From Drunk on Passion (Aegean Affairs #2)
Chapter Three...
c2016
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When Hesper had walked onto the beach, she had thought it might be Alexios who sat watching the tides. As she approached, she realized the man was significantly older and, when he looked up at her, she saw the familiar glazed look of a drunk. She probably had the same look, she thought, as the amber scotch burned her throat. Of all the things she hated to drink, that was at the top of the list. Of course, that didn’t stop her from laughing and taking another swallow from the bottle before returning it. Obviously, the stranger wasn’t a resident of one of the local islands, with his lighter complexion and heavy accent. He sounded like someone she had seen on one of the British soap operas that commonly played in the dormitories. His suit was open and a tie hung loosely around his neck, the first few buttons of his white shirt undone and a bit of bare chest peeking out. The haze from her day and night of drinking had her mind in a fog. “You look familiar but I can’t place you.”
“I get that a fair bit. I travel a lot for work.”
At least that meant he wasn’t one of the visiting professors she might run into again when sober. “Ah, a businessman,” Hesper nodded, looking out over the ocean. It would serve Alexios right if she had a one night stand. Why would he say that he would meet and then never show? Who was Alexios really with tonight? A stab of a jealousy pricked her heart and she wanted to drink the rest of the scotch just to take it away.
“Something like that. And you? Travel a lot?”
Hesper looked back at him and smiled, shaking her head. “Not really, just around the islands. I’ve grown up around here and chose a University on a nearby island.”
*****
University. She was just a girl! And yet… Duncan couldn’t help himself. He reached his free hand out and moved some of her hair behind her ear as he felt a tingling of desire move through him. “You’re beautiful, lass,” he said, softly, his words causing her to blush deeply in the darkness.
The wind chimes of her laugh rang out again. “I’m a slightly drunk lass.” She leaned over him to pick up the bottle and drank again. “A drunk lass who was stood up on the beach.”
Duncan looked around and saw no one. “Stood up? I can’t imagine a man standing up a princess like you.” Had he really just called her princess? Now he knew for a fact that he sounded like a drunken idiot.
She smiled and leaned forward, into his hand that was now caressing her cheek. “Princess?”
He shrugged, shoving the bottle into the pliable sand and moving forward to kiss her. Her lips were soft, tasting of cherry lip gloss and whiskey. She was the culmination of a hundred memories of a hundred women before, a last chance at vital youth, a reminder of all he had sworn to give up. As he kissed her, he forgot himself and his promises, instead remembering what it was like to be a university man with a beautiful girl on a windswept beach.
*****
The man was older but attractive and she was lonely. The brogue of his voice was thick and mysterious and his hazel eyes, although glassed over by the scotch, were kind. She longed to run her fingers through the hair that he kept pulled back in a ponytail.
The line about being a princess was totally going to work on her tonight, Hesper thought with a smile as he kissed her, first gently and then more ravenously. She wanted to feel like a princess instead of a cast off and, with the alcohol dulling her common sense, a stranger on the beach seemed like the perfect cure for her ailment. In that moment, Hesper felt wanted and desired. She kissed him back and moved closer to him, the sand twisting into the folds of her pants and filling her sandals.
Hesper ran her fingers through his hair, pulling the band from his ponytail and feeling his silky hair flow across her hands. He kissed her like she was air, drinking her in while his fingers found the bare skin beneath her halter. Hesper fiddled with the remaining buttons of his shirt, tossing his tie to the sand as she straddled him, sighing with want when he slipped her elasticized top down to her waist.
She was no angel. She had slept with a handful of boys throughout her higher education- not that she would ever let her parents know that- and the routine was the same. Drink. Kiss. Clothes off. Get it done. She moved her hands along the stranger’s tightly worked six-pack and toward the button of his trousers, then she let out a small yelp when he maneuvered her beneath him in the sand, kissing the sensitive skin around her ear and continuing down her neck. She couldn’t remember a time when she had been thrown off course; wasn’t the entire idea just to satisfy one another’s physical needs and move on?
But this man didn’t have sex like a college boy. Her entire body tingled as his mouth moved across her breasts, his tongue and breath alternating against her nipples with the cool night air. Her mind could barely think about what she had done before, except to tell her that it was lacking. She wanted him and he was agonizing her with the simple foreplay she had never really given a second thought.
That just made her want him more.
