by Dani Collins
The small pool was situated in a grotto-like private balcony off the master bedroom, which Gabriel was using. Four torches cast flickering light and left a citrus scent in the air that she suspected were meant to discourage insects. Gabriel was in the water, his arms stretched along the edges, hair wet and slicked back from his face.
She tiptoed down the steps into the cool water, sipped her champagne and set it on the edge. And wondered how awkward the next week would be, trying to make conversation with a man who expressed so little.
“You would think they would situate the pool so guests could watch the sun set,” she murmured, seeing nothing but bush around them.
“The privacy allows for suits to be optional.”
She snapped him a look and he chuckled.
“Your face is priceless. I’m wearing a suit.” He stood in a rush of water so she could see the snug band of black.
Not much of a suit. The water trickled and slid in silvery trails down every glorious bronze plane and dent in his chiseled physique. A black arrow of hair disappeared into the low band and the fabric cupped—
She jerked her gaze off that bulge and quickly wet her dry throat with a gulp of champagne. She thought he chuckled again, but he turned away to fetch the bottle out of the bucket, which he’d left on the edge near the stairs. He waded across to top up her glass, then refilled his own and settled beside her.
But she sensed his tension.
“Are you angry that we had to come here?” she asked.
“I don’t have to do anything.” He turned his head to regard her. “Neither do you.”
And just like that, she understood his tension was the same kind that gripped her—sexual.
“What if I want to?” It was her honeymoon.
He stretched out his arm, setting his glass on the edge and tipping back his head. His chest rose above the water as he took in a deep breath and let it out.
“Do you know where babies come from, Luli?”
“Oh, for—Is that a real question? Yes.” She rolled her eyes.
“Being a virgin, I’ll presume you’re not on any sort of contraception?”
“I’ve heard of something called condoms?” she shot back facetiously, then buried her mouth against the rim of her glass, admitting, “I’m curious.”
“Curious is fine.” He abruptly gathered her, easily floating her in the water so she was sitting with her knees straddling his thighs. His hands sat against the crook where the tops of her thighs met her hips, hot palms branding her through the fabric of her short shorts. “I’m more than curious. I’m obsessed with finding out how high this fire between us might burn.”
That fire was beginning to consume her now. “Okay,” she breathed, leaning in.
His thumbs dug in at her hips.
“But slipups happen. I signed our marriage contract thinking you would provide me an heir. If you don’t want children, I’m not going to force you, but I will need some. If you don’t want them, we’ll have to divorce at some point so I can marry someone else who does.”
She sat back and bit her lip in consternation.
“You see? I wasn’t entirely joking when I said you shouldn’t give your virginity to the first man you marry. How involved do you want to get, knowing this marriage won’t last?”
“What is my second husband likely to think if I show up a virgin? You’re appalled and—”
“I’m not appalled. I’m recognizing that your inexperience makes you vulnerable.”
“Then give me experience,” she near cried. “I’ve never had a boyfriend, never done anything. Here I am married, on my honeymoon, and I get nothing? That’s so typical of the way my life goes.”
She started to shift off his lap, but his hands tightened. His cheekbones were like scraped granite, high and hard.
“Stay.” His voice was harsh, but not angry. “Kiss me. Take what you want, then.”
She wanted to ask if he meant it, but her voice was caught in her throat and her thoughts burned away in the flare of heat in his gaze.
His hands shifted, barely moved really, but the easing of his thumbs at the front of her hip bones and the subtle pressure of his fingertips against the swells over her butt urged her to lean forward.
She started to set her hands on his shoulders, realized she still held her half glass of champagne and put it on the edge. Then she set her hands against the tense muscles of his neck and kissed him.
She kissed him the way he had kissed her, with long slides of her mouth across his, lips parted so they could taste one another. He was delicious. Better than champagne. And the way he kissed her back was pure magic. She wanted to do this forever, mouth catching at mouth, easing away then sinking back to be devoured by him.
She couldn’t get close enough. She shifted, arched under the slide of his hands up her back and—
Oh. She knew what that pressure was, startlingly hard against the tender flesh between her legs. She tensed in surprise, rising slightly as her thighs tried to close.
He didn’t disguise the hunger in his expression, didn’t flinch from the fact she knew he was aroused. He only quirked a brow in silent query. A tug between her shoulder blades released the tension of the tie behind her neck and relaxed the fabric across her breasts.
She instinctively caught at it, saw the passion in his eyes dim slightly at her reflexive modesty. He swallowed, nodded slightly.
She slowly let her hands drop, taking the front of her top with her.
Her breasts sat partially submerged, nipples thrusting in dark coral peaks above the surface.
For long moments, he simply stared, breath unsteady. Then he said, “I want to taste that.”
His voice was a spell, drawing her to dig her fingers into the tendons across his shoulders and lift on her knees, glorying in the way his hands slid all the way to the backs of her thighs and steadied her. Encouraged her to arch and offer herself in a way that had always made her wonder if it could really be all that—
His mouth enclosed the tip in heat and she opened her mouth in a soundless scream. He wasn’t gentle as he threw her into the inferno. He was scorching and greedy, filling her with the pound of her own heart so she rocked there gently in the water, hammered by pleasure as he sucked at her. Caught in a net of live wires that pulsed sensations into her loins.
Just when she thought she couldn’t take any more, he moved to the other breast.
She speared her fingers through his damp hair, encouraged him to draw harder, only distantly aware that the noises she heard weren’t from a jungle animal, but from the one inside her. She was pushing her backside into the hands that squeezed and roamed, and began to sink back down so she could feel that fierce pressure of him between her legs again.
“More?” he asked against her mouth.
“Yes,” she moaned, and kissed him with flagrant passion, twining her arms around his neck and tilting her head for maximum submission to his kiss. She wanted him to know what he was doing to her and to keep doing it.
His arms hardened. He lifted her as he stood in a sluice of water, surprising her into gasping. He turned and sat her on the edge.
“How much more? Lie back and let me taste the rest of you?”
Wicked tingles raced from her face to her breasts and deep into the flesh protected by the shorts he began to peel off her hip. She didn’t have it in her to be quite so blatant, but he helped her, leaning over and licking at her nipples again so she eased back and let him have his fill.
He picked up the part of the top that covered her stomach and lifted it, kissed her quivering abdomen while his other hand continued easing the shorts off her hips. By the time she had to pick up her hips so he could get them right off, she was screaming with anticipation.
She let her eyes drift shut then, “Oh!”
He poured the cool champagne across t
he tops of her legs, chuckling at the way she jumped before he leaned down to take a long and luscious taste into the crease of her thigh.
“Still with me?” he asked, sipping from her navel and petting the backs of his knuckles over the fine hairs protecting her most sensitive flesh.
If she could form words, she would tell him he could do whatever he wanted to her. She was a virgin at the dragon’s mercy, trapped in his private lair, feeling the heat of his breath.
“Yes,” she hissed.
“You’re beautiful. So beautiful,” he said huskily, wafting the words across her mound. He shifted her thigh onto his shoulder and gently spread the slippery dampness of her response against the petals of her sex.
She made a noise of agony and tried to muffle it with the back of her wrist.
“Let me know you like it,” he ordered.
“I do,” she moaned, ready to beg if he didn’t quit teasing.
His fingertip circled, knowing exactly what he was doing because he chuckled softly and said, “You do.” Then the heat of the most intimate kiss arrived. He crooked her knee outward and took his time feasting on her, letting her bask in the sheer magnificence of the experience.
This, she thought, staring up at the star-speckled sky, feeling the hot night breeze sensually caressing her everywhere that he couldn’t reach—this was luxury. She never wanted or needed anything else in the world except this.
His finger lightly probed, making her clench in reaction and intensifying the sensations.
“Hurt?” He withdrew.
“No. Please.” She was panting and had to lick her lips.
His touch returned, making her throw her arm across her eyes and lift her hips as she groaned jaggedly. It was so good, so good, and he kept pleasuring her with unhurried caresses until she thought she would liquefy and disappear.
His intrusion deepened slightly, did something that made the pleasure sharpen and redouble. She bit down on her lip as he focused on delivering her past what she could bear and into a profound climax. She sobbed with abandonment as her stomach muscles contracted and her thighs quivered, the whole of her convulsing in glorious release.
Slowly he withdrew his touch and planted two gentle kisses on each of her inner thighs before he rose to kiss her still-trembling abdomen.
“I have to go shower. Now.” His voice grated with strain. “Before I forget my good intentions and take this too far.”
She rolled her head on the hard tiles beneath her, still filled with lassitude. “I’d like to touch you. Help.”
“Do you realize what’s going to happen if you do?”
“In theory.” She smiled with her newfound womanly experience. “That’s why I want to do it.”
He made a noise that was both strangled laughter and defeat. In a lithe move, he settled beside her on the tiles and covered her mouth, kissing her with all the passion in him that had yet to be satisfied.
It made her hungry again and she kissed him with abandon until he growled with suffering. She cupped his jaw, urging him to back off a little so she could see.
His tiny bathing suit was too small to contain his arousal. Fascinated, she started to reach out, glanced at him.
“Be my guest.”
“Show me,” she whispered.
He did, wrapping her hand around him and teaching her what he liked. They kissed again as she caressed him. Kissed until the hand he’d tangled in her hair stung and his body shuddered and his feral cries spilled across her lips.
* * *
They enjoyed a mellow dinner in the dining room, chatting on and off with the couple at the next table.
Luli almost felt as though Gabriel had deliberately drawn those other people in to dispel the intimacy between him and Luli, which stung. She was beginning to realize what he’d meant about how she needed to be careful how much of herself she gave him. He had warned her that physical closeness would make her long for the emotional kind and it was true. She already did.
What she didn’t understand was why he didn’t want to give it to her.
“Can I ask why you were estranged from Mae?” She paused on the bridge to take hold of the rope that formed the rails and looked up at the stars. “I know she didn’t exactly reach out. She was very reserved. Is that a family trait?” she tacked on lightly.
“To some extent.” He moved to stand beside her. “I don’t spend a lot of time navel-gazing and paying therapists to tell me my family of origin is the source of all my problems, but what little I remember of my mother, she was very quiet. Regretful, perhaps, but I may be projecting. Given that Mae drove my mother to marry my father, I didn’t see a point in pursuing a relationship with her and possibly winding up committing a similar act of recklessness.”
“Present marriage excluded.”
“Of course.”
She smiled briefly, but it faded to sadness. “Your parents weren’t in love?” Was that why he didn’t feel he was capable of it? He had no example of it?
“My father was. Perhaps my mother was.” What she could see of his shadowed expression was inscrutable. “I don’t remember them fighting, but I was young.”
“How did she die? Mae never said.”
“A complication with her pregnancy. She wouldn’t let them take the baby and they both died.”
“I’m so sorry. That’s terrible.” She thought of Mae’s inexpressive face on the few occasions when she had mentioned her daughter. She must have been containing so much pain.
Much like Gabriel’s mask of indifference as he nodded toward the end of the bridge where their villa sat.
She didn’t take the hint.
“You lost a brother or sister.” He must be terribly lonely.
His shoulder jerked. “I wouldn’t wish my childhood on anyone else.”
She cocked her head, thinking of what he’d said about being bullied. “Mixed race? I thought America was the great melting pot, accepting of all.”
“What does that even mean?” he scoffed. “I’m pig iron, that’s true, but I wasn’t something anyone had use for until I refined myself into that other American ideal, the self-made man.” He spoke with an infinite depth of cynicism.
“I hate that feeling of not fitting.” Her heart panged with more than empathy. She was living that feeling even now. “The pageant school was a competitive place, but at least we all looked and sounded the same. The whole time I’ve been at Mae’s, I’ve felt like a big, sore thumb. Now I’m with you and I’m a square peg trying to fit into a dollar sign.”
“Fitting in is overrated.”
“I do that.” In so many ways, they were so alike. “I convince myself I don’t want what I can’t have.”
His resounding silence made her look up at him. He seemed so remote in that moment, her heart lurched.
“What I mean is, I always told myself it didn’t matter that I didn’t have money of my own because my needs were always met,” she tried to explain. “It works as a coping strategy. Especially when I looked at all the money Mae had and she didn’t have what she really wanted, which was her daughter.”
Still he said nothing.
“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” she hurried on. “Mae was difficult. I presumed she was controlling and isolated me because she had lost her daughter, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that was her nature from the beginning. Maybe your mother felt suffocated and pushed Mae away. I wouldn’t think your mother giving birth to you was an act of defiance, though. She probably wanted a family. If she had survived and you had siblings, you maybe wouldn’t have felt so set apart.”
“It’s late. We should both get some sleep.” He touched her shoulder.
She hesitated. “Together?”
“I don’t think that’s wise.” His flinty gaze met hers, read the injury she couldn’t hide. “I did warn you,” he said of his gentle rebuff
.
If this was how much it hurt to be close to him, then pushed away, he was right. It was too much to bear. More than she wanted to risk.
Forlorn, she went to bed alone.
* * *
He didn’t hear her so much as feel her move through the villa as sunrise approached. He rose from the bed where his mind had been too noisy and his body on fire with the knowledge he could have her—he only needed to compromise what few principles he had.
He had taken things way too far by the plunge pool, rationalizing that he was doing a damned public service by granting her the experience she craved.
He had pushed the boundaries, though. He had seduced her and had wanted all that they’d done and more. Everything. He was quite convinced she would have gone all the way if he’d guided her there.
Her startled newness to his most intimate caresses had told him she was as virginal as she claimed, however, passionate response notwithstanding. Recognizing that had allowed him to keep his head and take her to dinner instead of keeping her under him the rest of the night.
When she appeared dressed for dinner wearing a dreamy, adoring smile, he had realized his arrogant mistake. He had spent the next hours backpedaling, not wanting to lead her on.
Because he wasn’t like other people. He might meet society’s expectations by marrying and producing heirs, but only because he saw the elegant simplicity in it. He didn’t want or need a wife and family. He wasn’t trying to “fit in” or feel closer to anyone.
I do that. Convince myself I don’t want what I can’t have.
Her words shouldn’t stick like a fishbone in his throat, but they did. He was an honest person, especially with himself. And he had always known himself to prefer being alone.
At least, he had managed to convince himself he preferred living solo. It wasn’t lost on him that he was clinging to that belief even as he stood here watching her instead of lying alone in his bed.
She wore a pair of loose pajama bottoms and a snug, sleeveless top. She took a moment to look out at the western horizon, still purple and dotted with fading stars, then looked to the moon.