But, being Margot, she did it again.
Two scoops this time, one over each breast.
He couldn’t see the tips of them through the more padded parts, but the water plastered the rest of the sheer lingerie to her stomach, her belly, hinting at the lace panties she was wearing.
Those were getting wet, too, droplets clinging to the thighs exposed by her short gown.
“Dammit, Margot,” he murmured.
As if driven on by those words, she turned her back to him, once again swaying to the slow music. She reached to the front of her slip, undoing the buttons there. Then, inch by inch, she lowered the material from her shoulders, exposing her bare back.
He leaned against the wall, gritting his teeth.
Smiling—maddeningly, teasingly, totally knowing that she was in control of him—she allowed the slip to drop to her waist.
The slope of her back drove him wild, but he didn’t show it.
“What comes next?” he asked.
She turned toward him, revealing her breasts. They were tipped with silver tassels that she touched, stroked.
He wiped a hand down his face. So close to seeing more of her, yet so far. The mounds of her breasts were beautiful to him, perfect, begging for his hands and fingers and mouth. And as she wiggled out of the rest of her gown, tossing it to the tiled floor, he yearned to relieve her of those lace panties, too.
She palmed more water, but now she slid her hands up her legs, wetting them, allowing the liquid to roll down her skin.
“I think,” she said, still leaning over, giving him a good view of her breasts, “you like this trip so far.”
“I’ve always liked,” he said. “I’ve always wanted.”
He just wouldn’t tell her how much.
He took a step forward without even thinking, but she held up a hand and shook a finger at him playfully.
“We’ve got a long way to go, Stud.”
She reached for the handheld showerhead and turned on the water, her smile all-knowing.
So seductive that he didn’t know if he could last as long as this trip would take.
7
THEY SAID THE first rule of striptease was that you can touch him, but he can’t touch you.
At least, that was what Margot had seen and heard in the clubs she’d been in, like Le Crazy Horse. She’d written about the girls there and everywhere—women who seduced men with long looks and suggestive dances.
And now, as Clint Barrows watched her, she became one of those girls—someone who was wanted by a man more than anything else in the world. She could see it in his eyes, the wanting. Could practically feel it rising above the bath-steeped humidity in the room as the candles flickered.
She recognized the same yearning look from that night so long ago. Naked need in his gaze and... Now that she was in the moment, she remembered there’d been something else she’d seen in him that had scared her, even while making her heart beat with the same stilted, unfamiliar rhythm that it was right now.
But, at this moment, she wasn’t that Margot, was she? She wasn’t the girl from college who’d had an awkward incident with him that had sent her bursting out of a dim room, leaving him behind and darkening his name in her personal history. And even though the thought of becoming someone else for the night—someone who had no worries about her future and lived for the day—appealed to Margot, it was actually the only way she was going to be able to get through this seduction.
The only way her pride was going to stay intact while her body had a holiday.
As the water sprayed from the showerhead she held, the peach-scented bubbles from the bath clung to her calves, water beading on her skin. She ran her fingers down her soaked panties, up over her belly, then between her legs.
His gaze followed, a muscle in his jaw pulsing as he kept leaning against the wall, otherwise as casual as you please.
But that ticking muscle told her that he was steamed up inside, no matter how cool he looked.
“Imagine,” she said as the music kept playing. “My hands are your hands, touching me, making me hot.”
She slipped the showerhead inside her panties, dousing herself with water, leaving the lace clinging to her. Pressing back against the wall, she kept showering herself, stroking herself.
Hungry. He looked hungry enough to stop this show altogether and have his way with her. His gaze was burning with it.
But so was she. Her juices were swamping her, her breath coming faster and faster, especially when she pulled her panties away from her so he could see a bit more—but not much more—while she aimed the stream of water at her most sensitive parts.
She hauled in a hard breath, arching into the spray as it tickled her clit.
Then she whispered, “Your hands and fingers feel so good on me.”
She closed her eyes, maybe because she didn’t want to look at him, to see the reality of what she was doing. She and Clint Barrows—a scenario she would have fought tooth and nail before today. Her pride wouldn’t let her forget it.
But here she was.
And it was good.
She opened her eyes to see him grinning now, starting to unbutton his shirt.
“Uh-uh,” she said, shaking her head while still massaging herself, building herself up to a point where she wouldn’t be able to even talk or make intelligible sounds much longer, just like yesterday, when she’d pleasured herself to thoughts of him.
A fantasy.
Not real. Never real with him.
“There’s been enough teasing,” he said. The candlelight laved the tanned skin of his muscled chest, the bunched abs.
As he shrugged off his shirt, a pierce of desire made her stifle a moan.
Her nipples went hard, sensitive as hell, aching to feel his chest against hers.
And he noticed, his gaze eating her up.
He laughed, low and wicked, as he undid the top button of his fly, where a bulge strained against his jeans.
Something like panic shot threw her. She was the one who would set the pace today. She flicked the showerhead in his direction, spraying some water at him.
“You need to cool off,” she said.
He only laughed again, leaving his fly slightly open at the top, where a thin trail of golden hair disappeared.
The sight of it excited her even more.
As he removed his boots and socks, she took her hand out of her panties.
“I think you need to be reminded,” she said, gesturing to her entire body, “that this isn’t for you. You can look, but you can’t touch.”
“You sure about that, Tolstoy?”
Before she could be mildly impressed with his continued recall of Literature 101—how many authors’ names would he call her before this was over?—he undid another button on his fly.
“When you were touching yourself,” he asked, “were you thinking of how much better it’d be if I was doing it? If I was inside you, making you want to cry out like you did earlier today?”
She would never admit any of that to him. Hell, she’d spent the beginning of the night laughing downstairs at the dinner and acting like nothing was bothering her—surely she could do that with Clint, too.
“You think a lot of yourself,” she said. “Don’t you, Stud?”
“You know what I think a lot about?”
Another button, undone.
Another part of her, undone, as he took a step toward the tub.
He lowered his voice. “I think a lot about you. I haven’t been able to stop since I laid eyes on you again.”
She could barely find the oxygen to speak. “That’s because you want what you can’t have.”
When he got close enough, he reached out, hooking a finger in her panties, tugging at them,
and it was as if she had turned to hot water herself, near boiling.
“You want me to have it,” he said, slipping her panties down an inch, so that her hip was exposed.
She was pulsing for him, between her legs, in her chest. Was she going to let him have it?
Yes, she thought. Hell, yes.
But only when she said so.
As he pulled down her panties more, she covered herself with a hand. Another rule of striptease—hide your bits.
Keep teasing.
He worked the material down her legs, and she allowed him to do it. She even stepped out of the lace without being urged, watching him throw it carelessly behind him.
He glanced up at her with those light blue eyes—eyes that could talk her into anything. A gaze that had probably talked any number of girls into more than they should’ve given him.
For a long time, she’d been determined never to be one of those girls—not with any man. She was better than that.
But as she saw how much he wanted her, she knew that it would be fine if it were on her terms.
When he stood, she reached for his fly, undoing the last button. Then she took him into her hand—hard, long, stiff. Everything she’d never gotten ten years ago.
All for her.
She caressed him, up, down, so slowly that he shut his eyes, clenching his jaw.
“Maybe you’re the one who wants to be inside me more than anything,” she said. “You’re thinking about it right now, feeling how you’d slip into me, coming inside me over and over again.”
She circled a thumb over his tip, and he groaned low in his throat.
“Just how long do you think you’re going to last?” she asked, ruthless.
“All night if I have to.”
Oh, really? Now who was wielding the power?
Ramped up, she decided to tease him even more, skimming her fingertips underneath his shaft until she got to his balls. She toyed with him, watching how his nipples went hard, how a vein in his throat strained.
“You’re not going to last another second,” she whispered.
It was a challenge the adventurous side of her wanted him to accept.
And he did.
Everything happened at once—his eyes opened, his fingers locked around her wrist, and before she knew it, he was in the tub with her, splashing water with such force that he doused the candle in the corner.
Her pulse was nearly deafening as he lifted her, bringing her against the wall, gently yet firmly removing one tassel from her breast before latching on to her with his mouth, sucking at her until the pleasant throb between her legs became unbearably painful.
In a good way, she thought as she wound her fingers through his thick hair. In one of eighty good ways....
As he worked at a nipple, his fingers sought the other, taking off the tassel, then playing with her as mercilessly as she’d played with him, bringing her to a peak so quickly that her mind couldn’t catch up.
But he had to know that he was driving her crazy, and he looked up at her with those hungry eyes and a cruel grin.
Who’s not gonna last? that grin seemed to ask.
She heard the answer echoing in the back of her mind. Me. I can’t stop myself with you, damn you.
She yanked down his jeans, bringing them around his hips as she slid down the tiled wall to the bath. He stopped her, reaching into one of his pockets for a condom, then worked off his jeans the rest of the way, discarding them with a wet thud on the floor.
Once she was sitting in the water, warm, frothy bubbles popped over her everywhere as she watched him sheathe himself, then kneel in front of her in the bath, lifting one of her legs over his arm.
Open to him. She was so damned open, the water lapping at her, once again making her want to scream.
He only made it worse when he teased her with his tip, running it down between her folds.
“Is this what you want?” he asked. “Are you still playing a game?”
It would always be a game with them, nothing more.
But even as she thought it, that inner sinking sensation—the stone hitting water and causing ripples—hit her.
She ignored it, wiggling under him, giving as good as she was getting from him.
“You want it more,” she said.
Another laugh, gritty and amused. “I want it a hell of a lot.”
And he drove into her, as if to show her that he wasn’t going to deny anything—not his lust, not the lengths to which she’d driven him.
Not her.
She gasped, digging her nails into his arm, water slick over his skin and muscle as he rammed into her again.
Bathwater sloshed over the sides of the tub as she moved with him at every thrust, her other hand planted in his hair while she insisted on dictating the pace.
He didn’t seem to mind—not even when she demanded that she be on top, forcing him beneath her, riding him, causing frenetic waves to slap the tile floor.
She braced a hand on the wall, working him, feeling him go deep inside her, closing her eyes again as patterns of light ricocheted wildly across her field of vision.
At first she didn’t know what she saw in them, all of the shapes unfamiliar, just as foreign as what she’d seen in his eyes back in college, just as confusing as the strange emotions that had nipped at her as he’d kissed her, caressed her.
And now, they were back, but intensified.
Flashes of heat. Swirls. Jags of lightning...
The rumble of oncoming thunder in her body.
It started in her clit, gathered in her belly, pushing out with such energy that the orgasm came like a bolt out of the blue, hitting her, rattling her, making her take such a needle-sharp breath that she didn’t think she’d ever be able to breathe again.
He wasn’t far behind, though, and when he came, he said her name.
“Margot...”
Not an English-major nickname, not the name of a famous author, just...her.
The sound of it melted off the walls like beaded steam, slipping down like drops.
Slipping into her as if finding someplace it truly belonged.
* * *
AFTERWARD, CLINT watched her just as longingly as when he’d watched her perform the striptease.
Watched her push back a hank of hair that had come to cover her face while she climaxed. Watched her watch him, then catch a breath, looking away.
After that, he wasn’t sure what happened. He just knew for certain that she was piecing herself together while she climbed out of the tub, water sluicing down every angle of her beautiful, long body before she grabbed a towel from the rack and started to dry off. He watched her as she wrapped that towel around herself, hiding everything from his gaze, before she walked out of the bathroom without another word.
He’d stayed in the tub a little longer, reveling in the aftermath, satiated.
That’s what he was, right? Satiated? Sure, the pit of his belly ached for more. And, yeah, he hadn’t been lying when he’d told her that he could last all night, because he was ready to go again.
And again.
But he was feeling something else, and he was afraid to look at it too closely, because this was it. One night only. A last hurrah at a reunion.
Obviously, she wouldn’t let this go any further. She’d made her point to him already—that she’d won some kind of contest between them—and that was good enough for her.
The longer he sat in that bath, the more her attitude bothered him.
He got out of the tub. The water had gotten cold, anyway.
After he wound a towel around his hips, he found Margot by the window, the curtains shut. She’d turned off the music and turned on a light, but if she thought that the glare would wipe away the fant
asy of what had gone on in the tub, she was dead wrong.
She was just as desirable in reality, with that towel wrapped around her and the ends of her lustrous hair plastered to her skin. And even with her back to him as she went through her suitcase, he couldn’t deny that he’d seen that all-consuming light in her eyes when he’d been inside her.
“I haven’t gone on a lot of trips in my lifetime,” he said, “but I doubt there’s one that would top where I just went.”
Her shoulders stiffened as she held up a nightshirt for her inspection. Was she about to shoo him out so she could go to bed, dismissing him?
Well, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t gracefully put an end to more than a few nights like that himself.
“You must not take many vacations.” She sounded so cool and collected.
Something about her tone made him angry. Okay, maybe not angry, but it tweaked that part of him that Margot always seemed to rile up.
The part of him that no one else ever got to.
He rested his hip against a dresser, crossing his arms over his chest. “You’re the traveler. I’m the small-towner who likes where he’s at.”
“Then this should be enough excitement to last you.”
Burn.
“You know,” he said, not taking her words to heart, “there are way more slips of paper in that basket of yours. I’d hate for all your hard work to go to waste.” He jerked his chin toward the soaps and lotions he’d brought over. The pretty white negligee. “And all these things I bought this morning? They can’t just sit here.”
“Use them on the next girl who comes along.”
Could there be more to her attitude than he’d first thought?
“You’re not pissed at me because you finally gave in, are you?” he asked.
In immediate hindsight, maybe this hadn’t been the right subject to broach at the moment.
She turned around, her posture ramrod-straight. She held that nightshirt in front of her like a shield. “I gave in? As you might recall, you were pretty easy.”
“I can’t say you’re wrong about that.”
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