It was barely any covering, and she found herself foolishly bashful. They’d had sex. Of course, it had been under cover of darkness, and it hadn’t felt quite so…
It felt risky now. In a way that it hadn’t before.
It was the knowledge that she carried with her of what it meant to fall out of favor with him.
What it meant to risk her heart.
Make no mistake, she was doing that. She could pretend that it was all attraction. That what she wanted was his body. She did.
But it was more than that, and it always had been.
He held her face for a moment, his hand cupping her chin. “I’m the only man you’ve ever been with?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes.” Her voice trembled.
“I was very rough with you that night.”
She shook her head. “No. You were perfect. It was perfect. I don’t need or want you to apologize for anything that happened.”
He nodded, then moved his hand down to cup her breast, his thumb sliding over one tightened bud there.
“You are a revelation. You were even then. It had been so long since I’d touched anyone.”
“Is that the only reason?”
He shook his head. “No. It was something else. It was something else for me. I felt drawn to you, in a way that I’d never felt drawn to another person.” He paused for a moment, and it was like he was drawing the next words from deep inside himself. Like they were difficult to make himself say. “I’m not the kind of man who has one-night stands, you know.”
“You’re not?”
He shook his head. “No. I never cheated on my wife, even though we weren’t intimate at the end of our marriage. I’ve always done the right thing. I’ve never let my body or my head run away with me. But with you I did. With you, I have no resistance. I wanted to claim that it was the moment, but I didn’t want anyone else either. It’s the reason I had to have the ball. I had to find you.”
They were both victims of their expectations, she supposed. He had imagined her to be someone that she wasn’t, and he hadn’t been able to get over the disappointment when she proved it to be just Birdie.
Or maybe it was what she had imagined earlier. Maybe the biggest problem was that he hadn’t actually wanted emotion this big. And so at the first possible opportunity, he had rejected it. She couldn’t say that she blamed him.
He kissed her collarbone, down to her sternum, right between her breasts, then knelt down in front of her, holding her hips, looking up and kissing her stomach, before taking her bikini bottoms down and exposing her to his hungry gaze. “You are beautiful,” he said, the words hard, strained. “I’ve never felt like this before. I’ve never felt so out of control for a woman. For anyone. For anything. I’ve never been able to be.” She wanted to talk, but she also didn’t. Because her body was throbbing with need, and she just needed him.
He leaned in, sliding his tongue over her sensitive flesh, licking her right where she desired him most.
He ate her like he was a starving man, and she gripped his hair, trying to brace herself in the deep, shifting sand as he pleasured her.
Oh, the things that he did to her. The things that she was willing to risk for him. It was a private island; having sex outside wasn’t a risk. That’s not what it was.
But her heart.
He looked up at her, as he continued to eat her, and the look in his eyes sent her over the edge. She cried out his name, digging her fingernails into his shoulders as she fought to keep standing.
Then as she melted, he grabbed her body, braced against his, and laid her down on the picnic blanket they had brought with them. With haste, he took off his swim trunks, and she wiggled beneath him, aching to get a look at his body, which she had been denied that night in the study.
“What?” he asked.
“I want to see you naked,” she said.
He looked stunned, like she had hit him upside the head with a brick. “Oh.”
“You’re beautiful,” she said, wrapping her hand around his throbbing manhood, looking at him as she slid her thumb over that hot, smooth skin.
“It’s been a very long time since…” He closed his eyes.
