His hands went to my rear, barely covered in a bikini bottom, and pulled me to the edge so that my core ran up against his body. Heat combined with the cool of the water and air, driving sensations I’d never felt before as our hands and tongues explored, demanding and retreating in a beautiful rhythm. The longer the earth-shattering kiss continued, the more the ache of heartbreak turned into the simple ache of desire.
The passion behind the slow lap of his tongue in my mouth had me moaning. Had me tightening my legs around him as a foreign idea filled me. Knowledge that this was the one place I was meant to be—next to this man who drove me crazy, and drove me to drink, and drove me to pleasure.
A door slammed, bringing us back to where we were, but when he pulled his lips away, there wasn’t regret in his eyes. There wasn’t self-hatred; there was only longing. It was more than lust. It was a sensual craving mixed with emotions I’d never received from a man. My body beat out a return answer.
I ran a finger along his lips, and he nipped at it, causing me to smile. It was a new reaction from either of us after any of our intimate moments. There was no remorse, only a yearning for more.
“Are you two going to be done in time for dinner?” Maribelle’s voice reached us from the veranda.
Nash ran a hand along my side all the way from my hip to the curve of my breast before backing away. He grabbed his sunglasses from where I’d placed them next to me, slid them on, and then grinned up at her, the Nash I’d very first encountered coming back. Charming. Teasing. But now I knew it for what it was. It was a Nash who was hiding behind a front.
“Depends on what you’ve made me,” he said.
She tutted. “What do I always make you on the second night you’re here?”
“Red beans and rice followed by beignets.” He grinned.
“It was your daddy’s favorite. But then, that’s what comes from being raised in New Orleans,” she said with a small tease, as if being from New Orleans was the worst offense in the world.
I saw the small tick on Nash’s jaw at the mention of his father after he’d just barely told me what had happened to him. I stood, going to the lounge chair to pull on my sundress.
“You won’t get me to pick his side in this fight with you, Maribelle,” Nash said as he waited for me at the steps. “If I had to choose, it wouldn’t be Louisiana or Georgia.”
When I joined him, we went up together while she stared down at us with her hands on her hips. “No? And just where would you pick?”
“Delaware,” he said without even a moment to think. My insides lurched as I tried to decipher the meaning of his choice, because I wasn’t the only one to live in Delaware. Tristan did, as well, and while she had made it quite clear that they were just friends, he would always feel responsible for her. How could he not after everything he’d just told me? What would that mean for any woman Nash chose to be with? Could he ever truly give his heart to someone when there were so many already hanging from it? Would he ever be able to put them first?
???
After another wonderful dinner, we adjourned to the library where Carson beat me at chess once again. Instead of snorting and making deprecating noises, Nash was watching me with an entirely different look. A look that was all hunter?sniper?and instead of threatening my being, it was threatening the heart I’d somehow tossed stupidly in his direction just like I’d once tossed my clothes.
Regardless of the danger to my well-being, it was a look that had my insides quivering and my mind forgetting which step I had planned.
Carson won in half the steps he’d won the night before.
“You were distracted tonight,” he said, even though he had his back to the person to blame for my distraction.
“I was,” I told Carson, and Nash gave me a charming, knowing grin followed by a wicked wink.
“You’ll never learn that way,” Carson said with a defeated sigh.
“I think I’m just tired. It’s been a long week.” I stood, and much like the night before, Nash joined me in saying goodnight.
We walked up the stairs in a silence that felt expectant.
When we got to his door, he threaded his fingers through mine and pulled me into his room. I went willingly. I wanted to feel the fire and burn and collision of our bodies again. After my feelings had revealed themselves to me at the pool, I wanted to lose myself in him for a few hours. To feel like this was something real. Something beyond the mirage we’d stepped into since driving onto the estate. I wanted to pretend there was a love in his touch that matched my own.
I barely got a sense of red, white, and blue before his lips crashed down onto me. Everything else went out of my head. Just lips and tongues and bodies straining to be closer. The heart he’d twisted and shaped and marked was trying to escape its confines.
Nash pulled at my sundress until he found the hem, lifting it as his hands slid over my thighs to my butt which he squeezed in the most delicious way. His touch continued, bunching the material as the slow trail of his fingers cruised over my body until he was removing the dress and flinging it into the recesses of the room. My hands mirrored the action with his shirt, sending it in the same direction my dress had gone.
He picked me up and carried me to the large sleigh bed that took up the majority of the room where we shed the remainder of our clothes. Completely and unashamedly naked, I paused, kneeling on the mattress, to take in the corded muscles rippling over every ounce of his body. The tattoos and scars scoring him. Last time we’d done this, it had been fast and furious due to the tension we’d built over the long game of strip poker. I hadn’t been able to see all of his grooves and valleys. Like the small scar above his heart that I caressed gently.
He stood next to the bed, absorbing the details of me as I absorbed him. I had a feeling he saw more than I did, his sniper training capturing every single ounce of me. When he finally reached out to touch me, starting with one pink tip, it was tantalizingly slow. Drawn out as if to make each second last a lifetime. Every time I got desperate enough to attempt increasing the speed, he would push away and do the opposite. Go even slower.
He wrapped his arms around me, laying me down so gently it stunned me. His body joined mine, partially covering me, knotting our legs together. But even once we were entangled, he didn’t increase the pace. He just continued moving his fingers and mouth over me languidly, as if he was now memorizing with a touch what he’d already memorized with his eyes. Every curve, every dimple, every mole was stamped in a way no man had ever tried to do before. Each stroke, each kiss, each nip of his teeth turned me into a pool of weak limbs when I wasn’t weak. I wouldn’t be weak.
I pulled away, twisting our bodies so I straddled him, my legs shaking as he continued to score me with his fingers and lips, their path both beautiful and torturous. My hands surrounded the erection that pushed between us, copying his deliberate movements until I found myself overwhelmed with the need to have him inside me.
