His mouth travels down my body and then he pauses to ask if this is okay. My only answer is bringing his lips back to mine.
I don’t know how long we just lie there like this, getting to know one another, learning each other’s bodies and responses. We could stay here forever and I wouldn’t give a damn. It’s been so long since I’ve felt wanted like this. No, needed. When was the last time a man held on to me like he couldn’t let go? I wrap my arms around him and plunge my fingers into his hair, suddenly frantic at the thought of losing this feeling.
He pulls back to break the contact and sits up. I blink blearily up at him. His face haloed in a beam of early morning sunlight dappling through the crevices in the windows. The majority are boarded up, but one plank hangs on from a single nail. I thank God for that board because it allows me to see every blessed inch of him in the hazy green light.
“What’s wrong? Why’d you stop?”
“Nothin’.” He wraps an arm around my legs and pulls me flat along the couch. Then he spreads out alongside me, tucking my body into his.
“What are you doing?”
“Shhh.” He presses a finger to my lips. “I just want to touch you. Will you let me?”
My breath hitches in my chest and I can only nod. His finger traces my bottom lip, his eyes captivated by the movement. I’m trembling by the time his mouth comes back to mine. I can feel his smile against my lips and had I the will power, I would have smacked him. He has me right where he wants me.
His hand glides over the material of my bra, so close to the aching weight of my breasts. I make a frustrated noise and he laughs, diverting his hand to the exposed skin of my knees. Even better.
The tips of his fingernails scrape along the skin of my thighs and at this point, I’ve virtually given up on ever breathing again. He makes one painstaking journey up to the top of my thigh, then stops and changes direction.
I grab on to his shoulder, discarding any rational thought, and press against him. “Please,” I whisper.
Our eyes lock and his hand presses against where I need him the most. I can feel the heat of him through the thin material and my eyes drift closed at the overwhelming sensation.
I feel him dip his head and he says, “No, princess, I want to see your eyes.”
I bite my tongue and do as he says. He rewards me with the gentle play of his fingers ever so soft against me. And oh, God, the feeling is amplified a hundred times because it’s nowhere near as hard as I need it. No, instead, he traces me in small, languid circles until my hips are matching the back and forth movement of his hand.
My cheeks burn hot in a combination of shame and want. I shouldn’t be doing this. I’m not the type of woman who does this. He slips his devilish fingers underneath the material of my panties and all good sense escapes me. My entire body bows up in response, muscles arched in a sweet ache of unreleased tension.
“You like that, princess?” His voice, God that voice. Each whisper sends a shockwave along my body, inciting the heat growing in my core as though it were a caress. He’s going to devastate each and every one of my senses before this is over, I swear.
I hold my breath in my chest like a captive trying to force myself over the peak. My hips roll against the soft play of his fingers and each flutter brings me ever closer to relief.
His fingers move lower and I let out a sobbing breath. Yes, yes, yes, I think to myself. His chuckle rumbles in my ear.
Then, disaster strikes and three things happen all at once. First, he plunges two fingers deep inside of me, and I come. Exquisitely. Deliciously. Fantastically hard. Then, the front door to the cabin bursts open.
Gabriel
I’ve not been a man prone to violence. Temper, maybe. Do I have a tendency to be a jerk at times? Sure, if the situation warrants it. But never in my life have I wanted to throttle someone quite as much as I do in this moment.
The rapturous expression on Chloe’s face, the one that I was admiring mere moments before, is replaced by panic and I instinctively move to cover her half-exposed body with my own. I, regretfully, free my hand to grab the blankets and pull them over us. Beneath me, she’s trembling and I let loose a string of expletives.
“That you, Gabe?” A thirty-something man pokes his head around the corner and I relax, albeit not that much, when I realize that it’s one of the island cops, Tyler. A man who I once considered a friend, that was until he walked in on his own untimely death. I’m going to have to kill him. I’ll be sad to see him go, but it must be done.
“Bit busy here, Ty,” I bite out.
Tyler, damn him to hell, grins and says, “I’ll say.”
Maybe I’ll enjoy killing him. “Get your ass out of here before I throw you out, man.”
“You know, you could have told someone that you were going to go out in that weather to neck. Would have saved me and my guys some time looking for you.”
“Yeah, next time, I’ll make sure to do that.”
Chloe’s body stiffens beneath me, but she averts her face when I glance down. My lips pull into a frown. I press an absent kiss to her forehead. This hadn’t been in my plans—especially not the interruption—but I wanted her to know it was more than a casual fling.
“That wouldn’t happen to be Chloe McKinney with you, would it?”
“Tyler.” I practically growl.
He holds his hands up. “No offense intended, but her boss has been calling the hotel every half hour looking for her.”
“Shit,” Chloe mutters and the vestiges of our interlude melt away. I can physically feel her pulling away and I want to say something to open her back up to me, but she’s already shifting to pull the blanket back over her. I watch her skin disappear beneath the material and am ridiculously irritated when her body is hidden from my view. I clench my hands against the need to drag it back up and bury my head underneath for a while. Tyler and her career be damned.
“Get out, Ty.” Fuck niceties.
He salutes and disappears back through the door.
Chloe taps my shoulder to let her up and I recline back on the couch as I watch her lift up and walk back into the living area, leaving me feeling bereft. I hear her moving about in the other room and I wonder what happened. Is she embarrassed? I want to reassure her that this isn’t my normal behavior, but the spell the seclusion has woven around us has been broken and I don’t know what to do to fix it.
My shorts are still clammy when I shrug into them, which is probably a good thing. I forgo the shirt as it hasn’t fared much better. I grit my teeth and go about gathering up our crap from the room, stuffing it violently into bags. I’m pissed off all over again and I don’t know what to do about it. My first instinct is to reach for a pack of cigarettes, but I stop myself when I realize there isn’t one there. Instead, I settle for a toothpick. I break three of them before I head out to search for Chloe.
I find her slipping into her dress and my toothpick tumbles to the ground. She’s all devastating curves and glowing skin. My hands twitch by my sides. She peeks from underneath her lashes and I cover my staring with a cough.
“Are you ready?” she asks, looking anywhere but at me.
The comforting words I want to say die in my throat. Shit, maybe she is embarrassed. I rub a hand across the stubble on my chin, exhausted, confused, a little pissed off, and horny as all hell. If I didn’t know any better, I would have said I was falling for this girl. Which is crazy. I eye her warily, as if it were her fault that my emotions have suddenly developed vaginas.
I grunt and she must take that as an affirmation because she ducks under the arm I have braced against the doorframe and limps to Tyler on the beach.
What the actual fuck? Resigned, I follow suit.
A smug grin stretches across Tyler’s face. “Long night?”
“You’re just asking for it, aren’t you?”
Chloe ignores our conversation and begins to swim through the waves to my boat, her bags trail behind on the life vests. At least she didn’t
choose to take Tyler’s and escape back to her hotel with her tail between her legs. I scrub a weary hand over my face and catch the remnants of her scent on my fingers. My body tightens in response. I wish we were alone. I want nothing more than to take her right here in the water.
Chapter Six
Chloe
My body is wracked with a heady combination of nerves and the tingling of aftershocks. My skin feels tight and sensitive, made ever more so by the electrical charge leftover from the orgasm. I can’t meet Gabriel’s eyes.
Not because he did anything wrong. More like because everything he did was so right.
Things like this don’t just happen to normal people, and my intense reaction scares me.
I drop my hefty bags and the life vests underneath the console and plop down onto the seat. Gabriel is having an intense discussion with the cop back on the beach and I watch underneath my lashes as he gestures wildly. His eyes are on me, though. It makes my fingers stumble over the strappy clasps of my sandals when I remember the way his eyes heated while he pleasured me. Watching him as he watched me tumble over the edge was the most erotic experience of my life.
Pull it together, Chloe.
Gabriel waves to Tyler and wades back over to me. I can barely move by the time he reaches the boat. My fingers clasp at the soft, cracked leather seats and my thighs stick together from the humidity—probably a good thing considering how easily they spread for him.
He lifts himself into the boat and my mouth goes dry. Water cascades down the cut ridges of his abs and I want to throw myself at his feet and lick each and every drop. My cheeks heat and I suck my lower lip into my mouth to stifle the need building inside me.
He starts the boat and eases away from the beach. I send our ragtag little shack a mournful glance. Who would have thought that a night there would have been so much more enjoyable than the four-star hotel my company had set me up in? I heave a sigh, feeling the peaceful spell he’d woven around me fade as we speed away.
The ride back to the main part of the island takes much less time than the ride out, and I find myself slumping in disappointment as he pulls back into the slip. I can see the distinct rise of my hotel in the distance. Instead of feeling relief at the thought of returning to my life, I feel the burn of regret festering in my chest.
Gabriel twists the keys from the ignition, but doesn’t make a move to stand. His hands rest on the wheel with the keys dangling loosely from his fingers. His powerful shoulders are bunched up and the little bit I can see of his face reveals a thunderous expression.
He must be waiting for me to get the heck out of here, right? Fine. I grab my bag and surge to my feet so quickly that I don’t pay any mind to the cut on my foot. I let out an involuntary shriek of pain as my foot throbs in protest.
Gabriel catches me before I make a fool of myself for the hundredth time since meeting him. His arms are solid around me and I flash back to earlier when he’d had me caged in a much more pleasurable position.
“You okay?”
I force the words around the knot in my throat. “Yeah,” I whisper. “Totally fine. Just forgot about my foot. Thanks.”
His arms tighten around me as I move to stand up. I shoot him a look, my brows drawing together. He grunts and takes a step back, putting a good couple of feet in between us.
“Ya’ll take care now!” calls a voice from behind us.
I turn and see Tyler pulling into another slip behind us and curse his ever-loving horrible timing. The moment broken, I take Gabriel’s offered hand and take the first steps back to reality. The life that felt like it belonged to someone else.
I look around at the dock and note the destruction and debris scattered everywhere. Trees naked of their leaves are bent at awkward angles. Everything’s all roughed up and appears vulnerable. Much like how I feel after baring myself to this man—both body and soul—I barely know. My life is chaotic as it is—always a new, shitty job to jet off to, a slew of half-hearted relationships, a broken family. What did I have to offer this beautifully complicated man? He has a daughter for Christ’s sake. The last thing he needs is a train wreck like me.
Wanting to spare us both from the inevitable awkward goodbye, I paste on a happy face—the one that got me through weeks of phony friends and relatives after my dad died. Gabe is tying off the boat and checking gear, glancing up at me with intense, alluring eyes. Perfect, he’s distracted.
“So, thanks.” I clear my throat. “For everything. I’d better get back before they send out a search party.” I give a fake laugh that I hope he can’t see through. “Another one.”
And he just stands there looking as pained as I feel, so I give him a weak wave, press the remaining money I owe him into his hands, and book it back to my hotel room, where I tell myself it’s for the for the best.
Gabriel
I groan as I watch Chloe limp away. This was not how I pictured my day going after waking up to a beautiful woman wrapped around me. Fate or sheer coincidence had thrown Chloe and me together, and given me something to hold on to. A woman who seems just as lost and lonely as I am. A woman who isn’t intimidated by my brash exterior or interested in a one nighter while she is on vacation. Though we’d almost wound up that way, I could sense she wasn’t that type of girl.
Sending her one last mournful glance, I reluctantly return to the boat to finish shutting her down and tying her off. I’m kicking myself for not protesting and letting her walk away. Was it worth losing what we could have because of what might happen in the future? Were my fears of getting burned again going to be my downfall?
I hear footsteps on the dock. They come to a stop by me, but I ignore them as I put away the emergency bag. Tyler doesn’t say a word, but I can feel his curiosity like an itch on my neck. With nothing else left to clean, I make my way back to him, but my eye catches on something on the floor.
Chloe’s camera bag.
I smile and grab it. I turn to Tyler and ask, “You wouldn’t happen to know what hotel Chloe’s at, would you?”
*
I hear her voice on the other side of the door and it makes a devious smile pull at my lips. I knock and as I wait, I picture what she is doing on the other side. The chain wiggles and the door opens to an outpouring of steam and with it a sweet feminine scent. She’s wrapped in a robe and her skin is still damp from the shower. I inhale deeply and get in her space. She has nowhere to hide and I’m going to keep it that way until we settle whatever it is between us.
Chloe’s eyes widen and she bobbles the drink she was holding, the sudden movement causing the corded hotel phone to slip from her shoulder and tumble to the tile floor. She glances from the phone to me, and back to the floor again, as though she can’t comprehend how any of it came to be.
I hold up her camera bag by the ridiculous pink strap. “You forgot something.”
Then I take a step into the room and guide her backwards with a firm hand on her shoulder. I turn and close the door. The clicking sound from the lock echoes in the small space of the room.
The wild look in her eyes gives me a ridiculous amount of satisfaction. I like the thought of her being cornered and on edge more than I’ll admit. It was time for her to be the one off-balance here.
She tries to cover up her nerves with chatter. “I can’t believe I left it. This weekend has been crazy. Forgetting that would have been disastrous.” A blush stains the apples of her cheeks.
My eyes follow the line of the robe as it dips down the middle of her body. The belt is loosely tied and throws a shadow over the exposed line of skin. She fists the collar of her robe with one hand as I take in the outline of her legs through the material. My fingers twitch with the need to feel their silky softness again. She shifts from foot to foot, still favoring her injured heel, and the sight of her toenails painted a soft pink makes me smile—that’s my princess.
My eyes travel back up to hers. I hold out the bag and she takes it from me, clasping it to her chest as if it will protect her
from me.
I take a few steps until I can see that her bundled hair is dripping down the back of her robe. Picturing her in the shower makes me ache with need so I discard the thought and focus. “Did you really think that you could get away from me that easily, princess?”
“Get away from you? But—”
“Room service,” comes a call from the door.
She flicks it an annoyed glance. “Sorry, that’s me.”
I relax into a chair and motion for her to go ahead with a wave of my hand. I watch her stride across the room. She keeps shooting me these nervous glances as she takes her order from the bellboy and I have to resist the urge to smile. She comes back and sets the tray down on the small table.
“Do you want some?”
“No, that’s okay.”
She settles down into the chair and crosses her mile-long legs, causing the hem of her robe to slip dangerously higher. She takes a long swallow of a frozen drink—a Piña Colada by the looks of it and starts nibbling on the assortment of fruits she’d ordered.
“Thank you for bringing back my bag. The big guys want what few images I was able to take first thing in the morning. Then I go back on Sunday. I would have been in deep shit without it.”
I make a noncommittal noise as I watch her nibbling on pieces of fruit and sipping on her drink.
She’s acting as if nothing has happened, like we haven’t had a connection at all, like I haven’t watched her as she came in my arms. Like her world hasn’t tipped on its axis.
I bide my time, make simple—though somewhat stilted—conversation with her as she finishes off her plate of strawberries and pineapple. Her fingers twitch each time she lifts her hand to take a drink and her eyes move around me as if she couldn’t stand to look at me for too long.
She can dance around the attraction between us as much as she likes, but the simple fact is I’m not leaving until I’ve driven her as crazy as she’s made me.
A few minutes later, her plate cleaned and her drink completely drained, she stands and clears her throat. “Thanks again, for everything. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”