Beautiful Mine (Beautiful Rivers #1) (6 page)

I don’t know if I found her entrance or if she found me. She’s just as wet as she was the first time, but I don’t go as slow. She’s tugging on my hips, kissing me fervently, angling up to meet me. I kiss her firmly, then pull away from her mouth just enough to watch her face as I slide in. Her eyes roll back and her lips part. Soft ecstasy washes over her beautiful face. She exhales long and slow, and I exhale with her. She’s amazing. Fucking amazing.

We kiss and caress and start to rock together. She’s taking me so deeply, I don’t know where the hell she’s putting it. Her little cunt is so hot and tight around me, squeezing me. I hook my arm under one knee to spread her harder. She gasps, then says, “Yes, yes.”

It’s such a turn on, giving her this much pleasure. I’m greedy, too. I want more.

I bring her knee up over my shoulder and she throws her head back, moaning.

“Do you like that?”

“God, yes,” she says, her eyes pinched shut, her breathing short and tight. I brace myself up on both hands and abruptly increase the rhythm and pressure, ramming her harder. “Oh fuck, yes,” she says, but I don’t speak. She’s so hot and feels so good, it’s taking all my concentration to keep it together. Her slick pussy is driving me wild. Her moans are making me crazy. I want her to come all over me.

I’m pounding her hard and she’s bucking against me as if it’s still not enough. She’s gripping my biceps, nails digging into me. “Fuck, Whitney,” I say, dropping my head and closing my eyes and almost losing it.

We’re both panting and groaning. Out of the corner of my eyes, I see her little foot trembling with her building ecstasy. My cock and my entire body are clenched, needing release. At last I feel her clamp hard on my dick. Her body curls inward and she cries out. Her orgasm pulses around me and I grit my teeth, my pleasure spiking high and furious but me holding out, wanting to give it to her hard and steady until I feel her first release.

The pleasure balloons around me as she climaxes on me, and when she takes that first gasping breath, her channel relaxing temporarily, I let go. I moan and drop my chest to hers and the lights burst behind my eyes as I come again and again. Her arms clutch me tighter. Her pussy grips me harder. She pulses around me and my whole body shivers hard.

When it’s over, and we’re tucked back into each other, and our bodies are still, and her breathing is quiet and deep, I have to wonder.

Did fate really do me a good turn?

Or is this one going to tear my heart out?

Whitney

I realize I’m probably just another adventure for him. Maybe he’s only that for me, too. I’ll go home and get on with life and have a good story to tell.

That’s what I’m telling myself anyway, because I don’t want to lose my head about this. I need to be smart. I’m going to just enjoy it, for as long as it lasts.

And enjoying Connor is so easy to do.

We’re currently walking a beautiful, gently curving path, talking easily. He’s back to wearing his navy shirt, and using his walking stick, which I’ve learned is named Gandolf. Our conversation has flowed effortlessly from one topic to another. I’ve heard more about his travels, and his stories are so interesting that I think I have to be boring in comparison. Yet, he doesn’t make me feel boring. He continues to ask questions about me and listens and laughs and it’s all just so
easy.

We’re only about five and a half miles from Santiago when we finally get to the medieval bridge I’d read about in my guidebook. It’s a “wee” thing, as Maggie would’ve said. An arched, stone footbridge that takes maybe twenty steps to cross, but it’s survived centuries, which gives it a neat atmosphere.

When Connor and I get to the top, I stop and look below. Maybe it used to cross a stream, or a creek, but the only thing beneath it now is tall grass and a few flowering bushes.

Connor crosses to the other side, then turns back and waits for me. When I reach him, he smiles and takes my hand, then leads us off the stone slab path and down into the grassy ravine. I grin at him. He has a go-with-the-flow, impulsive streak I find both invigorating and calming.

We go down the slope and to the arch of the bridge. He rests his stick against the side, then we slip underneath the arch. The bridge isn’t very wide, so it’s still sunlit under here, but we’re in the light shadow, running our free hands along the rough stone above us.

“Someone made these stones,” Connor says. “A long time ago, with their own hands.”

I try to imagine who those people might have been. What their lives were like. “Think of all the times and people this bridge has seen since then.” I glance at Connor’s profile, my heart skipping a bit.

“Pretty amazing.” He’s not feeling the stones anymore, but he’s still looking up at them.

“I wonder how many people have kissed under this bridge.” A shameless hint.

He grins and looks at me. “I don’t know.” He pulls me closer, making me tingle all over. My chest comes lightly against his and he wraps one arm around me, still holding on to my hand. “But this’ll be the only one that counts.”

He dips down to me and I raise up slightly to meet him. His kiss is soft and lingering, then slowly opens to more. When our tongues softly brush against each other, my core starts to simmer. I release his hand and we sink into a firm embrace. He kisses me slowly and masterfully, and when he pulls away I’m wishing we were still back at the hotel.

“We’ll never get there if we keep this up,” I say.

I’ve already told him how much I want to walk to Finisterre. It just seems like the perfect end to my Camino journey. But it was tempting, oh so tempting, to spend my remaining days rolling around with him in a Santiago hotel room instead.

“Then you’d better stop asking for kisses, greedy little miss,” he says, grinning and placing another kiss on my lips.

“All right,” I say. “We’ll go. After the next one.”

The heat factor of this kiss is several notches above the last. Oh yeah, we need to get going, or I’m going to be too turned on to walk. I’ll throw him down under this bridge and have my way with him and his magnificent cock and not care at all how many pilgrims come by and watch me do it.

“Okay,” he says thickly, pulling away with heat in his eyes. He gently grabs me by the shoulders and turns me determinedly. “Back you go, missy, or we’ll be losing some serious time.”

I duck out from under the bridge obediently. He’s behind me, but hangs back a bit. When I glance back over my shoulder I spy him subtly adjusting himself. I face forward again and grin, already feeling quite accomplished today.

We reach our day’s destination well into the evening and decide to forgo the larger hostel option, wanting more privacy than that. There aren’t hotels in this town, so we go for a small, private hostel, which is basically a bed and breakfast. It’s a charming, restored stone house with a red terra cotta tile roof, sculpted rough iron door handles, and potted flowers lining the walkway.

As we’re checking in, Connor refuses to let me help pay.

“That doesn’t seem fair,” I protest. “You don’t need to pay my way.”

“You could contribute some other way,” he says off-handedly as he determinedly leads me away from the check-in desk. The host is taking our packs and his walking stick to our room for us, but we’re heading back out for dinner. We’re both starving, otherwise we’d be checking out the room and the bed
first
.

“Like buying dinner?” I suggest. We’ve been buying our individual meals thus far.

“Uh, no. How about this?” he says as we go out the front door and onto the street. “I get the room and you agree to explore the city with me.”

“That’s the deal you want to make?” I think I’d be getting the better end of things there, but I’m already giving in. I can see he has his mind made up.

“Well, I don’t know how you feel about
more
walking,” he says.

“With you?” I say, giving him a grin. “I’m game for anything.”

He smiles. “Good. It’s a deal.”

We duck into the first restaurant we find and finally get some dinner. We still pay separately, which I’m glad about. The hotel was one thing, I suppose, but this can’t start feeling like we’re dating, or it’s going to make things that much more difficult.

We’re just having fun. That’s what I keep chanting to myself. We’re having fun. That’s it. And it’s great and I should enjoy it.

After dinner, we start wandering. We leave the restaurant in the opposite direction than the one we came in, and the first time we come to a small intersection, Connor stops and grins at it.

“Ah,” he says, his voice pulling slow and sweet like caramel. “A fork in the road.” He has a glint in his eye I haven’t seen before. “Which way shall we go, Whitney?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not one whit,” he says, like that’s the best thing about it. He looks at me expectantly. “You get to choose.”

Grinning at him, I point down the street to the left. “Good choice,” he says, squeezing my hand and turning that direction with a little spring in his step.

“What if I’d picked the other one?” I ask, amused.

“That would’ve been an excellent choice, too.”

I laugh. He makes me feel light, without a care in the world. “Is this how you travel? You get to a crossroads and randomly pick a direction?”

“Pretty much. Some things I plan, but
damn,”
he says, getting that sweet pull in his voice again, “there’s nothing like a fork in the road.”

It’s not long before I see what he means. On my entire journey, up until I met Connor, I’ve pretty much just been doing the pilgrim thing. I’ve seen a lot of things and met a lot of people. And it’s been incredible. But I’ve stayed in the hostels where the pilgrims stay and eaten in the restaurants the pilgrims frequent and have more or less stayed on the path.

But in this little town with Connor by my side? It’s one impromptu turn after another, and I like it. Still though, we’ve gone so far off the path, I have to ask, “Do you know how to get back to our room?”

“Sure,” he says, squeezing my hand. “Don’t you?”

“With all the turns we’ve taken? We could be going in circles for all I know. It doesn’t help the way the roads are laid out here.” Unlike the grid system I’m used to, these older towns have streets that go at strange angles willy nilly, their direction dictated by some long-forgotten need.

“I have a good sense of direction,” he says reassuringly.

“I guess you’d have to, or you’d get lost too often.”

“I didn’t say I don’t get lost. But being lost is a frame of mind anyway. What’s that saying? Wherever you go, there you are?”

“Wait. You
do
know how to get back, don’t you?”

He laughs. “Yes. But even when I get lost, if there’s somewhere specific I’m trying to go, I figure it out eventually. Okay,” he says, nodding his head toward the junction we’re approaching. There’s that glint in his eye again. Every time.

I feel like I’m watching a wild animal in its natural habitat. I’m starting to see that whatever it is that drives Connor to wander, it’s stitched deep inside his soul. It makes me wonder. “You know,” I say. “I hope I’m not keeping you from, you know, doing your thing.”

“Doing my thing?” he asks, looking at me.

“Yeah. I mean, how many forks in the road have you passed by today because you were walking with me instead?”

“Ah,” he says, eyebrows lifting and coming to a stop. Grinning, he pulls me in close to him. “Well,” he says, “it’s not like I’m
completely
incapable of staying on a path. I’ve spent the last several weeks walking the Camino, as planned.”

“That’s true,” I say, enjoying being in his arms. No matter the reason for it.

“Besides,” he says, leaning in close. He has that glint in his eye I saw before. “You
were
the fork in the road.”

He cups my face in his hands and brings his lips to mine so slowly, I feel the spark before we actually touch. When we do touch, it lifts me up right off my feet. My face still in his hands, I wrap my arms around his waist and press myself softly against him.

He pauses, looks me in the eye, then kisses me again, this time bringing one hand into my hair and the other slowly down my side, one thumb running over my breast and edging close to my nipple.

We sink deeper into it, tongues gently swirling together. He takes a handful of hair at the base of my neck, gripping it gently and sending prickles of pleasure down my spine. I grip him tighter, press myself against him more firmly, and feel his hardness growing against me. Our kiss grows more heated and he cups my ass, squeezing hard.

I pull back, breathing hard. “Take me back,” I whisper.

He gently sucks on my bottom lip, making my knees go weak. “I don’t know the way,” he whispers.

“What?” I say, straightening and looking at him in alarm.

He grins a devilish grin. “Just kidding.”

“Oh, you are going to pay for that one,” I say, as he leads us back down the street, his arm firmly around my waist.

“One can only hope.”

After we break open the new package of condoms he purchased earlier today, and manage not to make the old bed in our room squeak
too
much putting that condom to good use, Connor draws a warm bath and leads me to it.

I’m starting to feel a little raw from so much sex, but it feels good and I’m hoping we’re not done for the night. Judging by the way he looks at me as we settle into the tub, I don’t think we are.

I’m sitting between his legs, with my knees pulled up and my back toward him. Using a cup, he’s slowly pouring warm water over my hair, prepping it for a wash. Each time he pours the water, he gently runs his hand down my hair, from scalp to ends. It’s so gentle and tender and erotic. By the time he’s applied shampoo and is slowly massaging my scalp, my eyes are closed and I’m a helpless little puddle right there in the tub. The warm water is just covering my breasts, and I feel wrapped in a little cocoon of warmth and sensation.