A Good Day for Chardonnay (Sunshine Vicram #2) by Darynda Jones

Then he drew a nipple into his mouth as his fingers pumped in and out of her. The wave swelled, built momentum a second time, but when he shoved her legs apart and drew her clit into his mouth, sucking softly, it exploded inside her. She grabbed handfuls of hair as he circled his tongue around her clit. Helping her ride the wave. Easing her back to Earth.

“Oh, my God,” she said when she could talk again. “That has never happened to me.”

He kissed her clitoris and took up a position next to her again, the length of his body pressed against hers the very definition of heaven. “Which part?” he asked.

“All of the parts. I’ve never … I haven’t experienced an orgasm from a man. And so far, you are two for two.”

“Are you kidding?” he asked, surprised.

“Not at all.”

“What did you do? You know, when you were with someone?”

“It’s called faking it. I took a class,” she said, teasing.

“Hell, if you faked it this time, you deserve an Academy Award. You’re good.”

She grinned at him. “Nobody’s that good. I’m sorry, I’m just … shocked. I didn’t know it could be like that.”

“You know sex is all in the mind.”

“Maybe so, but it felt much closer to my clit.”

“Holy fuck, you’re sexy.” He buried his face in her hair.

She was sexy? Had he looked in the mirror? Like ever?

The fact that she’d just had sex with Levi Ravinder was not lost on her. It was like a dam inside her had broken and elation spilled out, flooding every cell in her body. She would wonder about what this meant long-term later. For now, she only had one question: when would they get to do it again?





28


Free belly rubs with exam!

(Sorry, pets only. And Levi Ravinder.)

—SIGN AT DEL SOL VETERINARY CLINIC




A little while later, Sun lay in his arms. Levi Ravinder’s arms. “What is this?” he asked, lifting up the key she had on a chain necklace around her neck.

“Oh.” She took it and tried to tuck it under the sheets. “It’s nothing.”

He propped himself up on an elbow and brought it out again. Held it between his fingers. Flipped it over and over. “Is this what I think it is?”

When they were kids, the Ravinders had been harassing her one summer afternoon. Hailey, who back then hated Sun with the fiery passion of, well, the sun, ripped off the chain she’d had around her neck, the one with the key to her house, and tossed it down Levi’s shorts.

It was the day everything was truly solidified for her. She fell in love. Because while the Ravinder cousins were hooting and hollering, Levi took out the key himself, fixed the chain, and put it back around her neck.

She learned that day what Levi was really made of, despite his crude upbringing.

“It’s just a key,” she said, trying to take it from him.

He took a closer look at the smiley face she’d engraved into it as a kid. “Is this the key from—”

“That day? Yes.” She snatched it back. “It’s my good luck charm. Everyone needs a good luck charm.”

“You’re right.” He bent and brushed his mouth over her jaw and down her neck.

“Do you have one?”

“Yes,” he said, absently, focused on more productive things.

“Really? What is it?”

He leaned back, the whiskey in his irises glistening, and said, “You, Shine. It’s always been you.”

Her heart swelled. Why had it taken them so long? She had so many questions. So many doubts, but she’d never doubted her feelings for him.

“Now, hush.” He bent again and made his way to a breast. A breast that betrayed her instantly by tightening under his touch. Then he started doing that thing with his tongue again, and her fingers clenched in his hair.

By the time he rolled on top and slid inside her, the pleasure in her core peaked almost instantly. He sucked a breath in through his teeth, then covered her mouth with his as though staking his claim. It was a claim she gladly relinquished.

Perhaps it was the angle of the light.

Levi had stood and was wrapping the towel around his waist again when she noticed them. His skin was so tight against his flesh, they were hard to see, but there on the left side of his lower abdomen were three indents. Three distinct scars. Three straight lines, each one about an inch in length.

Three knife wounds.

Her mind rushed into the past as a flood tide of memories flashed bright and hot. Two men fought in a downpour, but she couldn’t focus. Why couldn’t she focus? Was she hurt? Drugged? She couldn’t tell who the men were beyond the fact that one was young, just a boy, and one was older. Should she root for one or fear both?

The icy rain sliced into her flesh and chilled her bones and yet she was on fire. Hot and cold warred for her attention as the men struggled.

Her mind plucked a fact out of hindsight, a truth she didn’t know back then. One of the fighters was Kubrick Ravinder, the man who’d abducted her fifteen years ago. And the other one … he had to be Wynn. Kubrick’s brother. Because he’d rescued her.

But he didn’t have the scar on his wrist when she interviewed him in prison. Her rescuer had been bleeding from his wrist when he gave her water in his truck. A defensive wound, deep and ugly. A wound Wynn didn’t have. And yet the DNA test came back positive. It had to be Wynn.