by Serena Bell
“You mean maybe I’m a dirty girl?”
“That’s what I mean.”
“I’d say you’re probably right.” And she followed him into the bathroom, knowing she was probably crazy but accepting, at least for the moment, that it wasn’t the kind of insanity whose grip she knew how to break.
* * *
HE RAN THE WATER while she stood and admired him, the big broad muscles across his upper back, the deep groove of his spine, the dimples in his perfect, hard ass. His legs were covered with dark brown curls of hair, and there was something secret and delicious about seeing his cock and balls from behind, something animal that made her want to grab and maul.
He stepped into the shower/tub combo. “C’mere,” he said.
She followed him in and stood just outside the spray, watching as he rinsed himself under the hot water, his hair plastering itself down. His chin was tipped up so she could admire the long line of his throat, the knot of his Adam’s apple, the cords in his neck. The hard male curves of his pecs covered in curly hair, the ridges of his abs. But mostly the abandon on his face, his blissful worship of the hot water. She liked watching him with his eyes closed, as if that way she could see his true self without him having access to any of hers, as if he were safe for her that way.
He held his arms open, and she went in. The water was hot, but not as hot as his body, and the roughness of his body hair, the trickle of water everywhere on her already sensitive skin, lit up the rest of her nerve endings. She wanted to lick him, so she did, first his collarbone, then his throat, then his jawline. He grabbed her face with more force than she suspected he’d intended and pressed his open mouth to hers.
She groaned, and he kissed her, hard and hot, the slick contact and the wet of the water joining the sheen between her legs to make one continuous tease. A connected sensation she couldn’t escape, not even when she broke off the kiss to gasp, “Holy—”
He put the fingers of one hand in her mouth, slid the fingers of the other between her legs. As if he felt the connection, too, was drawing the line she’d felt but hadn’t articulated. And the water still spilled down, and sensation was drawing up in her too fast. She was going to come against his fingers in a second, and she wanted it to last longer.
She could feel him, hard against her belly, at the juncture of her thighs, a threat and an invitation.
She pushed away his fingers in her mouth with her tongue, moved his hand from between her legs and picked up the soap. She lathered up her hands and smoothed the suds over the planes of his chest and abs, the solid feel of him a message that traveled straight from her hands to her core. She dropped her hands lower and grasped his cock, a slick, soapy up-and-down slide. Worked him hard and tight, drawing her fist over his swollen head.
“Lise,” he said, and tilted to lean against the tiled wall.
She watched his head emerge again from her hand, thick and hard, slightly darker than the rest of him, and disappear again, and then she knew what she wanted.
“You do it.”
“Better. When. You. Do.”
“I want to watch you.”
He took over, his grasp even tighter than hers had been, mean-looking, harsh, like the groans he was making now, his jaw tight, the muscles in his chest strung. There was red heat rising blotchily into his face now, and she saw a flicker of something, almost pain, move into his expression.
“Do it,” she instructed. “Come.”
She moved close, and he came, hot spurts against her thigh, his body rigid against her, her name broken and half-coherent on his tongue.
He’d been holding her arm too tightly with his free hand, and he let go abruptly and turned his face into the wall, panting. One hand a hard fist. The muscles of his ass clenched.
After a moment he turned back. “Jesus.”
“Nice work.”
“I want to mess you up like that.”
“You see that showerhead?” She gestured above them. The shower nozzle was the extensible kind.
His eyes lit. “Lie down.”
She lay on the shower floor, and he unhooked the nozzle and knelt between her legs.
“Temperature okay?”
She felt it with her hand and nodded. Her body was drawn tight just thinking about what he was about to do. Then he did it. He started with the spray at a distance.
“How’s that?”
“Oh. Good.” The spray was perfect, not too harsh, not too light. Nothing else, not even a vibrator, could send that many individual tingles through every swollen part of her. She could feel micromuscles tightening in her chest and belly. He reached for her hard nipples, but she pushed his hand away. “You’ll make me come in a second if you do that.”
He changed the angle a little, and she purred her approval.
“Hot,” he grunted. “Do you do this at home?”
“Sometimes. I don’t have the extensible kind, so it’s hard to get the angle and the pressure—oh—”
He’d brought the spray a little closer, and suddenly she couldn’t think. He was watching her so intently, his own pleasure in hers evident. He spread her a little more. The spray was so intense on her clit, the sensation building so fast, and it was so, so, good—
“Brett!”
He dropped the sprayer in the bottom of the shower and put his hand where it had been, two fingers deep inside her, his thumb over her clit, the pressure and surety of his hand, something to surge against, the perfect counterpoint to what he’d broken free in her body. And his mouth was on hers, too, kissing, sucking, licking, while the last of the ripples and flutters subsided.
“That was—” But she seemed to be at a loss for words.
“That looked good.” He grinned.
“Oh, my God.”
He laughed. “That’s what we like to hear.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank the resort’s water pressure.”
“No, whatever you were doing with your hand at the end there. Was perfect. And your mouth. Made me feel like—” She hesitated. It was hard to say out loud. “—like I was coming in every cell in my body.”
He was still kneeling between her legs, his cock stiffening at her words. Water from the abandoned nozzle swished against her thigh and sluiced down the drain. “I almost came all over you, watching.”
“Mmm.” The visual of that made her sex clench, despite how thoroughly she’d dispelled her tension.
“Mind if I get a condom?”
“Please.”
He stepped out of the shower and retrieved one from the bathroom vanity. In the meantime she stood and replaced the shower nozzle, rinsing herself off. Her body was still throbbing, hot and swollen. She slid her hand down, and felt the heat and moisture. “You’re going to like this,” she called to him.
“Wasn’t worried I wouldn’t.” He stepped back into the shower, condom in place, a prodigious display of size that made her mouth and her core feel empty and achy. “Turn around. Put your hands up on the wall.”
With other men, this position had always seemed incredibly impersonal to her, but with Brett, now, it was different. He pressed his chest against her back and settled his face beside hers.
“Put your foot up here,” he said, gesturing to the edge of the tub, and she obeyed. She felt his erection against her back, and the breath went out of her as heat—anticipation—knifed through her belly. Having Brett almost penetrate her was as good as having sex with most men. She could probably make herself come again in a few seconds, just from the promise of that cock against her.
But he didn’t deliver right away. He put his hand on her belly. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured.
Desire expanded in her, like a stop-action movie of a flower opening, and she whimpered as he slid his hand up, up, until his teased the s
ensitive underside of her breast. He lifted and molded it, his fingers sometimes tripping over her nipple as if by accident, and she wanted him to stop and pay attention there, but he wouldn’t. She pushed her breast into his palm, and he laughed, low and amused.
“Want something?”
The tip of his cock slid through the wetness he’d called out of her. Then he was in her, a hard, hot pressure on some perfect spot, and his hands were on her breasts, his thumbs and forefingers rolling her nipples, and she was making a low, dark sound she’d never heard herself make before.
“You like that?”
He moved against her, slowly, easily, wooing that supersensitive spot, teasing it. The tile was cold under her hands, the water was pouring over her head, and she closed her eyes and lost herself completely to the sensation. He jacked the water temperature. She hadn’t realized it had gotten cooler, but now steam rose. His cock was filling her, stretching her, touching that crazy-good spot he’d found, because of course she’d have to have some magic button that only Brett knew about. There was that little justice in the world.
He slid one hand over her hip, the other still tormenting her breast, and found her clit. The touch was so faint it was more a tease than a sensation, just a brush and tingle, until it was way more, a mad rush of heat and wetness and building tension, connecting all the most sensitive spots on her body, and then, as he wrapped his arms tight around her and braced them away from the wall with his elbows, she was coming again, and so was he, and the sound of him calling her name got lost in the sound of her calling his.
14
THAT NIGHT THEY had dinner in the resort’s main restaurant, seated across from each other at a small table with a cream-colored tablecloth and two flickering candles.
“Ohmigod, this is good.” She slid another bite of steak au poivre off her fork and into her mouth.
He was staring at her.
“What?”
“I’m trying very hard not to find that sexy, but it’s not working.”
She took another bite.
“I think it’s the way you drag your mouth over the fork. Or possibly the little noises you’re making. They’re reminding me of something else. Did you know it’s practically impossible for me to be simultaneously this horny and actually hungry?”
“Are you saying my enjoyment of my meal is ruining yours?”
“I’m saying there is a serious conflict of interest within my body. At the snake brain level. Food. Sex. No, food! No, sex!”
“I hadn’t realized there was a level of your brain above the snake brain.”
“Ha. Very funny.”
She realized she’d hurt his feelings. “Hey.” She put her hand on his. “You know I don’t mean that.”
He shrugged, and she was reminded of what she’d said to him the night before, that his opinion of himself wasn’t very high. She tried to think whether that had always been true. She knew he worshipped his older brothers and that he didn’t see himself as being in their league. One brother made policy in the presidential administration—she’d seen his name bandied about in the press when the health-care debate had heated up—and the other managed a women’s NBA team. Pretty hard-hitting, but so was a news anchor. If he was comparing himself and finding himself lacking, it wasn’t on the grounds of accomplishments. It was something deeper.
Zachary, Peter and Brett had been the “smart,” “athletic” and “handsome” brothers, respectively. That was before parents knew they weren’t supposed to label their kids, that kids internalized those labels for life. And of course Brett wasn’t the kind of guy to dwell on stuff—no way he’d blame his parents or gripe about them in therapy—but at the same time, if you’d been the “handsome” one all your life, you might keep finding evidence in the world that that was who you were—and all you were. Women who fell all over you, for example. If you believed in your heart that those women were only interested in you for what you looked like, it would be hard to convince yourself that there was more to it.
He was still watching her eat, though he was also eating his own dinner now, a pork chop slathered with apple compote.
“I know you were kidding when you said this on the plane, but I didn’t become a dating coach because of you.”
“I know.”
“If anything, I did it because of Julie.”
Her sister’s name hung in the air between them.
“Because she has made such a disastrous mess out of her dating life. The same mistakes over and over again, sleeping with the wrong guy, getting her heart broken. I think stuff like that is much more obvious from the outside, and the right advice can really change everything for a woman who’s in one of those bad patterns.”
“That’s a good reason.” He took a deep breath. “Lise?”
“Yeah?”
“I didn’t have sex with Julie.”
“Don’t.” She turned away.
“What?”
“I don’t want to hear it. I told Julie, when it happened, I didn’t want to know anything about it. And I still don’t.”
“But—”
“It really doesn’t matter whether you had sex with her or not. The fact remains that you took my sister out on a date two weeks after you kissed me. That was a really shitty thing to do.”
She’d said it, acknowledged the Kiss That Would Not Be Named, and the world hadn’t ended. Her heart was still beating, if faster than usual. He was still sitting across from her, possibly watching her more carefully now, as if he expected her to implode or—and this felt infinitely more likely—burst into tears.
“It was a really shitty thing to do,” Brett said. “And I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”
“Why did you kiss me?”
It wasn’t the question she’d meant to ask. She’d meant to ask, Why did you go out with Julie?
But it was the question that had come out of her mouth, so she guessed it was the question she most needed the answer to.
He reached across the table and took both her hands. His hands were warm and strong, and hers disappeared into the cave they formed. His eyes were dark and full of a significance she wanted to believe. She only had to let herself, and she could be completely swept away by him. They still had all of tomorrow left and tomorrow night and then—this was the part she couldn’t let herself think about. What would happen when they got back to New York? Leaving St. Barts could be an ending point. And yet it was hard to imagine that she’d be ready for it to be over. Nothing about their passion for each other seemed to be leading toward a natural conclusion. It certainly hadn’t felt that way in the shower this afternoon, or when they’d dried off and fallen asleep on the bed, and she’d woken to find him watching her sleep as he very slowly, very lightly, circled her hip with one finger.
“I kissed you because—because you were you. Because you were beautiful and sexy. Because I’d been not kissing you for too long. Because I couldn’t not kiss you any longer.”
She felt the pressure of held-back tears behind her eyes. She didn’t trust herself to speak, so she just turned her hand in the cradle of his and squeezed his fingers.
She’d given enough fearful women advice that she knew what she needed to tell herself. Take it one night at a time. One date at a time, one encounter at a time. Just because you’ve had your heart broken before doesn’t mean it will be broken again this time.
He smiled at her, and she smiled back. “That’s a good reason.”
As hard as it is, you have to have a little faith.
She’d never realized how hard that advice was to take.
* * *
THEY WALKED ON the beach after dark. Brett carried a rolled towel that he’d taken from the room, tucked under his arm, and a bottle of wine. Elisa had two stemmed glasses she’d borrowed from the bar, which was b
eing tended now by a squat woman with corn rows. She hoped the bartender from last night was catching up on sleep.
They walked until they found a secluded cove, and then Brett spread the towel, and they sat and poured wine. It was dark, but they could see lights strung all along the shore and on boats out at sea. There was almost no breeze, only the purr of the ocean and the warmth still radiating from the sand beneath them. The smell of salt and cooling vegetation scented the air.
“To—” Brett raised a glass.
“Celine Carr,” she offered.
He laughed. “To Celine. And Haven, because without Haven, we might still be chasing Celine all over the island.”
They toasted and drank.
“Have you heard from them?”
“Haven caught up with the happy couple and tried to talk Celine into leaving, alone. No success. So Haven’s going to stick around and keep an eye on them. Manage the media situation, keep Celine out of trouble. Apparently they went snorkeling this afternoon.”
“All three of them?”
“Celine and Steve. Haven reported that she doesn’t get her hair wet. She cheered them on from shore.”
Brett laughed. “I’d believe that.” He extended the arm that wasn’t holding his glass and tugged her closer, burying his face in her hair. “You smell so good.”
“It’s that expensive resort shampoo.”
He laughed. “Which you used three times today, right?”
“The last time I showered I just rinsed off. I started to get worried my hair would roll over and die from all the washing.”
“So you’re sparkly clean.”
For a moment she remembered the sensation of repressing the provocative thoughts that crossed her mind, the ache in her tongue from holding back what she wanted to say to him. “No, filthy dirty,” she said. The feeling of freedom that came with letting go was heady. Lowering her voice to a purr, so she could feel it everywhere, she said, “I’m wearing a skirt.”
A slight hesitation and then he said, “Yeah?”
“It’s dark out.”