his hand up her torso, pulling up her sweater, and held her breast in his hand for the very first time. He undid her front-clasp bra—pink, too, goddammit—and licked across her marble-hard nipple, blew on it and then took a look as she panted in his hair.
Cenobia’s perfect, full, soft breast. He kissed the heavy underside, making promises for later as he rushed along.
“Gonna spread you out,” he swore as he kissed down her stomach. “Gonna eat you up.”
She gave a high-pitched whine, her stomach trembling under his lips, and urgency beat like a storm in his veins.
He dug his fingers into the waistband of her jeans, around the closure, felt baby soft skin against his knuckles. He looked up into her eyes.
“Please,” she gasped, giving a little shove of her pelvis that covered Roman in a fine layer of lust like Texas humidity. “Please.”
He ripped open her fly, reared up and took her mouth while he hitched her up so he could pull her jeans and underwear down, her not helping at all as she devoured his mouth and got in the way. He plopped her soft, naked ass back down on the car as he blindly reached back for her shoe, yanked it off, then tugged one sleek, muscular leg out of all that fabric.
Fuck. She had him like a kid, eager for his first taste.
She wrapped that naked leg around his jeans-covered ass and ground herself against his cock. She was no fucking help at all.
He yanked her leg off him and held it out wide so he could nuzzle into the tender crease of her thigh, where the smell of her was rich and intoxicating.
She slapped her hands against the fine car. “Roman,” she called, her hips rolling and begging for more.
He pulled her by her knee until she slid to her back. He bit the side of her kneecap. Kissed the edge of her obvious thigh muscle. Rubbed his beard, slowly, slowly, up the soft, tender skin.
He was going to savor this.
When he nosed at her trim, black curls, she let her thigh fall wide.
“Good girl,” he praised, sounding like he was at the end of a three-day whiskey binge. He gently separated her with his big thumbs then looked his fill. She was burgundy rose, soft and puffy, wet and glistening. For him. “Pretty girl, you let me in there.”
He kissed that wet, rosy skin. Licked out with his tongue and took a good, long taste. He swallowed and memorized—salt and tang and skin and sweetness. His Cen. He edged his tongue around her tiny oval pearl of a clit, felt her jerk, heard her startle, then he took that little innocent clit between the dirty lips she adored and laved it wetly.
Cenobia cried out, sending a few crows flying and cawing, and tried to jerk her hips away.
He chuckled, made sure to do it against the hot slick skin of her pussy as he picked up her knees and pulled her thighs over his shoulders. “Where you think you’re goin’?” he growled against her, holding on to her hips, adding the gravel of his voice to her cunt.
“That can’t be... It’s too...”
Giving in to what he’d always wanted, what he’d dreamed of doing, he tongued her clit, wet-mouthed, licked and caressed it, over and all around, stroking her words into moans. He fed himself as much as he pleased her, kissing lower to taste, test, exploring with his mouth to find all her sweet spots, then getting into all that sugar. He pressed his tongue inside her, gave her a tiny little fucking.
Her hips shoved up against his mouth.
Yeah. His Cen liked that.
He pushed his tongue deep and pulled it back slow. Her thighs started trembling.
His raised his head and rested his chin on her pelvic bone, let the slight breeze cool his face. He faked calm and control, drew on a lifetime of focusing on the mission, while greed and need were growling in his head.
“Cen?” he asked, looking up at her then quickly pressing the heel of his palm against his throbbing cock as he took in her brown-satin flesh against gleaming turquoise, that pervy pink sweater lifting and falling with her heaving breaths. He shoved up the sweater to expose those beautiful tits to the rain-heavy air, then squeezed a tight, dark nipple, his cock jolting against his hand.
She gasped and clenched her eyes tight.
“Cen?” he sing-songed again to cover the strain in his voice.
“¿Mande?” she asked weakly.
“Don’t you want to watch your warrior prince lick your pretty pussy?”
She gave a whimper in the back of her throat and he thought that if he pushed his fingers into her right now and just right...
She forced her eyes open and struggled up on her elbows.
Cenobia Trujillo, her pussy spread for him, mostly naked and stretched out over a classic car, looked devastated. His Cen looked one fragile second from coming all over his face.
Roman was the general of self-denial, had mastered the agony of waiting in the freezing cold, boiling heat, surrounded by enemies, alone in the dark when time became meaningless as he waited for his prey.
But he was like a green recruit during his first day of basic with the way he wanted to plunge inside her.
He fought it as he locked eyes with her and circled both arms around her thighs, separated her pussy lips, and nestled his mouth between. He kept his eyes on her as he pursed his lips in the way she liked so much and used them to suck on her clit.
Her beautiful face squeezed into a rictus of pleasure.
He trailed his tongue down the center of her, focusing his hunger on her pleasure, and pushed his tongue into her body.
He had to grip her thighs with his arms to keep her from rocking away. Her heels beat at his back and then...then she was snapping her hips up against his mouth. She’d found something to put her feet on—the dash? the windshield?—and she was helping him fuck her, forcing his mouth deeper as she trapped him in her midnight brown eyes.
His baby girl was filthy. His CEO was using her prince’s dirty mouth.
He might come.
He tilted his head so he could fondle her clit with his thumb while he fucked and sucked at her without breaking eye contact.
“Roman,” she demanded. His bossy baby girl. Her hips were speeding up and he shoved his tongue deeper. “Roman, make me come.” Her face was so sweet, so desperate. “Make it happen. Make me come.” She had no way of knowing that he never wavered once he set his course. “I want it, I want it, please, please.”
He leaned up, moved his thumb between her legs to push it into her dripping body, and surrounded her clit with his lips, vibrated over it with his tongue.
Her scream was long and crystalline and perfect. So was the sluice of moisture over his hand, the silky, soaking channel that clenched his thumb, and he kept moving it, stroking her, wanting more, tasting that delicious pulsing clit, devouring all her sweetness until she wrenched her pelvis away.
He slid his hands up her sides and gripped her around the waist, trapping her against his mouth, kissing and lapping, gently, wanting to feed and watch and make her come again.
“Roman.” She was buttery with wetness. He’d done that to her. He was gonna sink his cock into all that sweet cream.
“Roman.” Her gorgeous torso was covered in a wet sheen. He’d given her that. He was going to breath cool air between her breasts as he made love to her slow on the hood, give her a long, languid ride until she was coming again.
He could have everything, she’d said.
“Roman, the car. It’s sprinkling.”
He pulled back, wiped his mouth on his shoulder, rested his forehead on her thigh.
The light rain was starting to soak into his denim shirt. He was surprised it didn’t sizzle when it hit his skin.
“You’re gonna...” He gulped against her thigh. The smell here...it wasn’t helping him. “You’re gonna have to drive back.”
“’Kay.” He could hear the laziness of carnal satisfaction in her voice. He’d put that there. “Or we could raise the hood and...find some way to pass the time.”
The instant roaring “yes” of his body reminded him of that first delirious time he’d punched back and didn’t stop until teachers had dragged him off.
Plunging into Cenobia Trujillo’s body, hungrily, desperately, right now, wasn’t the mission.
He was going to make love to her. The thing he most/least wanted was going to happen. But her first real time wasn’t going to be in a car, no matter how gorgeous the car was. He wanted hours and a closed door and a bed the size of a small country. And she deserved to be teased wild before they got there.
Hours later, with the thunderstorm finally rolling out of the area, Roman and Cenobia took a fully clothed dip in the lake. When they showed up at the house—drenched instead of sweat soaked and shuddering with an afternoon of pleasure—they hoped it would look like they’d merely gotten caught in the rain.