by Jill Shalvis
couldn’t lie still. Her nipples rubbed against her blanket, the same blanket that was balled up at the vee of her thighs, teasing her halfway to an orgasm. “Sean—”
“Turn over,” he said, his voice giving her a full body shiver, which was when she realized it wasn’t the blankets at all. It was 100 percent him.
Chapter Seven
Lotti had a choice. Call this off now, or turn over and take what she wanted—which happened to be one sexy as hell Sean O’Riley.
She turned over.
Sean’s dark eyes went molten lava and his breath caught audibly. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he said and it was crazy. Just his words now, with neither of his hands on her, had her squirming.
In the ambient lighting he’d created, he looked like a pagan god, leaning over her in nothing but those board shorts, now so low on his lean hips as to be nearly indecent. She’d never seen anything sexier in her entire life. Catching her staring, he smiled and went to pour more oil on his hands but she shook her head.
“One of us is overdressed,” she murmured.
Setting down the oil, he rose and unfastened his board shorts. Letting them fall, he kicked them off.
He’d gone commando and was aroused. Very aroused. She moistened her dry lips and said, “I’m glad I’m not on curfew this time. I don’t think I can take another interruption.”
Another low laugh left him. “Not going to happen.” He bent his head and kissed her deeply, thoroughly, until she was writhing on the bed needing more. Reaching down, she wrapped her fingers around him and stroked, coaxing a deliciously male sound from his throat.
“You taste like a strawberry margarita,” she murmured.
“I want to find out what you taste like,” he said and slid down her body, kissing every inch of her as he went. Her jaw, her throat, her shoulder and collarbone. Her breasts. He spent long moments there, teasing, biting softly down on a nipple before drawing it into his mouth and sucking so that she arched off the bed.
“Mmm,” he said, his voice low and hot. “You taste amazing.” He nibbled a hip. Scraped his teeth over her belly, an inner thigh. Then the other.
And then in between.
She would’ve come right off the mattress if he hadn’t had a hand on either of her hips holding her down, anchoring her to the bed as he had his merry way with her. Her entire body was tensed like a tightly coiled spring ready to snap and just when she thought she couldn’t take any more, he slowed down and let her catch her breath.
Then he started over, again taking her to very edge and holding her there until she was rocking mindlessly, her hands fisted in his hair, shamelessly begging for him to finish her.
Which he did.
Twice.
When he finally crawled back up her body, he kissed her before rolling on a condom while she watched—which was shockingly, incredibly arousing all by itself—and when he was done, his gaze swept over her as he gave himself a long, slow stroke.
Sitting up, she nudged his hands away and took over. His head fell back as a rough groan escaped him. When she leaned forward and licked his nipple in tune to another stroke, he wrapped an arm low around her hips and lifted her, guiding himself home.
He sank in deep. So deep she cried out his name and clutched at him. “Okay?” he asked, holding himself utterly still, the strain of doing so in every line of his gorgeous, hard body. “Do you want to stop?”
“Stop and I’ll kill you, right here in Mexico where I could probably even get away with it.”
His laugh was rough, as was hers. The sound must have triggered something inside him because he laid her back on the mattress, leaned over her, and drove into her, thrusting long and hard and deep. She wrapped her legs around his waist and met him stroke for stroke, crying out as he took her to paradise.
Sean might as well have just been hit by a runaway Mack truck. He felt that gobsmacked by what had just happened between him and Lotti. It’d been . . . incredible. Like holy shit, off the rails, into the stratosphere incredible. He glanced over at her and found her eyes closed. She was breathing like she’d just run a mile. Her skin was flushed and she was damp with sweat, her hair rioting wildly around her face. She looked thoroughly fucked and thoroughly sated.
And she’d never looked more beautiful. “Lotti.”
She opened her eyes. They were dazed and glossy and unfocused. “Hmm?”
He rose up on an elbow and leaned over her. “Tell me that was real. That you didn’t . . .”
Her eyes narrowed. “Didn’t what?”
“Fake it.”
She blinked and then . . . laughed. She laughed so hard that she started to choke and he had to yank her upright and get her some water, which she proceeded to also choke on.
It was an excruciating five minutes later before she could talk and he was waiting with a barely tethered impatience.
“You think I faked it?” she asked incredulously. “Twice?”
“Three times,” he said.
She blushed a little, but overall looked so pleased with herself that he relaxed.
“Okay then,” he said. “So you didn’t.”
“Wait a minute,” she said. “What if I had? What then?”
“We’d start over from the beginning.”
She stared at him and then gave a slow, sexy smile, and he felt his heart roll over and expose its underbelly.
“Then I definitely faked them,” she said and lay back. “So you’d better start over from the beginning.”
Lying there with Sean after round two, waiting for their heart rates to recover from stroke level, Lotti kept expecting him to get up and leave.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he straightened the covers that they’d destroyed and then climbed back in bed with her.
“What are you doing?” she asked as he pulled her in close.
“Worried?” he asked.
When was he going to learn—she was always worried. Although a good amount of that worry faded, replaced by something else as he nuzzled at her jaw, making a very male, very sexy satisfied sound deep in his throat. “Are you . . . cuddling me?” she asked.
“Trying,” he said, sounding amused.
She allowed it because who the hell was she kidding, she loved the way he was holding her, loved the feel of his warm, strong body cradling hers. But she did feel that she needed to remind them both of something. “You know that what happens in Mexico stays in Mexico, right?”
“Sure,” he said.
She opened her mouth to say “no really,” but he stroked her hair from her face and smiled at her. “Not a cuddler, huh?”
“I like affection,” she admitted. Way too much. “But you should know, I’m kind of . . . well, emotionally unavailable.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And what does that mean exactly, ‘kind of emotionally unavailable’?” he asked, looking sincerely interested, so she gave him the truth.
“It means I like it when you hold me,” she said. “But I don’t really want to answer any questions. Or talk,” she added, wanting to cover all her bases.
He grinned and kissed her. “Maybe I’ll wear you down.”
Her biggest fear was that he already had. “Don’t count on it.”
“Okay, tough girl,” he said softly, nuzzling at her throat. “No questions. No talking. You go ahead and give ignoring what’s still between us your best shot. I’ll wait right here.”
Much later Lotti came awake suddenly. The last thing she remembered was . . . well, riding Sean like a wild bronco. But she was alone in her bed.
So he’d left after all.
Okay, she got it. She really did. But wait a minute. There was a dim light coming from the direction of her kitchen table.
Sean sat at it, working on his tablet. “Sorry,” he said. “Did I wake you?”
“No.” Realizing she was bare ass naked, she grabbed the sheet and pulled it to her chin.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I just got ordained online.”
She blinked.
“To marry Finn and Pru,” he said. “Now I’m writing the ceremony. Or trying.” He ran a hand down his face, making her take a closer look at him.
He looked . . . exhausted. And tense with stress.
She carefully slid out of the bed, keeping the sheet wrapped around her as she did. Moving to stand behind him, she leaned over his shoulder to look at his screen, but he cleared it.
“You’re embarrassed,” she said in surprise.
He grimaced. “Let’s just say talking about love and commitment is new for me. Very new.” Reaching back, he hooked an arm around her hips to keep her close.
“You’re having regrets,” she murmured, and utterly unable to help herself, slid her hands to his broad, bare shoulders.
He moaned and leaned into her fingers as they dug into his tense muscles. “Regrets, yes. Lots of them, actually,” he said.
This had her freezing. She went to remove her hands from him, but he reached up and entwined their fingers, giving a little tug so that she leaned over him. Turning his head, he looked into her eyes as he lifted her hand to his mouth and brushed his lips across her palm. “Not about last night, Lotti. I have no regrets there. Not a single one.”
She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She didn’t have regrets either. What had happened between them had been . . . amazing. And it’d also told her something she’d already known about herself but hadn’t accepted.
Regardless of how much time had gone by, regardless of her cocky talk of being emotionally unavailable, she was still greatly, deeply emotionally invested in Sean O’Riley. “If it’s not me, what are you regretting?” she asked.
He gently squeezed her fingers. “How I handled things with you all those years ago. What a shithead I was in general.” He pushed his tablet away. “That I can’t pay my brother back for all he’s done for me.”
She shouldn’t have felt surprised. Even after what had happened between her and Sean that long-ago night, she’d still known he was a good guy. But now, seeing the man he’d turned into, how he’d shed the anger and resentment and his adolescence and had gotten himself a life, a good one, warmed her. “It sounds to me as if you’ve been doing just that,” she said, “paying him back, and have been for a few years now. You work with him running the pub. In fact, it sounds like you take care of him every bit as much as he ever took care of you.”
He started to shake his head, and she leaned in and gave him a soft kiss. “Sean, I’m watching you work your ass off to give him the wedding he deserves. You’re doing everything in your power to give it to him because you love him. It’s . . .”
“What?”
“Moving,” she said.
He turned around to face her and pulled her into his lap, running a hand through her hair, tucking it all back behind her ear. His knuckles slid along the outer shell and she suppressed a shiver of desire that slid slowly down her spine.
Brushing a soft kiss against her temple, he wrapped his arms around her and pressed his face into her throat. “I thought coming to Napa was such a mistake,” he said. “I wanted to take everyone to Vegas for the weekend. Looking back, I can’t believe how close I came to never running into you again.”
She was quiet a moment, thinking about that. “I’m glad you came here,” she finally admitted.
He squeezed her tight. “Me too.”
They sat there together quietly, and she relaxed into him. “Show me?” she murmured, gesturing to the tablet.
He hesitated and then brought his screen up.
She stared at it in confusion. “It’s . . .”
“Blank?” he asked. “Yeah.” He huffed out a sigh. “I keep deleting everything I come up with.”
“Why?”
“Because when it comes right down to it, I don’t know shit about everlasting love.”
“I’ve seen you with your friends, Sean. I’ve seen you with Finn. You’re a very tight-knit group and you seem to be an important part of it. They all love you, especially your brother.”
He didn’t say anything to this but he did meet her gaze, his own revealing a vulnerability that reminded her of the younger Sean. “Tell me some of the things you’ve written and deleted,” she said.
He looked away from her, facing the blank screen. “They’re two of the strongest people I’ve ever met. They had to be. They each suffered some pretty big losses early on, which left them no choice but to pick themselves up and carry on.” He paused. “That they found each other is a miracle. Neither of them were exactly open to the idea of love.” He paused again and still she didn’t speak, not wanting to interrupt him, but also unbearably moved.
“It wasn’t love at first sight,” Sean said quietly. “But I think that’s the point. First, they had to learn to like each other. And then trust each other.” His voice was a little thick. Gruff. “Love born of that, trust, is an everlasting kind of love.”
Lotti’s throat was tight with emotion. She still didn’t speak because now she literally couldn’t.
Sean sighed and nuzzled his jaw to hers. “You can see why I’m having trouble.”
“No.” Cupping his face, she lifted it and looked into his eyes, letting him see the emotion in hers. “It’s incredible, Sean. You’re incredible.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head so she whispered it again against his stubble-roughened jaw. And then yet again against his mouth.
His arms came around her hard. “Careful,” he murmured huskily, eyes still closed. “Our positions are reversed this time. After last night and this morning—and though the sex was amazing, that’s not what I’m referring to—you’re going to leave me with the broken heart.” He opened his eyes and unerringly leveled her with his stark gaze.
She stared at him right back. “Don’t tease me,” she whispered.
“I’m not teasing.”
And indeed, there was no light of joviality in his expression, not a drop, and she swallowed hard. “I didn’t sleep with you to get back at you, Sean.”
“No, you slept with me because you wanted a one-night stand with a surfer.” A ghost of a smile crossed his lips. “Mission accomplished.”
“Okay, so we know why I slept with you,” she said. “But why did you sleep with me?”
He held her gaze. “Maybe I thought you might fall for me again and I’d get it right this time.”
Her heart squeezed. “Sean—”
He put a finger to her lips. “Don’t burst my bubble yet,” he said and slowly fisted his hands in her hair, carefully pulling her in so that they shared their next breath of air. “Not until I’m finished giving you everything I’ve got.”
“How much more could you possibly have?” she asked, shifting in his lap, humming in pleasure at what she found. “Wait. You don’t need to tell me, I think I’ve just found out for myself.”
With a snort, he rose from the chair in one easy movement, her still in his arms. He turned to the bed and tossed her onto it, retaining his grip on the sheet wrapped around her.
This meant she landed butt naked in the middle of the mattress. She bounced and let out a squeak, trying to roll over and grab the covers.
But Sean was quicker, snatching the blanket, dropping it on the