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Martha leaned her head on his shoulder. “You would have had fun doing this together.”
He pulled her closer. “He would have liked you.”
Warmth rushed through her. “I wish I’d met him.”
“He would have flirted with you and pointed out that he was way more interesting than me.”
She looked up at him and her heart beat faster because she was absolutely sure she wouldn’t have found his brother more interesting than him. “I’m sure I would. We would have laughed together, and he wouldn’t have bored me with facts or left his pizza crusts. We would have bonded over broccoli.”
He stroked her shoulder. “My brother used to tease me for always planning ahead. He always missed flights because he could never get himself to the airport on time. One year he was a day late to Thanksgiving because he’d left the travel to chance. ‘Just catch the wave’, he used to say.”
The setting sun turned the rocks burnt orange and the sky fiery red.
She turned and slid her arms round his neck. “Is that what we’re doing? Catching the wave?”
“Maybe.” He slid his fingers under her chin and lifted her face to his. “What do you think? Are you going to catch this wave, Martha?”
“Yes.” It came out as a whisper. “To get my confidence back, you understand.”
“Sure. What other reason would there be?” His mouth was so close to hers they were almost kissing, but not quite.
The suspense of that almost kiss, the burning anticipation, was more erotic than any actual kiss she’d experienced.
He lifted his hand and brushed his fingers over her cheek. “My room or yours?”
“Which is closest?”
“Yours. But that’s next door to Kathleen.”
“Good point. My room. In case she comes looking for me in the night.”
He raised an eyebrow. “That would make for an interesting conversation.”
He kissed her briefly, a heated hint of things to come and then he grabbed her hand and they virtually sprinted back to her room. She could taste the urgency in the air and feel it in the tightness of his grip. She wanted him with a desperation that crossed the borders of decency.
Desperation made her clumsy, and when they finally reached the door she fumbled with the lock and dropped the key. “I hate keys. I can’t—”
“I’ve got it.” He retrieved the key and thrust it into the lock, but before they could step inside he grabbed her shoulder. “Wait. Are you sure, Martha? Answer quickly.” His tense jaw was a sign of the self-restraint he was exercising, and it made her feel better about her own out-of-control response.
“Yes. I’m a great decision maker, didn’t you know that? I never doubt myself.” She tugged him into the room, kicked the door shut behind her and pulled him against her. “Come on you meat-eating, broccoli-avoiding, water-hating but seriously hot guy—”
His hands were in her hair, his mouth on her neck, her cheek, her forehead. “You think I’m seriously hot?”
She reached for the buttons of his shirt, fumbled again and decided there had to be something wrong with her fingers. “No, I’m doing this to please Kathleen.” She moaned as he cupped her face in his hands and delivered a long, slow deliberate kiss to her mouth, and she thought to herself that the word kiss was too generic because she’d been kissed before and it had never felt like this. She was breathing hard, unraveled by the intimacy of his kiss and his sure, knowing touch. Her heart was doing an intensive workout of its own and she thought he could probably feel it because his hand was on her breast, teasing and then his mouth and she closed her eyes, awash with sensation as he ripped impatiently at his clothes and then did the same with hers.
They hadn’t bothered turning on the lights, but the moonlight through the window allowed them to stumble their way to the bed without bruising shins or banging elbows and she tumbled onto the mattress and grabbed his shoulders as he came down on top of her. His face was shadowed in the semidarkness, the details blurred by dim light.
She felt the weight of him, the solid power of his shoulders as he levered himself up, and then the skilled pressure of his mouth as he kissed her. She dug her fingers into his shoulders, desperate, urging him not to hold back, but he wouldn’t be rushed.
His mouth moved from her lips to her jaw, and from there to the skin of her throat and then her shoulder. He lingered there, breathing her in, tasting every segment of her skin as if she was a meal he was only going to get to savor once in a lifetime. She’d never felt so much all at once and she shifted under him as excitement escalated. Her body shivered with the contrasts—the chill of the air-conditioning and the warmth of his hands, the slow drag of his tongue over her breast and the rapid pounding of her heart. And she explored him back, touching and tasting, hearing the change in his breathing and the soft murmur of words.
His touch unraveled her but he kept up the intimate exploration until there was no part of her left unexplored, until she was quivering and writhing and focu
sed on nothing but feelings. Muscle and strength. Heat and kisses. Arousal and need.
And then he eased inside her, infinitely gentle and for a moment she stopped breathing because underneath the electrifying excitement was the knowledge that nothing in her life had ever felt so completely right before. She’d never experienced anything like this thrilling, intricate tangle of the physical and the emotional. Never felt so connected to anyone. She was caught in a dizzying whirl of need and he responded with his own urgency until there was nothing but heat and sensation as they tumbled over that peak together.
And afterward, even after the wildness of the storm had eased, they stayed locked together, bodies entangled as they talked in hushed voices, each exchange flavored by the new intimacy.
