Love Letters Volume 4: Travel to Temptation Read online

  “Silas, I need you. I want you ins…”

  “You have no idea how badly I want to be inside of you right now. So far inside you that you’d worry how I’d find my way out.”

  His words were so startlingly erotic that Winnie couldn’t stop the raw response that tumbled from her lips. “Who says I’d ever want you to leave?” Heat was rippling in tingling waves from her pussy down to her toes. She put the fingers of her free hand through her hair, pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead and reached desperately toward the twisting flash fire a scant few movements away. So dangerous, but she didn’t care if she burned.

  “Come for me, Winnie. I want to see it again. Beautiful, tight, wet, hot, perfect little bruxa.”

  Witch. He was the one casting the spell. His mouth, so close to her ear, capable of such wicked words. His cock hot and silken in her hand, every muscle of his body taut and working for their mutual pleasure.

  “Yes, oh God, so perfect, Silas, yes…” She chased up the peak and then over, hanging suspended for long, jackknifing, shuddering moments. He coaxed her through the delirium and she babbled filthy things to him in her euphoria. Somehow, she was able to bring him with her, and his answering roar as he came in molten pulses against her stomach was almost as satisfying as her own orgasm.

  The silence that followed their completion was broken only by their labored breaths. Silas had fallen to her side, and he sounded like he’d just been hit by a truck. The same one that had reversed and mowed Winnie down. She might never recover. She uncurled her hand, the nail marks she’d dug into her palm stinging at contact with the air.

  She felt him sit up and leave the bed, but she couldn’t find the strength to move.

  Moments passed, and she heard the sound of running water and Silas’s return. Something damp and slightly rough swept over the exposed skin of her stomach. She opened her eyes. Silas had a washcloth in his hand.

  “You have running water here? Hot water?” She stretched and closed her eyes again as he started slow, warm circles with the cloth up her ribs. The air cooled the damp trails that he left, and, impossibly, she felt lust stir again. She let one of her knees drift to the side, her muscles lax.

  Silas swore, softly, and the cloth left her body. “Get up.”

  Winnie groaned, rolling over onto her stomach and burying her face in the lone pillow. “No. I’m incapacitated.”

  “Not yet, but you will be.”

  She turned her head to see him make a quick circuit around the room to gather their clothing. He dressed quickly, then righted her bra and helped her back into her shirt and skirt. He tossed her the hiking shoes she’d been wearing and sat on the bed beside her to pull on a pair of calf-high military boots.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  When Winnie had tied her second shoe, Silas helped her up off the bed and kissed her—long, slow and deep. Despite the ground-shaking orgasm she’d just had, she felt that stir of lust bloom full force, hot and heavy. He left her lips and grabbed her by the hand, pulling open the front door. Outside, the rain came down in massive sheets, obscuring anything farther than a few inches past the threshold.

  “Are you crazy? It’s torrential out there!” She leaned back slightly, but he was already pulling again and she stumbled out of the shanty and into the rain with him.

  She expected the rain to be warm, but the iciness of it startled her, made her shriek. “Silas, you’re a madman!”

  His grin was mysterious, and she let out a few more yelps as he started pulling her down a set of stairs, unmindful that they were getting soaked.

  They were only halfway down the flight and already she didn’t have a dry thread on her. It was pitch dark, save for the random strands of lights that hung from the eaves of the shanties that they passed. He kept a tight hold on her, zigging and zagging down side steps and muddy, narrow alleys so fast that Winnie lost track of the direction they were headed.

  “Where the hell are we going?”

  He didn’t answer her, just towed her along, and after a few more twists and double-backs, they arrived—at the shop of the man who’d given Winnie directions earlier that morning.

  The short, smiling man was sitting under a tarp that formed a poor canopy at the front of his shop. Despite the downpour, and the fact that he was soaked as well, he was still smiling. “Teacher, teacher!” he shouted, hopping up to shake Silas’s hand.

  Silas took his hand and returned the gesture. The man looked over Silas’s shoulder at Winnie and waved. It would have all been very nice, except they were all standing out in the pouring rain probably getting pneumonia.

  The man yelled over the downpour. “She found you. Now you can stop sulking.”

  Silas looked back at Winnie and nodded. “Almost. Winnie, this is Márcio. Márcio, we need condoms.”

  Winnie almost died on the spot of sheer embarrassment. Márcio, on the other hand, dove happily back into his ramshackle shop and came barreling out with a warehouse-club-sized box of prophylactics. Silas dug money out of his pocket, but Márcio waved him off.

  “Carnival! Have fun!”

  Winnie couldn’t muster anything but mortified thanks before Silas shoved the box into her hands and started leading her back up the steps.

  She got dizzy at all the chaotic twists and turns, blindly following Silas as he navigated back up the steep incline. Loud music blared from a corner house, and they flew past people lighting fireworks in their doorways. She was winded when they reached his door. He wrenched the handle and pushed it open. She went to step inside, but he caught her around the waist, scooped her up as if she weighed nothing.

  “Silas, I’m freezing.”

  “I’ll keep you warm.”

  He plucked the box of condoms from her hand, opened it and tore off one. He threw the rest of the box inside, not bothering to look where it landed. He yanked the door shut and his arm tightened around her waist.

  “Silas, this is nuts, what the hell are you do—” He kissed her. He kissed her in the rain, in the dark, until she couldn’t catch her breath.

  “Follow me,” he said when they parted, and she did, unable to resist the wicked promise that glinted in those eyes. He slipped away from his front door, into a sharp corner where two houses angled together in bizarre configuration. She could hear the fireworks popping on the next street, the loud music, and the voices of the people they had rushed by. But Winnie and Silas were tucked away in the dark and Winnie’s blood began to heat as Silas’s intentions started to dawn on her.

  He slipped the condom into her hand, undid the snap and zipper on his pants.

  “Open it, Winnie.”

  She tore the packet open with shaking fingers. He put his hands on the wall on either side of her and dropped his head to watch her roll the condom on. That he was hard again this fast delighted her, filled her with a self-assurance she’d never felt with anyone before.

  She reached down and shimmied out of her panties, and he took them from her hand and stuffed them in his pocket. He lifted her, pinned her to the wall, and she wrapped her legs around him and let her head roll back as he slid, inch by slow inch, inside her.

  They both moaned. And then he stopped. Winnie’s eyes flew open. “Silas?”

  His arms were tight, his face tensed with restraint. “I have to tell you something.”

  “Now?”

  He nodded, and she found herself nodding back, her mind currently elsewhere. “Okay.”

  “I know where the statue is.”

  “You what?” Winnie was finding it hard to concentrate with him hard and throbbing inside her, but the statement warranted attention.

  “I knew about the breakin. I’m not here to teach. I’m here to recover the statue too.”

  Silas lifted his head and pressed inside her, the first movement between them—one that sent electric sparks flying to the tips of her fingers, made her gasp. “Why? For wh—oh, do that again.”

  Silas started movi
ng faster, and Winnie tightened her legs around him, answering his rhythm. He made deep, throaty sounds of pleasure and cupped her hips, angling her tighter against him. “A favor for someone. An interested party.”

  “I’m not sure if I should be mad—mmm—or leverage that so that you help me.” Winnie tipped his face to hers, caught his mouth in a fevered kiss. She couldn’t feel the rain anymore, didn’t care that she was using mud-caked boots to rock Silas deeper inside her.

  He tore his mouth from hers. “Christ, Winnie, if you keep doing that, I will do anything for you.” His voice was gravel and desperation. His hips were bruising into hers, and the concrete was rough behind her, but Winnie was lost in the friction between them, unsure if the pops of color and light were only under her eyelids, or if the fireworks were still going off behind them.

  “Then help me.” She was breathless, panting, frenzied against him. “Let’s just have tonight, and tomorrow I’ll recover the statue and I’ll leave. You’ll never have to see me again.”

  He slammed into her, slipping, sinking to his knees and bringing her with him. The mud swallowed her kneecaps, but his hands were strong on her upper thighs, pressing her down, rocking her. They were so physically perfect together that it was like being in one body. One ragged inhale, one breathless exhale, one mind, one heart.

  Winnie’s throat constricted. This was why Silas was dangerous, because she had no sense of self-preservation when it came to him. She had asked the difference between him and Alex, when she’d already had an answer—she couldn’t shut off how she felt when it came to Silas.

  His mouth was at her ear again, pulling her from her panic. The man could probably talk her straight to orgasm. “What a shame that would be, to never see you again—like this. Your legs wrapped around my waist, your tits bouncing while I fuck you.”

  She looped her arms around his neck, on the verge of losing her mind. The edges of her vision narrowed, and her hips snapped against his

  “Silas, please, please…”

  “What? Tell me, bruxa.” He sounded on edge himself, and the tension in her built to a breaking point. There wasn’t time for explanation.

  She came in strong, deep waves that crashed over her and drowned her as surely as the downpour around them. Silas arched upward and followed, crying out her name into the dark.

  There was a series of loud, frantic crackling, a whistle in the sky. They both relaxed in time to look up. Somehow, someone had managed to get a lone firework to fly.

  Flowers of pyrotechnics burst through the rain, and the shower of multicolored sparks lit Silas’s face as Winnie looked at him. He raised a hand to brush his knuckles over her cheek.

  Winnie turned away sharply, felt a knot form in her throat at the confusion that clouded his eyes. His hand stilled, midair. “What is it?”

  “Help me,” she said, still breathless, “so I can get out of Brazil and away from you.”

  His eyes shuttered, half lids obscuring his reaction, but his arm was still strong around her. When he looked up, there was only softness, and a hint of something Winnie couldn’t place—sadness?

  He laced his fingers, the ones she had shied from, through her hair to pull her to him. Winnie expected another aggressive kiss, another display of the predictable things between them—passion, anger. But he kissed her tenderly, softly, with a pervasive sweetness that made her go lax against his chest.

  “You’re shaking,” he said when they broke apart, and Winnie nodded dumbly.

  She only became aware that her teeth were chattering when he stood, scooping her out of the mud. “Let’s get you inside.”

  She buried her face in his neck, gripped a handful of his wet shirt.

  “Don’t worry, bruxa.” Again, that strange softness, this time in his voice. “I’ll do it. I’ll help you find the statue.”

  She had won, Silas would help her. But…since when did victory make her feel so guilty?

  *

  Silas woke to the sun streaming in the small window of his shanty and Winnie’s body resting deliciously over his chest. So it hadn’t been a dream. Her hair, that nimbus of dark silk that he had dreamed of feverishly for months, was draped over his shoulder and spilling onto the rough wool blanket that covered them.

  He noted with disappointment that he didn’t hear any rain, that no thunder interrupted the quiet stillness of the morning. He would have to wake Winnie soon, get them to the market at Niterói, just across the bay. She had asked for help finding the statue, and he had promised to give it to her.

  And when she gets it, she will leave, and you might never see her again.

  Silas managed to slip out of the narrow bed without waking her, trying to push the thought out of his head. She had been right last night—it was best if he sent her back to the States with the relic in hand, and to hell with whatever this was between them.

  Moving as quietly as he could, Silas made his way past the old-fashioned copper tub that stood in the center of the room. Last night, he had filled it with all the hot water that the ancient, groaning water heater would allow, pulling Winnie’s boots off, her clothes, then his. The tub wasn’t meant to fit two, but they’d both gotten in.

  Out of Brazil and away from you. That was what she wanted. Silas had told Winnie that he wasn’t the commitment type—but when she’d whispered those words last night, it had hit him somewhere he wasn’t used to feeling wounded—his heart.

  So Silas had spent nearly an hour washing her clean of all the mud she’d been covered in, memorizing her responses, the planes of her body. As if he would never get the chance to touch her again. As though it was the last night ever.

  His appreciation for beautiful things didn’t stop at canvas and clay—Winnie was, inside and out, one of the finest pieces of art he’d ever laid his hands on. The sliver of lye soap that was now dry and stuck to the floor had gone on some interesting detours. Long after the water had cooled, Silas had taken her back to his bed and made love to her even more slowly.

  He stopped at the kitchenette, slid one of the small drawers open and hooked his pinkie into a notch at the back. The false bottom lifted, and he drew out a package wrapped in cloth and twine. He hefted the weight of it and plucked at the twine. He couldn’t resist a peek inside. It was some of his finest work.

  Silas frowned. Letting Winnie have the relic, once they found it, would mean that he wouldn’t be able to use it for collateral. It would mean that his “interested party”—the person he’d come to Brazil on behalf of—wouldn’t be so interested in their deal anymore. He’d be giving up the spoils of having the statue for himself.

  “Silas?”

  Her sleepy voice made him stiffen, and he rewrapped the parcel, turning casually to face her. He tossed the parcel up, caught it, and fixed her with what he hoped was a distracting smile.

  “Morning, sweetheart. You up for a ferry ride?”

  *

  Half an hour later, she was dressed and they were breakfasting. Silas had caught one of the local cart vendors on his morning rounds, and after a dash out into the street, he’d returned with his bounty—two soft, perfectly ripe guavas and a brown bag heavy with hot, cheese-filled cassava bread. Sipping the last of the strong black coffee that Silas had handed her, Winnie sighed in contentment. “I could get used to this.”

  She didn’t miss the flash in his eyes, or the small smile that ghosted his lips when he scooped up her empty mug to carry it to the sink. “Good,” he said. “I’m glad you like it.”

  She pushed away the unsettling feeling that he was keeping something from her. When she woke, he hadn’t been in bed. He’d been by the kitchenette, with his back to her. Not that she didn’t admire the bare expanse of his back, let her eyes travel the same path that her hands had last night—down over his spine, to the dip where his lower back curved into his boxers. But she also hadn’t missed the momentary straightening of that spine when she’d called out to him.

  He had diverted her from whatever he was doing with a s
low, deep good morning kiss that could only be given by a man like him—a man who knew your weaknesses and played them like a pro. Silas knew her brain turned to mush when he kissed her. Winnie knew the canvas-wrapped package he’d been holding was something he didn’t want her to see. The package now resided in a leather satchel that hung near the front door, one that Silas slung over his shoulder, cross-body, as they prepared to leave.

  “Ready?”

  She nodded, retrieving her backpack from the floor by the foot of the bed, tightening the straps as she put it over her shoulders. Silas unzipped one of her pack’s outer pockets and slid a bottle of water inside. He hadn’t told her much about where they were going, only that he’d already tracked down a lead on the statue and that there was a meeting arranged for this morning.

  They stepped out into the bright morning sun. All traces of the rain had gone, and in the daylight, without the mask of darkness and the mind-blowing distraction of making love to Silas in the pouring rain, the favela seemed less an exotic vacation spot and more a ramshackle leviathan—a twisting pile of bizarrely configured buildings that seemed to have crept upward from the sea to take over the hillside.

  Children, barefooted and some even bare-chested, played at the edges of the streets. Food vendors and taxis vied for space on the narrow road. Women shouted across rooftops. Spent firecrackers littered the ground.

  “Where are we going, again?” Winnie looked back over her shoulder at Silas’s shanty. She had gathered all her things, assuming she wouldn’t be coming back. The thought made her chest tighten, and she looked away quickly.

  “Niterói. It’s just across the bay, we go by ferry. There’s a market there, we’re meeting a man named Beto.” His tone was cool, and it made her press him.

  “To buy fish? Souvenirs? More condoms?”

  He cut his eyes toward her and steadied her as she stumbled on a step. A smile threatened his lips. “He’s a runner for the Red Command, one of the local cartels. They’re mostly into drugs and weaponry, but they wouldn’t turn down the chance to fence an artifact like your statue, especially considering what it’s worth.”