LITMIR.BIZ

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from the warmth of Santi’s embrace. One of his hands was resting loosely on her waist, the other on her shoulder, occasionally moving up to her cheek to wipe away some tears. Just the size of his hands, the softness of his touch made her feel so feminine. She’d never admit it, but it felt good. Powerful, almost. The closest she’d ever get to feeling like an Amazon queen.

      Leaning in to kiss him would be so easy.

      Pressing her cheek into his hand to absorb some of the comfort it gave, she became aware her eyes were still unable to resist the magnetic lure of his lips. She bit down on her own lower lip, fighting the desire to go up on tippy-toe, just a little bit, and taste...

      “Don’t do that,” Santi said, abruptly pulling back.

      “What?”

      “That...lip thing you do.”

      “What lip thing?”

      “There.” He pointed at her mouth. “You’re doing it right now.”

      “No, I’m not!” She did a few moves to try and figure out what she’d been doing, highly aware that Santi’s hands were still touching her, almost territorially. Nerves won out over a limitless supply of sultry choices she could have made. “You mean my buck teeth overbite thing?”

      “Mija. You do not have buck teeth or an overbite.” Santi’s voice was gravelly, intense. Which made her stare at his lips even more. Sensual, full lips he was dragging a tooth along.

      “Well,” she huffed. “You do a lip thing, too!”

      “No, I don’t!” Santi looked at her as if she had just gone directly around the bend.

      “Yes.” She nodded soberly. “You do. It’s all slow-motion and sexy and, for the record, extremely distracting.”

      “Oh, yeah?” Santi’s mood and voice shifted again, slamming straight out of neutral into for-bedroom-only gear. Her tummy went all swoopy, melty, lava lamp on her. Oh, no, no, no... This was the so-bad-it-was-good sort of thing she’d heard about from friends of hers who’d settled down—or just plain old settled in her case.

      Her eyes were magnetically drawn to his lips.

      Beware! Beware the most perfect lips in the whole of Miami.

      Her breath became jagged and uncontrollable. He did the lip thing. Saoirse had no choice.

      She went up on tiptoe and kissed him.

      From the moment her lips touched his she didn’t have a single lucid thought. Her brain all but exploded in a vain attempt to unravel the quick-fire sensations. Heat, passion, need, longing, sweet and tangy all jumbled together in one beautiful confirmation that his lips were every bit as kissable as she’d thought they might be.

      Snippets of what was actually happening were hitting her in blips of delayed replay.

      Her fingers tangled in his silky, soft hair. Santi’s wide hands tugged her in tight, right at the small of her back. There was no doubting his body’s response to her now. The heated pleasure she felt when one of his hands slipped under her T-shirt elicited an undiluted moan of pleasure. He matched her move for move as if they had been made for one another. Her body’s reaction to his felt akin to hitting all hundred watts her body was capable of for the very first time.

      She wanted more.

      No.

      She wanted it all. The whole package. The feelings. The pitter-patter of her heart. Knowing it was reciprocated. Being part of a shared love. Not some sham wedding so she wouldn’t have to live in a country where her soul had all but shriveled up and died.

      She felt Santi’s kisses deepen and her willpower to shore up some sort of resistance to what was happening plummeted. This felt so real. And a little too close to everything she’d hoped for wrapped up in a too-good-to-be-true package. This sort of thing didn’t happen to her. And it wasn’t. She’d started it, Santi was just responding. She heard herself moan and with its escape her resolve to resist abandoned her completely.

      She caved in to her body’s desires. To caress and be caressed. Explore and discover new ways of giving pleasure. Time and space and heat and light all melded into one as she felt her body blossom with sensation after sensation. Each and every one of them pure pleasure.

      The sharp jangle of her phone’s text alert shot through her body just as she was weaving one bare leg around Santi’s.

      They both froze, eyes wide as if the neighborhood priest had just walked in on the pair of them, clothes asunder, tousled hair, hot, heated pants of desire slowing as they let reality settle around them.

      Bzzt!

      Saoirse batted her hand around the counter without changing her position and finally found purchase on the phone. She brought it up to her eyes, blocking out Santi’s amused expression.

      Lovers’ quarrel over? Safe to come back now? We are ten minutes away, can delay if necessary. xx A

      At least it was proof Amanda hadn’t installed a secret camera anywhere.

      “Amanda?” Santi asked, tipping his head out from behind the screen of her smartphone.

      “Amanda.” Saoirse’s thumb tapped away at the phone, telling her to hurry up, suddenly aware how close she’d come to giving herself, body and soul, to Santi.

      “Tell her the barbecue’s off,” Santi murmured, his hands slipping around her waist, trying to close the space that had opened up between them.

      “No. Sorry.” She pressed a hand against his chest, forcing herself to wriggle out of his embrace, swiping a hand over her kiss-bruised lips as she did. “I think that’s probably enough of that. We made a rule. Remember?”

      Rich, coming from the number one rule breaker.

      She pulled her glass of iced tea along the countertop, leaving a watery pool in its wake, and took several long slurps through her pink flamingo straw. It was one of the first purchases she’d made when she’d moved here, kitting her house out with dollar-store specials, and it never failed to make her smile. She hardly noticed it now. She needed the icy tea to tamp down the flames of desire licking away at her nerve endings in wicked little flicks and quivers.

      “Want some?” She held the glass out to Santi. He shook his head, eyes clouded with something she couldn’t quite read. Irritation? Or ardor?

      “James and Amanda are going to be back in a few minutes, yeah?”

      Saoirse nodded. Where was this going?

      “And James is going to talk us through the whole process—the legal process—of putting in the forms for you to stay here and what we’ll have to prove and show, et cetera, right?”

      Gulp. He wasn’t going to back out, was he? Or maybe he should. Friends only was one thing, but friends with benefits? That had red, hot and dangerous written all over it.

      “Yeah.” She nodded, fingers unable to resist touching her kiss-swollen lips again. Could lips pine for someone else’s?

      “Amanda and James thought this barbecue was a good way to introduce the formal factor into the proceedings. Make the whole thing a bit more relaxed.”

      “Are you relaxed?” Santi’s body tensed as he spoke, evoking a jangle of nerves in her own.

      “Not exactly.”

      It wasn’t exactly a declaration of love but at the very least he knew he was now officially under her skin.

      * * *

      Santi gave his shoulders a sharp shake, eyes closed tight as he tried to clear his head of all the behind-closed-doors things he wished he was doing to Saoirse right now. She’d felt good in his arms, pressed against his body, wanting him as much as he now knew he wanted her. There was a pool of sunshine on the wide-planked wooden floor he wouldn’t mind laying her out in. Slowly...luxuriously...stripping off her tomboy gear

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