Chapter 37
“She asleep?” Vince asked as I came out onto the terrace.
He was sitting by the fire bowl with a bottle of beer, staring into the flames. His face looked pale, his gaze empty.
“Yeah,” I whispered and sat down next to him.
Once we got home, I had helped Laurie take a shower and get into bed and stayed next to her even once she’d fallen asleep, listening to her quiet breathing.
“I was scared shitless about her.”
“I know,” I said, leaning against his shoulder.
“If something had happened to her. If… Fuck.”
“Hey.” I sought his eyes. “Everything turned out okay. Nothing happened to her. Or to you.”
He tilted his head. “To me?”
I winked. “Yeah. To you. I nearly died of worry when you were out there.”
For a moment he seemed surprised, and I asked myself why.
“I’m a good swimmer.”
“I’m a good tennis player. All the same, sometimes I miss.”
“Not this afternoon.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“From?”
“From it being a close call.”
“It wasn’t close. Not for me.”
“It was,” I burst out.
I pressed my lips together, felt him staring at me.
“What’s wrong?”
“I was scared, Vince. For you. I was scared that you would drown and that I’d never see you again.” My voice rose. “That the last thing I said to you was something stupid about a bikini.”
A slight smile appeared on his lips. “That was me.”
“Hmm?”
“The thing about the bikini. That was me.”
He was right. I’d said something else, but I couldn’t remember now.
“What would you have liked to tell me?” he asked in a voice as soft as velvet.
Our eyes locked. And what I saw in his went straight to my core. This here was more for him. More than it should have been. More than we had said. And he wasn’t the only one. The realization hit me with full force.
“Lou,” he whispered. “What would you have told me?”
He reached out his hand and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. His breath tickled my cheek as his face approached mine. Slowly and cautiously. I swallowed and sucked in my lower lip.
“You’re nervous,” he mumbled.
“Yeah. But I don’t know why.”
My heart began to pound even more as he came even closer. So close that the tips of our noses were touching. We held our breath and remained caught in the tension as it grew stronger and stronger.
“I do.”
A breath later, he pressed his mouth to mine.
His lips muffled my gasp. I was powerless against the intensity.
The feelings flooding me from all sides.
Passion, desire, and fear bubbled over inside me.
My head was so overwhelmed that I let my heart decide.
And my heart knew exactly what it wanted and had for longer than I’d realized.
I climbed onto his lap and wrapped my arms around his neck.
Ran my fingers through his hair then pulled his mouth back onto mine, kissing him deeply, hungrily.
His hands felt the hem of my shirt and slipped under the thin cotton fabric.
Stroking my back. Rough fingertips on soft skin.
I shivered in the best possible way. Let him pull me even closer until I could feel what awaited me.
He was hard. Ready. And so was I. The mere realization was enough to send a tingle of anticipation through my abdomen.
He removed his lips from mine and took off my top, carelessly throwing it to the side.
Effortlessly opened the clasp of my bikini and slipped the Lycra off my body.
His eyes swept across my breasts, which felt heavy and full.
Looking at them instead of touching them was almost too much, and he stopped.
“Nothing you haven’t seen before,” I reminded him with a touch of impatience.
“Doesn’t seem that way,” he whispered, and to my surprise it didn’t sound like something he was just saying.
It sounded rapt. Concentrated. As if he could caress them with his eyes.
His index finger began to trace the fine tan line of my bikini bottoms. From my collarbone to my right breast, to my left, and then back up, leaving a tingling trace behind on my skin.
I wanted him. Oh my god, how I wanted him.
I impatiently began to rub back and forth across his lap, causing him to emit a hoarse moan.
And yet, he wouldn’t let himself be rushed and began to run his lips down the very same course his finger had taken. I was melting.
“Vince,” I moaned. “I…”
He smothered the rest of my sentence with a kiss that was anything but soft.
His tongue greedily forced its way into my mouth.
Our teeth bumped roughly against each other.
I tugged his T-shirt over his head and tossed it behind me.
Almost at the exact same moment he yelled, “Stop!” But by then it was too late.
It had landed in the middle of the fire bowl and burst into flames.
Eyes wide, I watched the fire eat through the fibers.
For a moment, it was eerily quiet. Our eyes met.
One second, two. Then we burst out laughing, so hard that tears welled up in our eyes.
“I’ll buy you a new one,” I said, once I’d calmed down somewhat.
“Bullshit. It was ancient.”
“But you really seemed to like wearing it.”
“To the beach. It’s really no big deal.”
He kissed me and, to my surprise, we were able to find our way back to a romantic mood without any effort at all. He lifted me up carefully, then laid me down onto the cushions and bent over me.
“Hi,” he whispered, and the look he gave me would have caused a candle to melt.
“Hi,” I replied, trembling.
He began to kiss my upper body. My collarbone, my neckline, between my breasts. His mouth wandered lower, and I could feel all the tiny hairs on my stomach stand up. As he moved closer to my waistband, I was overcome by a shudder.
“Do you want to go inside?” he asked quietly.
“I want you to keep going.”
His expression told me that he liked my response.
Without taking his eyes off me, he undid the button of my denim shorts, unzipped them, and slid them down my thighs along with my bikini bottoms. Laying stark naked before him, I felt two kinds of heat.
One shot through my groin, the other through my cheeks.
But my desire was great enough to push back the shame.
“Now you.”
With a quick movement, he removed his shorts, and I shakily drew a breath.
“Nothing you haven’t seen before,” he said.
It was hard for me to smile. Even though he was right. I was familiar with the brown hairs of his belly and the tan lines on his hip bones, knew what he looked like when he was excited. And yet it was different from the last few days. Different from the moments we’d spent in his room.
“Hey,” he said, seeking out my eyes. “We don’t have to…”
“It’s important.”
He blinked. I pointed at him and then at myself and then back at him again.
“This here. It’s important.”
He smiled softly. “Yeah, it is.” Barely audible, he murmured, “It always was.”