by Amy Andrews
Big mistake.
She was wearing a thong. He groaned inwardly as two white naked cheeks greeted him. He followed the lush curve of them up to where two flimsy strips of fabric adorned the tops of her buttocks and followed the line of them all the way along her hips where they connected the front of the thong to the back.
More heat, more fire, more tension in his belly.
He shut his eyes briefly before running straight past her into the inky water, praying it was freezing. And embracing the water when it was, sucking in a breath as it soothed the fire in his loins.
Callie got to the edge and gave a little squeal as the first wave splashed right up her bare thighs. ‘Crap, it’s freezing,’ she said to him.
‘I do recall mentioning that,’ Cade said, thankful it was dark enough not to see if the water was making her underwear transparent.
Callie inched in a little further, sucking in her breath as the water reached the tops of her thighs. ‘Bloody hell,’ she complained.
‘Only one way to do it,’ Cade said. ‘Just dive right in.’
Callie jumped as another wave rolled towards her, trying to keep as much off her body as possible. ‘Let me guess, you’re a “ripping the plaster off quickly” kind of guy, huh?’
Cade stood. ‘I have no problem at all with forgetting it and getting back into my clothes.’
He was less than a metre away and water sluiced off him in the most fascinating way, clinging to pecs and abs and chest hair like a long slow lick. He was hip deep and his entire torso was exposed.
Getting back into his clothes?
What on earth for, when he looked so damn fine out of them?
A wave headed her way and Callie took a deep breath and dived in. The shock of cold against her skin took her breath away and she emerged from the water spluttering, goose bumps pricking her skin, her nipples erect.
‘Now swim,’ Cade said, whose head and shoulders she could just make out through the salt water stinging her eyes.
Callie didn’t need to be told twice. She’d entered the water intent on seduction but if she didn’t warm up first she wasn’t going to be very successful. He struck out and she followed, swimming out not very much deeper before travelling parallel to the beach. He’d stop every now and then, ensuring she had caught up, but he always remained tantalisingly out of reach.
When she had finally warmed up she stopped in chest-deep water and watched him as he swam. His big strong arms windmilled through the waves and seawater flowed off his back as sleekly as off a seal’s skin. The moon chose that moment to peek from behind a cloud and she caught the delineation of the muscles of his back.
The water moved against her bare skin like liquid silk now, the ebb and flow of it caressing her belly and thighs, washing against the fabric of her bra and the scrap between her legs. Heat bloomed where everything had been cold not that long ago and she was grateful now for the frigid water. It soothed the buzz in her body that pulsed with the ancient pull of the tide and the primal power of his muscles.
Would he make love with the same kind of unhurried strength?
Cade looked behind him. Callie had stopped. It was too dark to see the expression on her face but he got the impression she was watching him.
Which didn’t help the prickle in his blood he’d been trying to swim into submission. He lazily stroked back towards her, pulling up a good two arms’ lengths away. ‘Warmer now?’
Callie nodded, glad he was close enough to see the water beading on his lips. ‘Very.’
She had a sudden vision of licking along his mouth. Tasting the salt and feeling the coolness of his lips. Pushing her tongue inside to the warmth and the flavour of him. But there was a wariness about him and frankly she couldn’t bear rejection tonight.
How the hell was she going to bridge the gap between them without just jumping him?
And then something scraped against her leg and she practically leapt the distance between them in a single bound with a tiny little squeal.
By the time he’d said, ‘It’s just seaweed,’ in her ear she was clinging to him, her face planted into his neck, her legs wrapped around his waist, like an oyster on a rock.
But his arms were around her waist and his body heat was wrapping her in its seductive embrace and his breath was husky in her ear. She could feel the crash of his heart against his ribs as no doubt he could feel hers.
‘Sorry,’ she murmured into his neck, her mouth brushing the thick thud of his carotid pulse, water droplets tickling her lips.
Cade wasn’t sure he was sorry at all. It had been a while since a woman’s legs had been wrapped around him and he’d been thinking a little too much about Callie’s legs for his own sanity. The aching tip of his erection was so close to the juncture of her spread thighs he knew it would only take the slightest movement, a tiny shift, a well-timed wave to be flush against her.
And then he would be just two bits of fabric and one mental surrender away from being inside her. He shut his eyes and willed his body to behave, pulling himself back from the edge with that supreme willpower he’d perfected.
‘Okay, crisis over,’ he said, trying to inject some lightness into the thickening atmosphere. ‘You going to be okay if I let you go?’ he asked.
Callie’s hands tightened around his neck for a moment, wanting to stay exactly where she was—wanting to cling, wanting to rub herself against him. But her overreaction to a piece of harmless seaweed seemed foolish.
And she’d still be close enough to make her move.
‘Sure,’ she said, the water droplets on his skin, so close to her mouth, taunting her.
Cade let go of her waist, letting the current float his arms out to his side, as far from her waist, her body, as possible. Yet still she clung to him, arms around his neck, legs firmly locked in place.
The proximity of her body to his felt so good—too damn good—and Cade’s erection surged in the confines of his underwear. He shut his eyes and reached for his fast-evaporating willpower. His hands slid onto her thighs, pausing momentarily at the distraction of their silky smoothness before pushing down on them slightly, signalling her to unlock.
They tightened around him and Cade swallowed hard against the urge to push up into her. For the love of God. ‘Callie.’
Callie held tightly to his neck as she reluctantly unwrapped her legs. Had she known, though, it was going to bring the apex of her thighs into close and intimate contact with his erection, she would have done it earlier. His harsh intake of breath streaked straight to their point of contact and she ground herself hard against him. She barely registered his groaned expletive or the way his hands grabbed her hips as those damn droplets got too much for her and she licked a hot trail from the hollow at the base of his throat all the way to his jaw.
Cade’s intention had been to hold her still or maybe push her away but as her hot tongue lapped at his skin, he shut his eyes, his hands sliding from her hips to the cold bare flesh of her buttocks, urging her back where she’d been, her legs locking around him again. Only this time she sat lower, her hips flush with his, her sex rubbing up and down the length of his.
The sound of the ocean around them faded as her lips trekked a path along his jaw. It was just her and him bobbing in the ocean current and only the harsh saw of their breath between them. ‘We really shouldn’t do this,’ he muttered.
‘What?’ Callie asked, her tongue tasting the salt behind his ear. ‘This?’ And she ground herself against him a little more.
‘Yes,’ he muttered, as he held her buttocks fast and did a bit of grinding of his own.
Callie gasped as everything south of her bellybutton clamped down tight. ‘I think I should get a little heavy petting for my five thousand bucks, don’t you?’
A part of Cade’s brain—a small, cold part that had curled up next to his willpower in a shrivelled hypothermic stupor—protested at being treated like a gigolo. But he wasn’t thinking with any part north of his bellybutton right now.
‘I think five thousand dollars buys you whatever you want.’
Callie stopped her exploration of his earlobe, pulling her head back slightly to look into his eyes. They were hooded in shadow but she could feel their intensity boring into hers. She drew in a shaky breath.
‘I want you hard and deep inside me.’
Cade’s heart boomed like a thunderclap in his chest as her direct request reached inside his underpants and tugged hard at its contents.
‘Yes ma’am,’ he muttered, as his lips swooped down to claim her mouth in a crushing kiss.
A kiss that he’d been dying to take since the night she’d got tipsy and come on to him. A kiss he’d been depriving himself of for too long now. A kiss that could make him rethink his aversion to dating.
And it did not disappoint.
Her lips were cold and he sucked the salty droplets of water from them like he’d been wandering in the desert for days. But then she opened to him And inside her mouth was hot. Hot and sweet. Like Shiraz and sin. Inviting him to transgress. Taking him to the dark side. And he plundered with indelicate urgency, his hands kneading her bottom, spurred on by the deep satisfaction in her moan and the dance of her tongue against his.
When he pulled back they were both breathing hard. Callie mewed a protest but he shushed her and whispered, ‘Hold on,’ against her mouth as he grasped her buttocks tight and headed for the beach. His mouth joined hers again as his quads ploughed through the current and Callie clung to him like some water nymph to her Adonis rising from the ocean.
The waves buffeted the backs of his thighs and calves as he strode out of the sea. He barely registered it above the hum in his blood and the buzz in his loins and the blinding imperative to get her naked, to get her under him, to get inside her.
From nowhere a rogue wave crashed into Cade’s knees, knocking him sideways, and he lost his footing. They tumbled into the churn of water in the shallows but didn’t lose a beat. The wet sand made a soft landing and their mouths clung and held as Cade finally had her horizontal.
He stretched out along her side, his torso trapping hers against the sand, one knee jammed high and hard between her legs. It was only water rushing in around their heads that caused them to break apart. ‘Hold on tight,’ he said again.
Her arms anchored fast around his neck and, aided by the buoyancy of the water, he half crawled, half dragged her a little higher up the wet sand where the water just lapped at their feet and legs.
Satisfied, Cade collapsed on top of her, his mouth automatically seeking the heat of hers, his body craving her softness against his hardness as He ground his throbbing erection into the scrap of fabric between her legs.
But it wasn’t enough. He needed more. He needed to be closer. He needed all of her. He broke away, easing back onto his haunches between her legs then reaching for the spaghetti straps of her underwear and pulling them down. She lifted her hips to aid him and then arched her back and unclipped her bra. He watched as her breasts spilled free and she tossed the bra aside. Her nipples were taut peaks atop firm, creamy flesh, and his mouth watered.
Cade quickly grabbed for his own underwear, fumbling it off in his haste, kicking it off his feet as he settled between her legs, her hips cradling his, his erection snug against her belly. And this time he didn’t kiss her. Instead, he lowered his head to one freezing engorged nipple and sucked it deep into the heat of his mouth. The wind snatched her guttural cry away but not before he heard it, not before its potency had streaked heat to where her belly met the hard, aching length of him.
Callie arched her back and cried out again as he switched sides and treated the other nipple to some instant central heating. She was oblivious to the water rushing up their legs to their thighs and draining away again. Oblivious to the From Here to Eternity moment. Oblivious to everything as he pleasured her breasts with his mouth and hands—sucking, licking, stroking.
Oblivious to all but the driving need to make this man want her.
He rocked his pelvis against her and Callie gasped, ‘Cade.’ His erection taunted the sensitive flesh between her legs and she locked her legs around his waist again.
She was more than ready for him. ‘Please, Cade.’ She lifted her hips in invitation. ‘Now…I need you now.’
Cade’s head was spinning. He wanted to grind into her. He wanted to thrust and slam and pound.
He wanted to make her cry out and rake her nails down his back.
‘Yes,’ he said, kissing her hard, swallowing her desperate little whimper, letting it fill his head like the roar of a crowd.
And he was poised to do just that. To plunge inside her, to hear that gasp of satisfaction. But years of practising safe sex, of fixing up patients who hadn’t, gave him pause.
Condom.
Callie felt him still. ‘What?’
‘Condom,’ he said, levering himself away from her slightly.
‘Oh, hell.’ Callie shook her head. She’d been so far gone, so desperate for his possession, she hadn’t even thought of it.
Damn Joe and her mother to hell!
Callie felt ten different kinds of frustration at being so damn close. ‘Don’t you have one in your wallet?’ she hissed.
‘No,’ he hissed back. ‘I don’t have a condom in my wallet.’
Callie dropped her arms from around his neck. Trust her to choose a guy who’d taken willpower to a whole new level. ‘Removing temptation, huh?’
‘Yup,’ Cade sighed, dropping his forehead to her chest, wishing he hadn’t been so hell-bent on putting the possbility of casual sex as beyond his reach as possible.
They lay like that for a moment or two, both struggling to get their breathing under control.
‘Okay, right,’ Cade said, rolling off her and springing to his feet. Briskly ignoring how utterly doable she was, lying naked in the sand at his feet, he held his hand out to her. ‘Come on, let’s go. We can be at my place in fifteen minutes.’
Callie looked at his hand then let her gaze wander to the evidence of his arousal jutting out proud and perfect. ‘Make it ten.’
Twelve minutes after they’d got back into the car in hastily thrown-on clothes, they arrived at the underground car park. Callie winced when she saw her reflection in the mirrored wall of the lift beneath the harsh fluorescent light. Her hair hung in bedraggled strips around her head, sand clinging like glitter to the strands and decorating her forehead. Her arms were purple from the cold, her mascara had run a little and her shirt was inside out.
But it didn’t stop Cade from pushing her hard against the opposite wall and kissing her long and slow, his hands reaching for her buttocks, pulling her in tight and flush to his hips. Her drowned-rat reflection had planted a seed of doubt inside her but the feel of his erection, still thick and potent, demonstrated her doubts were baseless.
His ardour hadn’t cooled one iota.
The doors opened and he grabbed her hand and they hurried down the corridor to his apartment so fast Callie could barely catch her breath. Then he was sliding his key into the lock and the door fell open and he was dragging her inside and pushing her against the wall, kissing her as he kicked the door shut with his foot, and Callie couldn’t breathe for the weight of wanting him.
‘You’re freezing,’ he said, pulling away and taking her hand again, whisking her through the open plan of his living quarters and into his bedroom.
He planted another hard kiss on her mouth. ‘Warm shower,’ he said, pushing her towards the ensuite. ‘Go and get naked. I’m right behind you.’
Callie didn’t need to be told twice. She felt cold right down to her bones and her clothes were damp and scratchy from when she’d climbed into them still wet and sandy. She stripped off her shirt and jeans, leaving her totally naked. Their underwear had been God knew where—out at sea probably—and neither of them had wanted to waste any time looking.
She stepped into the shower, leaving the door open, and turned on the hot tap, grateful when the water took onl
y seconds to get up to temperature. She sighed as she dunked her head underneath and warm water sluiced over her freezing shoulders and achingly stiff nipples. She pressed her palms against them to relieve the ache, wishing the ache between her legs could be satisfied as easily.
But then the door clicked shut behind her and a foil packet landed on the soap dish in front of her and two big hands were gliding up her belly, pushing hers aside to claim her breasts, his thumbs stroking across her nipples. His mouth was at her neck and Callie shut her eyes and let her head fall back on his shoulder for a moment as his erection pressed into her back and sensation rippled everywhere in delicious hot waves.
‘You’re so sexy,’ he muttered against her neck.
It was exactly what she needed to hear. To know. Callie turned in his arms, her hands sliding up his neck, their bodies pressed together from chest to thighs, his erection steely against the softness of her belly.
Callie stroked her index fingers along his mouth. ‘I need you now,’ she said, and raised herself up on tiptoe and kissed him long and deep and slow as warm water rained down around them.
Cade didn’t need any more encouragement. He hauled her up his body and pushed her back against the tiles in one smooth movement. Her legs locked around his waist as they had in the ocean, except she was warm everywhere now, and he feasted on her breasts, rolling her nipples round and round his mouth until she was crying out his name and begging him for release.
‘Goddamn it, Cade,’ Callie swore as she blindly groped for the condom she knew was somewhere behind and to the left of him.
Her fingers finally found the hard edge and grabbed it. Dragging in ragged breaths, she tried to undo it with her fingers but she could barely co-ordinate them with his mouth creating such havoc so she tore at it with her teeth, gasping as his mouth pulled and tugged at her nipple.
Finally she liberated it. ‘Cade,’ she said, pushing at his shoulders. He ignored her to switch sides and her eyes rolled back in her head as she allowed herself to be distracted by the sharp spike of pleasure.