“Francesca, I . . .”
But she cuts me off, pushing up on her toes, a hand already buried in my hair as she pulls my mouth down to meet hers and I half expect it to match the last time this happened, hard and rough, mostly pleasure, but just the right amount of pain.
But it’s not.
As soon as her lips find mine, the kiss turns hesitant, gentle even. And if that’s what she wants, that’s what I’ll give her, but first . . .
I pull away with every ounce of restraint in my body and pull in a gasping breath. “Before we do this, I need to know something.”
“Anything,” she whispers, her lips ghosting against mine asshe says it, close enough to send a firestorm of sensation over my skin.
“Do you really want this or is it because . . . because of what happened tonight.”
“I thought . . . I thought you knew . . .” she says, blinking up at me. “It was always there for me, the whole time, hovering in the background. Every time you fought with me over some stupid point in my analysis, every time you did something exactly the opposite of what I’d told you and, especially when you followed my game plan, when you listened.”
“You liked when I listened to youandwhen I didn’t listen . . .” I say with a laugh, and a quick peck to her nose, “. . . so always?”
“Always,” she says, and laughs too, a light, airy sound that makes something in my chest loosen. I hate what happened to her, but she’s going to be okay.
“So, this isn’t just because you’re upset that you got fired and you need a distraction . . .”
“Charlie?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up,” she says, and kisses me again, bracing herself against my shoulders and then leaping up into my arms, knowing, instinctively somehow, that I’d take her cue and catch her.
My hands wrap around her thighs, my thumbs landing in that clever little crease between them and her hipbones. I could spend a lifetime exploring the soft skin there, running my fingers over it, tracing it with my tongue, sucking a bruising kiss into it, in a place that only she’ll see.
And suddenly I don’t care why she wants this now. She wants me and that’s enough.
I ignore the creaking protest of my knee as I turn back toward the house. We’re too exposed out here. I make it through the slider, managing to close it behind me when the internal creakturns into a scream and I have to toss her away from me onto the bed as I collapse beside her onto the mattress with a huffing laugh.
“Are you okay?” she asks, leaning up on her hands to hover over me, the damp strands of her hair tickling my shoulders and chest.
“I’m good,” I assure her, cupping the back of her head and drawing her down for a long, lingering kiss, just like I’ve always wanted to.
I nudge her bottom lip with the tip of my tongue and then she groans into my mouth while letting me deepen the kiss, the sound echoing down into me, setting my body alight and my hips softly thrusting up off the mattress into hers.
The bed shifts around me as she tosses a leg over mine and settles down against me, her legs on either side of my thighs, her ass sitting round and full and soft against where my dick is growing hard and hot encased in the cotton of my boxer briefs.
The towel falls away as she starts to set a rhythm, long and slow figure eights that have my hands gripping her hips, along for the ride with her. She pulls away from the kiss and sits up, her head thrown back as she keeps up the pace, giving me a view that even the long stretch of the Pacific Ocean can’t match, the dips and curves and peaks of her body completely intoxicating
The light pink lace of her bra and the matching panties are still wet and dark against her pale skin and I run a hand up from her hip to slide my fingertips along the underside of it, before cupping the weight of her in my palm, while my other hand traces up her spine to the clasp.
Her eyes open as she looks back down at me and nods, pressing her chest deeper into my grip and running her hands up and down my chest before bracing herself there to get a better angle. My hips are rising to meet hers of their own volition when, with a twist of my fingers, the hooks are undone.
She laughs lightly, leaning down to nip gently at my lips. “It should probably annoy me that you can do that one handed.”
“But it doesn’t, does it?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“Nope,” she says, popping the “p” sound and then pressing a lingering kiss to the underside of my jaw and then to my neck while I gently lower the straps of her bra down to her elbows. She lingers there for a moment, her mouth working hard against my pulse point as I grow even harder against her stomach.
Finally, she sits up and lets me draw the lacy scrap of fabric from her body entirely, before tossing it away and rising up from beneath her to bury my face against the soft mounds tipped with dusky nipples, already rock hard and waiting for my mouth.
A quick circle of my tongue has her gasping and burying her hands into the back of my hair, urging me forward. I match the pressure of my mouth with my fingers at her other breast, taking my time, exploring the salty sweetness of her skin made even more so from the salt water from my pool. Her hips begin to collide against mine with more urgency, and when my teeth gently graze against her, her entire body gives a gentle shudder, a sweet, soft orgasm that has her breathing out a gentle moan against my ear.
She’s so responsive to my touch, it’s incredible, and seconds later as she recovers, she grins at me before pushing at my shoulders with one hand, another at my sternum before following it with her mouth, her tongue tracing the long line that leads to my bellybutton. It used to be a little bit firmer, a little more defined, but she doesn’t seem to care as her fingers slip under the elastic of my boxer briefs and give them a little playful snap.
