Chapter Twenty
CHAPTER TWENTY
As they walked hand in hand back to the houseboat, everything felt different somehow. They weren’t just playing around anymore. This was real. No longer a temporary fling, but something that might last forever. Even thinking the word stopped Malcolm in his tracks, and though he tried to cover it, Josie noticed.
“Everything okay?”
He resumed his normal stride. “Yes, everything’s great.” Her expression seemed a little strained. “What about you?” he asked. “How are you doing? It’s been a hell of a day, huh?”
She smiled, and that ray of sunshine never failed to make his heart beat a little faster. “I’m good. Really good. Everything is just so amazing. So many things I didn’t see coming have happened. Moving here. Making new friends so quickly. And… you.”
His brother’s words still lingered in Malcolm’s mind as he leaned over to kiss her. “You won’t regret taking a chance on Elderflower Island. And the new job. And me.” He kissed her again. “Especially me.”
She gave him another smile. “I hope so.” Her light reticence made him want even more to prove his feelings for her.
They walked past the handful of other houseboats, and he unlocked his door. As he closed it behind them, it felt like they were in their own private, special world. A world made just for the two of them. One where nothing could come between them. A world with no room for any doubts. Any fears.
“Nearly every time we’ve walked in this door, I’ve ripped your clothes off and pounced on you,” he said. “But I want you for so much more than just sex. You know that, don’t you?”
He had never cared whether a woman knew that he was emotionally invested before. This was the first time.
“I do know it.” And then she closed the gap between them. “And you don’t have to worry—you can always rip my clothes off the moment we’re behind closed doors. I love that about you. How you don’t hold back your passion.”
But he always had, before her. Held his passion in check. On all fronts. It was only now, only because of her, that he was finally letting those passions run free.
“You’re special to me, Josie. So damned special.”
She laid one hand against his cheek. “You don’t need to convince me. Everything you do has convinced me.” And then she moved even closer, wrapping her arms around his neck as she pressed herself against him. “Drinking champagne on an empty stomach made me feel a little wild. Do you want to be wild with me, Malcolm Sullivan?”
“Hell yes,” he growled, glad for the chance not only to love her, but also for the lovemaking to push away the voices inside his head asking if he really did know what he was doing. “Tell me one of your fantasies.” His request was raw, possessive. He didn’t want to give her one fantasy, he wanted to give her all of them. More than that, he wanted to be the only one to bring her pleasure ever again.
“When I’m with you,” she said in breathy voice, “I have so many fantasies. I don’t know which one to pick first.”
Her words thrilled him, knowing that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. “We’re going to do them all,” he promised. “So you can pick any of them, and you don’t have to worry. All I want is to give you pleasure. So much damned pleasure.”
He drew her closer, lowering his head to the curve of her neck and shoulder. “Tell me,” he breathed against her skin.
“Blindfold me.” Her cheeks became a beautiful rose color as she betrayed a hint of shyness at her own request. “I want to be nothing but sensation.”
He pressed a kiss to her lips, and then he quickly walked back into their bedroom to get a tie. He came back, dangling it between his index and middle finger.
“If at any point you want to change the game, we change it.”
She nodded, staring at the tie.
He moved behind her, his heart beating hard inside his chest. Already, it was difficult to breathe normally, and he hadn’t even stripped her clothes off or started touching her. That was what she did to him. She made him feel. Feel everything.
Gently, he brought the silk fabric over her eyes and then lowered it into place, tying a firm enough knot at the back of her head that it wouldn’t slip, but still making sure it was loose enough not to distract her. He didn’t want anything to distract her from all the ways he wanted to make her gasp and moan and cry out his name.
He lowered his hands to her shoulders, then ran them down her arms so that he could thread his fingers through hers. He lifted her hands up over her head. “Hold them there for as long as it’s comfortable.”
He smiled at the little shiver that ran through her. She was sweet and she was sexy. It was a heady combination. Not moving from behind her, he reached for the hems of her sweater and T-shirt, letting his fingers deliberately brush over the soft skin of her stomach and loving her little shivers beneath his touch. He slowly lifted the fabric up her torso, over her stomach, and then her rib cage, and then her breasts, and then all the way up over her head.
He threw the clothes to the floor, then leaned in and whispered, “You can put your arms down now. But don’t do anything else unless I tell you.” He liked the little hint of a smile he saw in her profile, the proof that she was enjoying herself. He reached around and undid the snap on her jeans, lowering the zipper next, then pushing the denim down her legs before kneeling to untie and help her slip out of her sneakers. Then he pushed the denim all the way off her legs.
Slowly, he made a circle around her in the very small lounge of his boat. He wanted her to know he was looking, as that would heighten her excitement. He spoke softly. “You’re beautiful. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
Her smile grew bigger. He still wasn’t sure she believed him, but she should. Because he was telling her the complete and unfettered truth. Her beauty was both skin deep and far deeper than that. A light shone from within her, a light that had captivated him even when they were in high school.
He came to a stop in front of her this time, reaching out to let his fingers play over the straps of her bra. He stroked over them and then beneath them, but didn’t slide them down. Not yet. Then he ran his hands along the sides of both breasts, along her chest and the inward curve of her waist, and then to her hips, finally sealing them over the fabric there. Again, he stroked over and then between the fabric and her skin, but he didn’t take anything off. Not yet.
He stepped just a little bit closer and then lowered his lips toward hers, close enough that he could feel her breath, but not quite close enough for their lips to touch. He could hear how the breath shook in her lungs. And then, finally, he pressed his lips to hers. Her breath rushed out in a gasp. And she tasted so sweet. Always so damned sweet.
He ran kisses from her lips, down her neck, down to the hollow of her throat, where he slipped his tongue out once, twice, until a low moan emerged, and he could feel the vibration against his lips. Then he ran his kisses lower, over the swells of her breasts and then lower still, down the very center of her body. Down to her belly button, where he tasted her again, before running kisses down still farther. He cupped her hips, loving the feel of her curves, knowing he couldn’t wait another second to have even more of her. He wasn’t just teasing her. He’d been teasing himself too. And he’d hit the end of his restraint.
He slid her underwear down slowly, but he couldn’t wait any longer to press his lips to her sex to taste her fully. She moved her hands to his shoulders, holding on, and he could feel her legs trembling as he gently widened her stance. Every part of her was sweet, and he swore he could have stayed like this for hours, learning every inch of her with his lips, his tongue, his hands.
Soon, she was whispering his name and then shuddering beneath his touch. And even then, he didn’t stop—not yet. Not until they both had more. He was gentler now, leisurely as he drove her higher, up so high that when she came for him, she was no longer whispering his name, but crying it out.
* * *
Josie didn’t think her body could withstand this much pleasure. But Malcolm was relentless in giving. Giving. Giving. And, oh, it felt so good, but she didn’t want it to be a one-way thing. She wanted to give him pleasure too.
As if he could read her mind, he said as he kissed his way up her body, “Do you have any idea how good this makes me feel?”
She licked her lips, shook her head. “But the pleasure’s been all mine so far.”
“Wrong. It’s been both of ours. Every time you cry out my name, it’s the best it’s ever been for me.”
He gave her a kiss, and then he drew back and moved his hands around to the latch of her bra. And then he made her wait. Wait to have that final layer of fabric stripped from her skin. Wait to be completely bare to him. Wait for another onslaught of pure sensation. Because with her vision temporarily gone, she was a mass of aroused nerve endings. Awaiting his next kiss, the next stroke of his tongue over her skin, the next brush of his fingertips.
“I love seeing, feeling your anticipation as it mounts,” he said in a low voice.
She licked her lips again, finding it increasingly harder to breathe. “I like it too.”
On a groan, he kissed her again, lingering this time. And then, at last, he freed the clasp at her spine and let the bra fall. She felt him cup her in his hands, felt the awe in his touch, felt the desire in the way he slowly moved the pads of his thumbs over her aroused flesh. She was the one groaning now and arching into him, putty in his hands, letting herself be molded by him, by his desire, and by her own.
“I want to touch you too,” she said, and reached for his shirt, trying to pull it up and off.
His laugh was raw and hoarse with need as he helped her, pulling off his sweater and shirt until his torso was bare. With greedy hands and mouth, she touched him, craving him more and more with every second they were together. She simply couldn’t get enough of him. She needed him completely naked, just like her. So that she could touch all of him. Love all of him. She moved her hands to his jeans, but he was already one step ahead of her, yanking the zipper down, then shoving them off.
She reached for the warm skin of his hips and then around the front to clasp his hard heat in her hands. Soft like silk and yet hard like steel. She gripped him gently at first and then with a firmer touch as he pushed into her hands, and she ran them up the length of him and then down and then up again. Until the next thing she knew, he was lifting her in his arms. He had barely laid her back on the bed when she heard the tearing of the condom package. She wanted to help, but without sight, she’d only make the process take longer.
And she couldn’t wait any longer for him. For the ultimate pleasure of becoming one with him. There were faint bits of light coming in under the blindfold, but not enough that she could see. No, there was only his delicious masculine scent. The sound of his ragged breathing to match hers. And the pleasure of feeling him move over her at last and then fill her. Not slowly this time, but in one hard thrust that she welcomed with a gasp of pleasure.
She wrapped her legs around him and would have wrapped her arms around him, too, except he threaded their fingers together and lifted her hands above her head, holding them on the pillow. Holding her right where he wanted her as he moved over her, into her, harder, faster.
There were no words, only the sounds of the purest bliss. Unrivaled ecstasy. More sensation than she had ever felt before. Everything was heightened, and she fully gave herself over to it.
This was different. And not just because of the blindfold. Tonight, everything felt bigger, heavier, because this was real now. This was no fling. This wasn’t just a passing couple of weeks in her life to experience pleasure. This wasn’t just about her body anymore. It was about her heart too. And it was about trusting Malcolm not only with her body, but also with everything she was.
She crested the peak on a cry, but she didn’t fall alone. Malcolm was there with her, every heartbeat, every breath, every blissful explosion of pleasure.