Chapter 176

Pushing the door open with his foot, Richie stepped across the threshold of their Hawaii house with his arms full of Allegra, heart full of love,  and body full of raging testosterone.  Depositing her in the center of the tile floor, he nuzzled her ear growling, “I promise to do the tender, romantic making love thing later, but first I need to have down and dirty sex with you about half a dozen times.  Clothes off.  Now.”

“No.”  She pushed away from him with an amused smile.

Richie was not amused.

At all.

“Excuse me?” His eyebrows lifted in blatant disbelief and he presented his left hand.  “I’m pretty sure this ring means we’re married.  Wasn’t that the condition behind this ridiculous abstinence I’ve endured for the last thirty-five days?  Marriage equals sex on a regular basis?”

Not the least bit affected by his attitude, she teased her fingertips along the column of his neck, burrowing them into his hair.  “Just a little longer,” she begged prettily with a butterfly kiss against the pulse beating at the base of his throat.  “Pleaaase?”

Cupping the back of her skull, he tugged lightly on her hair, leaning back to look into her face.  “This is never going to happen again.  Do you understand that?”

“Our wedding night?” she chuckled, elevating on tiptoe to touch his lips.  “Yeah, I get that.”

“No.”  Richie pulled away with a frown, mentally searching for a way to get his point across without being an asshole.  He was wound tighter than his Fender the time Ava had ‘helped’ by turning every tuning key with all the strength in her little three-year old fingers.  Inhaling deeply, he pushed down the impatience and irritation and brought his thumb around to stroke Allegra’s jawline, speaking quietly.  “I willingly put up with this – without a damn good explanation, by the way –  because I wanted everything about your wedding to be exactly how you dreamed it would be, but that’s it baby.  There aren’t going to be games and withholding intimacy in our marriage.  Agreed?”

Wounded eyes went wide as she pushed against his chest in an effort to separate herself.  “It wasn’t a game, Richie,” she contended, arms coming to cross over her stomach.

“It doesn’t matter what it was.”  He reached for her elbow to pull her near again, but she stubbornly dug in her heels.  “Look,” he sighed.  “I’m sorry.  I’ve handled this badly.  All I want is for us to be on the same page going into married life.  I want sex to be a natural, easy extension of our love and affection for one another.  Something that we fall into without a second thought, not some planned or contrived event.  Don’t you?”

“Yes,” she agreed quietly, eyes cast toward the glass wall and the ocean beyond it.

Dammit, so much for everybody being happy on our wedding day!

He tucked a loose fist under her chin, inching it upward.  “I want you.  All of you.  I want to fuck you on the kitchen table, make love to you on the couch, shatter your world in the shower.  And I want to know that you’ll be receptive to any and all of that plus more.  That’s all I’m trying to say.”

She blinked and he thought he saw the hurt dim.  “I should have explained earlier, but I thought you would think I was being stupid.”

Pulling her into his embrace, he tucked her under his chin and spoke into the top of her head.  “Tell me now?”

Sighing heavily, she lifted her arms around him, settling her clasped hands in the small of his back.  “How many women have you had sex with?”

Jesus H Christ, no.  Please don’t go there.

“I dunno,” he mumbled, praying she wouldn’t be obstinate and demand a head count.  Not that he could provide one anyway.

“It’s a lot though, isn’t it?”

“More than I can count on one hand,” was all he would admit to.

Her laughter was humorless, shaking his chest with the one sharp breath she needed to force it out. “Take that unknown number of women and multiply it by three.  Even at a conservative two, it’s more than the average man.  Which doesn’t mean anything to me.  I was never naïve when it came to your past, and I’ve never had a problem with it.  It’s your past, not your present.  But this is our wedding night Richie.”  She craned her neck at an angle that she could see him.  “There’s no question in my mind that I’ll remember tonight as long as I live.  Is it so unreasonable that I wanted to make sure you would remember it too?  That it would stand out as something special in your mind?”

Stuffing down the urge to berate her for her lack of faith, Richie was still astounded that she’d think so little of herself.  Leading her over to the breakfast bar, he lifted her on the counter and stood between her knees, an open hand splayed over each bare thigh.  His thumb traced along the edge of her cotton shorts thoughtfully.. 

“Do you think I don’t remember in vivid detail the first time we had sex on your birthday in Seattle?  The first time we kissed on the beach in Hawaii?  The first time we made love in Jon’s guest house?  The first time I took you from behind in Las Vegas?  The first time you took me in your mouth, also in Las Vegas?  I could graphically describe each of those encounters and dozens more.”  Lifting her left hand, he turned it over to kiss the palm.  “So what makes you think I wouldn’t remember the night I make you mine forever?”

“You remember all that?” Again, lack of faith had skepticism drawn all over her face.

“Every sweet moan and whimper,” he huskily assured her, breath hot on her cheek.  “Everything is different with you, Allegra.  It has been from the start.”

The slightest turn of her head brought their lips together.  He could feel the uncertainty in the catch of her breath, wanting to believe him yet reluctant to buy in.

“I’m not lying.”  His lips brushed hers as he spoke.  “I’ll never lie to you.”

She opened herself to him, a mute invitation into the warm recesses of her mouth accompanied by a gratified sigh of acceptance.  Devouring her mouth with a groan of desperation, he imagined that he could still taste the lingering flavor of mango on her tongue and wedged himself more tightly between her thighs, hands roaming her back and pulling her close.

God, he’d missed this… this foreplay.  The kisses they’d shared in recent weeks were sweet, but he’d always known in the back of his mind they wouldn’t be more than a kiss.  This was a promise of something even sweeter.

With a rumble of pleasure, he found the bare skin of her back beneath the soft cotton tank she was wearing.  The soft texture of her flesh beneath his palms was as arousing as anything he’d ever encountered.  Growling deep in his throat, Richie slid his grasp to her hips forcefully bringing her to the edge of the counter and in direct contact with his bulging zipper.

“Richie…” she gasped, tearing her mouth away.  “Please let me – “

“No,” he cut her off, greedy hands wandering without direction over her body, not content to settle in any one place too long.  “I don’t need anything but you Allegra.  But I need you now.” 

She hesitated, tongue darting out to swipe away the moisture from along the full curve of her bottom lip.  This obviously wasn’t in her plans, but he didn’t care.  He wanted his wife under him.  Around him.

“Now.”  He reiterated, snatching the tank top over her head to divulge plumped breasts elegantly bedecked in ivory lace.  “So beautiful,” he murmured reverently, big palms coming to cradle their soft weight.  The seam where the two luscious mounds met begged his attention and with a deep inhalation of the berry scent trapped there, he snaked his tongue out to hotly lick along the crevice.

His hands shifted quickly unhooking her bra, and before Allegra had a chance to register the air brushing across her bare chest, he was laving her nipples with that same hot mouth.  His tongue curled around one beaded nipple, sucking sharply.

“Ohh!”

“Hurt?” he asked, cool breath causing the raspberry colored pearl to pucker even further.  Silky locks of hair brushed his cheek as she shook in denial and his fingers pinched at them before swooping in to consume one in a wide-mouthed suckle.  He moaned his pleasure at the fleshiness against his tongue, drawing with a determined force, yet careful not to inflict more pain than would be pleasurable. 

“Oh, baby it feels so good.”  Her body writhed against him, silently begging more of the loving torture his mouth was administering.   “More.”

More than willing to oblige, Richie lightly nipped her with his teeth and moved the same attention to the other side, keeping the first one entertained with his fingers.

Allegra felt as though she’d been sunburned on the beach yesterday.  Her skin was so hot, and beads of sweat were forming at her neckline.  The plans she’d so carefully laid to control and seduce him incinerated and crumpled into a pile of cold ashes beneath her husband’s magnificent sexual authority. 

“Hop down,” was the roughened command that garnered her dazed attention.  Silently obeying, she kicked off her flip flops and her toes stretched to reach the tile floor.  The instant her feet were flat on the ground, Richie pushed his hands inside the elastic waistband of her shorts, shoving them and her panties unceremoniously to the ground.

An upward glance found nostrils flaring with desire as he took in her breasts, belly and hips, all rounded with the effects of pregnancy.  Loving hands cupped the baby bump that was getting bigger every day, despite the scale’s insistence that she’d only gained seven pounds.

“Your body is spectacular.  So lush and full with our baby.”  His gaze burned her skin as he swept the black, sleeveless shirt over his own head and reached for the button on his cargo shorts.  “Jesus, I want to feel you against me so badly that my hands are shaking like a nervous kid.”

Smiling ruefully, she lifted her own trembling fingers for him to see.  “Glad I’m not the only one.”

“You’ve got one chance.  If you want this to happen in a bed, lead the way upstairs,” he informed her tightly, stepping out of his shorts and boxers.  “Now.  Otherwise I’m going to fuck you standing up against the wall.”

Goose bumps danced up one arm and down the other from the electric charge his words carried.  He made no excuses for his naked desire.  She was his and he would have her.  Period.

“The bed will be there later,” she gasped through empty lungs, the air stolen from them in the instant her shoulder blades hit the cool plaster wall.

“Good answer.”  Bending at the knees, Richie adhered himself to her front side and slowly rose back to his full height.  It was a slow, agonizing abrasion of roughened male skin against its satiny feminine counterpart, coarse body hair against smoothly rounded flesh, and unyielding muscle against pliable softness.

Sensations were larger than life, his breath in her ear roaring with the force of a mighty hurricane, the inferno of their body heat melting them together, his unmistakable scent a cloud of arousal in her nostrils.

The unexpected presence of his finger plunging deep into her hot, wet core wrenched a fevered cry from her and nearly buckled her knees.

“Damn. You’re so wet for me,” he growled, grinding his stabbing erection into her hip.  Staying pressed close to her, he withdrew his finger, skating it leisurely through her drenched folds until he grazed the hyper-sensitive nub that sent shocks through her.

“Oh!”  The thump of her head falling against the wall echoed in Allegra’s ears, temporarily blinding her to the fact that her nails were making deep crescent moons in Richie’s bare shoulders.

“Careful, baby,” he chuckled against her ear, breath stirring the fine hairs masking it.  Passing his fingers back with another light touch, then another had her thighs clamping together to intensify the pressure. 

“Uh-uh.  None of that,” he scolded with a light smack toward her left buttock.  Hard fingers gripped her thigh and jockeyed it up around him, widely separating the thighs that were set to do her bidding.

Allegra whimpered with frustration.  She was glossy-eyed and crazed by his touch.  What had she been thinking to shun even one instances of spine-tingling sex with this man?  Her body craved him.  Craved the way he would fill her – over and over and over…

His fingers did exactly that, pumping deliberately through the molten desire that was seeping from her body.  The friction felt so good.  So, so good.

But it wasn’t enough.  It wasn’t all of him.

“Please…” she gasped brokenly.  “You.  I want you.”

There was no pause in his intimate plundering.  If anything it intensified.

“You’ve got me.”  His voice was no more than a grumble beside her ear, their sweaty cheeks rubbing together with the exertion of staying upright.  Richie’s hips rocked relentlessly against hers without giving her the satisfaction she hungered for.  “You want more, you have to tell me.”

“I am telling you.”  Allegra sunk her nails into his bare buttocks, forcing him against her.  “I want you inside me.”

“Too bad you’re not in charge.”  Letting her leg drop, he pinned both hands above her head, nearly knocking a framed picture from the wall in the process.  Stretching so one of his hands could grasp both of her wrists, the other stole back downward to the slippery playground between her thighs.  “Who’s in charge here, my beautiful wife?  Who’s going to let you come?  Who’s going to make you come?”

Any thought she had of bristling at his presumptuousness faded under a wave of scorching arousal.  The man in charge was something to behold and she knew he would live up to his words.  God, he’s sexy. “You.  You are.”

“Good girl.”  His punishing kiss was all the more arousing for its contrast with the gentleness of his approval.  “I’ll take you places you’ve never been.”

“You already have.”

The only response he gave was to lift her from the floor, ordering that she wrap her legs around his waist.  Slowly, ever so slowly, he eased her down on his erection.  She mewled her approval, clinging to his shoulders while simultaneously wiggling downward in an effort to hurry him. 

Her actions had the opposite effect.  Richie stilled before she was half-impaled and gave her a punishing nip on the tendon between her neck and shoulder.  “You don’t think I know how to make you come?”

“Yes, yes.  You do.  Please…”  Beads of sweat trickled down her brow, past her neck down into the valley of breasts.

One powerful thrust had her crying out and forced her back flush against the wall.

He withdrew and plunged again with a groan of satisfaction.  Holding her firmly, he continued his motion – filling then withdrawing until she could feel the tingle traveling upward from her toes into her thighs.

Nose to nose with him, she could see the sweat trickling down the contour of his cheekbone as he drove them toward a point high in the sky with the intent to shatter and dissolve like a shooting star.  His pupils flared with the declaration, “You’re mine.  Forever.”

Allegra flung her arms around his neck, smashing her mouth into his and whispering.  “Forever.”

♥ ♥ ♥

Moaning complacently, Allegra stretched until her hands met the headboard and her toes wiggled against the soft cotton sheets tucked in around the mattress.  Without opening her eyes, she smiled, taking a moment to enjoy the serenity.  She wasn’t sure why she was smiling and felt so at peace, but it she was going to take the chance to bask in it while it lasted. 

She finally opened her eyes with a sigh, briefly confused by her surroundings. 

Hawaii.  Our house.

A contented grin swept over her face and she turned her head to find the opposite side of the bed empty.  After such an early start this morning and an active couple of hours in first the living room, then the bedroom, exhaustion had claimed her just after noon.  She and Richie had curled up for a nap in their big bed, but she had obviously slept longer than he.  Turning her head the other way, she made out his figure sitting on the deck with his reading glasses on and a book in his lap.

If she was going outside, she should probably put something on, even though it didn’t look like he was wearing much from where she stood.  Maybe a pair of shorts, at most.  Men had it so much easier.

Slipping out from under the lightweight bedding, she located the suitcases Richie had brought upstairs and dug through them to find her oversized nightshirt.  It would cover everything important.  She dropped it over her head and padded toward the sliding glass door and her husband.

Hearing the door sliding in its tracks, Richie lifted his head with an affectionate smile, removing his glasses and setting the book aside.  “Hey sleepyhead.  Have a good nap?”

“Mmm,” she agreed, settling into his lap with a soft kiss.  “Whatcha readin’?”

Slouching down in the cushioned Adirondack chair, Richie smiled and urged her to lean into his chest with the weight of his embracing arms.  Lifting her left hand to admire the rings seated there, he wove his fingers into hers so that their rings were side by side.  “Believe it or not, it’s something that was part of Dave’s gift.”

“Oh yeah?”  She stretched out with her free hand to snag the thick paperback book, perusing the cover before reading aloud, “Awakening the Buddhist Heart: Integrating Love, Meaning, and Connection into Every Part of Your Life.  Okayyy...  That’s interesting.  What else was in that bag?”

 

“A scented candle for relaxation, a book of love poems and a CD of instrumental ballads.”

 

The book hit the deck floor with a thud and he smothered a laugh at her astonished expression.  She and Dave may be close, but Richie had known him a whole lot longer.  “Seriously?  I figured there’d be something pornographic in there.  Perverted at the very least.  I didn’t realize he would actually be thoughtful.”

“You should know he’s not always what he appears to be,” Richie scolded, no longer bothering to hide his amusement.  “And how much he loves to keep everybody guessing.”

“True.  It was a very sweet gesture.  I’ll have to apologize and thank him.”  Leaning backward over the arm of the chair, she scooped up the fallen book and flipped curiously through it.  “So how’s the book?”

“It’s… enlightening.  One of those things that’s right up my alley.”  The hand that was leisurely sprawled across her thigh began to stroke idly.  The book had actually sparked a notion about the situation with Heather.  Un sure as to how receptive she would be, he approached the subject cautiously.  “Can I say something without you getting pissed at me?”

“The fact that you have to ask that has me wondering,” she laughed.  “But I feel so good right now, I’d say your chances are excellent.  What’s up?”

“It’s about Heather,” he said, thoughtfully watching her for any sparks of anger.

“Ugghhhh,” she groaned letting her head collapse on his shoulder.  “Can’t we leave the Wicked Witch of the Westlake out of our honeymoon?  Do we have to do this now?”

He chuckled and brought her further into the circle of his embrace.  “Just listen for a minute.  There’s no doing, I only want you to think about something.”

A disgusted huff breezed across his throat, but he knew it was more for show than anything.  Her body was too relaxed to be all that bent out of shape.  “Okay, what?”

“Well.  There’s a quote in this book that says ‘Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love’.”

“And?” 

“And I still haven’t got a clue as to why she’s being such a bitch, but Heather is never going to be anything but what she is.  It sucks having to deal with her, but your – our – anger isn’t doing anything but feeding her attitude.  Maybe it’s time to try a different tactic.”

“So you want me to be nice to her while she slices me to ribbons every chance she gets.”  It wasn’t a question, and Allegra didn’t appear astounded by his brilliance in suggesting it.

“No.”  He shrugged, with a half roll of his eyes before amending, “Well, yes, but I think of it more as not letting her dictate your emotions.” 

“Why do I have to be the bigger woman here?  Why can’t she just step into the light of reality for a minute and be a grown up?”

“Because you are the bigger woman, Sunshine.  And think about it… you’d enjoy taking the wind out of her sails when she’s spoiling for a fight.”

“Eh.  That may actually be fun,” she reluctantly agreed, wiggling her bottom into his lap under the guise of getting more comfortable.  Richie had a sneaking suspicion that the real intent was to make him un-comfortable.  A suspicion that was confirmed when she said, “I’ll think about it.  While you’re in an exhausted coma after hours and hours of marital bliss.”

He grinned.  “How could I possibly want anything more?”