Beckett wondered briefly if he was dead and then decided he didn’t care. It had been worth it. He’d never felt anything like it. The possession that choked him when he made Gianna come, the wrenching release of his own orgasm.
He was afraid he’d just had a religious experience. With a witch. In a secret passage.
He shifted to bury his face in Gianna’s hair. Maybe she was a witch? A spell had obviously been cast. She had bewitched him. It was the only explanation for what had just happened.
“Can you breathe?” he asked, nuzzling her.
“Mm.”
“I can’t tell if that means I’m smothering you or you just can’t form words yet.”
“No words,” she mumbled, snuggling back against him.
Beckett brushed her hair out of her face and fanned it out over the stairs. “Is that better?”
“My ears are ringing,” she sighed, finally opening her eyes. “I think it’s from me screaming your name.”
He grinned. She had shouted his name as they came together.
“I still feel the need to ask you if that was okay.” He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her fingers one at a time. “I think I got a little rough and I didn’t mean to.”
She smiled smugly. “Better than okay. I think all the cells in my body are singing … or weeping with joy.”
Beckett felt a quick wash of relief. He’d lost control, let go. He’d never done that with a woman before. Gianna’s words at yoga came back to him. She’d accused him of being too in control, afraid of falling. If this was falling, he wanted to do it again.
“I think we need to get off these stairs,” he decided.
“Okay,” Gianna sighed. “Which one of us is carrying the other one back downstairs?”
“Why downstairs?” Beckett asked, envisioning the soft expanse of his bed.
“That’s where your kitchen is and I need you to feed me.”
A quick detour to his closet yielded a pair of pajama pants for himself and a t-shirt for her and together they staggered down the stairs to the kitchen.
Gianna ducked her head into his refrigerator while he rummaged through the pantry. Beckett wrestled a box of Frankenstein shaped macaroni and cheese from the back of a shelf. It must have been Ellery’s. He hoped she wouldn’t mind donating it to the cause.
“How about this?” he asked holding up the box.
Gianna grinned. “It’ll go perfectly with these.” She held up a bowl of raspberries and a bag of sliced cucumber.
“You have an interesting post-sex appetite,” he told her, pulling a pan out of the cabinet and filling it with water.
Gianna tossed him a saucy look and began plating the berries and cucumbers in a rainbow across the plates. “The handful of French fries I nervously inhaled did not sustain me,” she told him.
“Nervously?” Beckett looked up from the simmering water.
Gianna hopped up to sit on the island. “You weren’t nervous?” She poked him with her foot.
“I’m a man. Men don’t get nervous. We get focused on whether or not we will be able to provide appropriate amounts of reciprocal pleasure.”
She rolled her eyes in a way he found utterly sexy. “You are such an attorney.”
He stepped between her legs. His hands skimmed under the t-shirt to pull her closer. “And you are so irresistible.” He nibbled along the line of her neck until he felt goose bumps rise on her skin. “Why were you nervous?”
Her eyes were still closed and she angled her jaw to give him better access. “Because I was afraid you wouldn’t be any good at it,” she sighed.
Beckett’s teeth sank down. Hard.
She yelped.
“Not funny, Red.”
She was laughing now and it sounded like music.
He shoved a cucumber slice in her mouth. “Enjoy your snack. It looks like we’re not going to eat for a while.” With that, he turned off the stove, tossed her over his shoulder, and marched upstairs, smacking her once soundly on the bare flesh of her ass when she struggled.
Gianna bounced when he pitched her on to the bed and he fully expected her to jump back up. But instead she rose up on her knees and beckoned him with a finger. A siren’s song couldn’t have had a more immediate effect. He found himself painfully hard and diving across the mattress to her and those sea-witch eyes that called to him.
Beckett met her in the middle on his knees with a kiss meant to brand her. She was his for tonight. And he belonged to her. They tangled and tumbled, rolling over the expanse of sheets sending pillows and clothing flying to the floor.
He wanted — no — he craved her with an ache that hollowed him out. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be, he thought, as his mouth cruised over her shoulder and then lower to feed.