Shit.
She’s perfection.
‘You know...’ I continue, hell-bent now on my mission to make her whole body glow red with knowledge and awareness. ‘You make the sweetest noises when you’re coming.’
Mission accomplished. She lights up like a Christmas tree, her eyes not meeting mine.
‘Why are we eating ice cream?’
It is the most goddamned clunky conversation-change I’ve ever heard—and I’m often around women who are nervous as all hell.
I laugh, the noise soft in the quietness of the bathroom, and I lift a spoonful of the confection out of the bowl. ‘I’ll show you.’
I place it in my mouth and then move through the water, finding one of her breasts, which I’m already thinking of as my breasts. I know how she loves them to be played with—how much it drives her crazy.
For the smallest moment Sienna is in my head again. And she’s pissed off as all hell at what I’m doing.
Anger briefly flares in my gut, followed by satisfaction. I’m glad she’s pissed off. She can join the club.
Sienna always was jealous. Jealous of the women who’d get backstage at my concerts. Women the band would introduce me to. Women who’d find out where I was staying and make their way to the hotel and wait outside my room. Women who emailed and Tweeted me their most obscene fantasies in the hopes I’d turn them into lyrics...or reality.
Well, no sense crying over spilled milk or unsown oats. Here, in this enormous bath with Ally, I’ve got every opportunity to make up for lost time. And I intend to use it.
She’s so hot. Like the sex gods recognised my deprivation and decided to reward me with an actual bona fide angel.
I slide the ice cream over her perfect peach nipple, my hands braced on her hips beneath the water so I feel the way she sucks in a hard breath of surprise at the ice-cold invasion. The frozen heat—such a contradiction.
She shifts underwater, dragging her breath lower. I make a ‘tsking’ sound of disapproval. ‘You don’t like it?’
‘Oh, I like it,’ she mutters, without meeting my eyes. ‘What I don’t like is how easily you can drive me crazy. It’s not fair.’
‘Not fair?’ I shake my head. ‘Believe me, I get as much out of your pleasure as you do.’
And to prove my point I nudge my dick against her, so she can feel how hard I am for her already. How no relief could erase the need I feel for her.
‘That’s reassuring,’ she murmurs.
I laugh. ‘I’m glad you’re reassured, Alicia.’
Something serious flickers in her eyes and she moves forward in the bath, making a small wave that ripples around me and crashes to the edges. She reaches for the ice cream spoon and takes a bite before bringing her mouth to mine. The kiss is hot and cold and I groan into her mouth, my hands seeking first her hair, tangling in its lengths, before dragging themselves down to her hips and squeezing her flesh, loving the feeling of her as she moves over me.
She’s so close I want to take her then and there.
Thank God she’s still got room for thought. She shakes her head, keeping herself just far enough away from me to inspire a sort of madness. ‘No condom,’ she murmurs.
I swear, if it hadn’t been for that I’d be taking her now, driving into her again.
She kisses me and I move closer and closer to bursting. She rolls her hips against my waist, teasing me, inviting me, even when we both know we can’t do this. She’s tilting her pelvis, simulating sex, and my temperature is skyrocketing. I’m harder than granite and there’s only one cure.
While I want her, I want more of this, too. More of feeling like I’m about to explode, like I’m close but far away. I wanted to get blind drunk tonight, but instead I met Ally and I’m drunk on something besides alcohol. Is this just deprivation talking? Just the fact I haven’t been able to do this for a really long time?
Flesh on flesh...her under my fingertips.
Fuuuuck.
‘What would you say about getting out of the bath?’ All I can think about is taking her again. Driving into her like she’s my new home.
‘Can we bring the ice cream?’
‘Hell, yeah, we can bring the ice cream.’
She’s so graceful. Even as she pushes up to standing and moves out of the bath it’s like a ballet performance. She’s lithe and lean and, though I’m aching to follow, I take a moment just to watch her. To watch as she pulls her wet hair over her shoulder and squeezes it into a towel, her eyes fixed straight ahead. She drops the towel to her body and pats herself dry in what is my new definition of sexiness. Then she turns back to me and she looks like Mona Lisa might have if she’d just rolled out of bed.
Enigmatic. Hot. Desirable.
‘Ready?’
‘Yeah.’ Is that my voice? So gruff and hoarse?
She reaches for the ice cream and once more spoons it into her mouth, but she holds the spoon there, her eyes holding mine. Just for a second. A beat. But it’s enough. Enough for me to imagine it’s me in her mouth.
I would be some kind of animal if I didn’t feel guilty for what I’m doing. Four months ago I thought Sienna and I would work through our shit and probably one day get married. Four months ago I wouldn’t have dreamed of being with someone else.
And now I’m fucking this beautiful, sexy Ally.
Am I doing it to hurt Sienna?
Am I doing it to fuck Sienna right out of my head?
Am I doing it because Sienna deserves that?
Hell, yeah. But I’m also doing it because Ally seems to have robbed me of any ability to walk away. She has drawn me into something I cannot fight.
And I don’t want to fight it anyway.
THE SUN IS WEAK, straining to break through the sensuality that has formed a deep fog in his room. I squint and stifle a yawn, arching my back until I ram against him. A feline smile curves slowly over my lips. I reach for him on autopilot, turning at the same time as his lips seek mine, crushing against them.
I haven’t spent the night in a stranger’s bed in a long time, and whenever I have in the past there has been the inevitable dawning of awkwardness the next morning. A raising of self-consciousness along with the new day. A desire to begin the forgetting—forgetting what I’ve done and with whom.
I do not feel that now.
I lose myself in the kiss and my body seeks his, hungrily, urgently, naturally. He groans into my mouth and it is an answer to my feral needs, my wildness and abandon. For a brief second he is distant, turning away from me, and then I roll with him, straddling him even as he laughs and extends an arm to the side table. He knocks a glass of water to the carpeted floor but doesn’t react.
Nor do I. I’m already seeking him, wanting to take him deep inside again. I need him more than I can express.
He laughs. A throaty sound of agreement. And then he swears. ‘Hang on.’
I don’t want to hang on, yet I pause, just long enough to frown and follow his fumbling hand. Oh, shit. A condom—of course. Had I really almost forgotten? Colour flushes my cheeks, but embarrassment is quickly swallowed by something else. Something far more primal.
Even before he’s ripped