He shrugged. “Occupational hazard.”
She still felt inadequate, knowing the types of starlets and glamour girls he’d paraded through this house. She was a complete novice, not a practiced seductress. “Still, it was clumsy of me.” She gripped his biceps, enjoying the solid feeling of strength beneath her hands. She let that ground her so she could say what she needed. “I…am… I didn’t…” She swallowed, embarrassed. “I didn’t give you the same satisfaction. I lost control.”
He gave her a very serious look, and she braced herself forwhat was coming. “Livvy, I want you to know…I have slept with some of the biggest movie stars in the world. At least one duchess. And even a traveling acrobat. But what happened between us just now was the single most erotic experience of my life.”
She couldn’t believe what he was telling her. “You’re being kind.”
He gripped her more tightly and forced her to look at him. “I promise you, I am not. Are you more inexperienced than some of my partners? Of course. But you are…so beautiful. So unexpected. So present. I never thought I would say this, but I’ll take your unbridled enthusiasm over rote seduction any day. You are the most invigorating person I have ever met. And that, what we did, was just the beginning. I promise you that was immensely pleasurable for me, Livvy. You became a wild creature, and unleashing that in you was…staggering. As for my satisfaction, I told you before, we have the whole night ahead of us.” He pulled her in to his chest once more and whispered in her ear. “You can have as little or as much of me as you want. You have pillaged and plundered my heart, and I am entirely at your mercy.”
Her jaw dropped at his pronouncement, and her heart threatened to pound out of her chest. Flynn Banks thought she—demure homebody Olivia Blount—was sexy. It was the kind of thing that only happened in the movies. The type of thing her mother had warned would lead to her ruin. To the desecration of her entire family. Yet here it was, happening to her, and no one had come to smite her.
She looked up at him, the late afternoon sun giving him a golden halo, and a new wave of heat washed over her. She could practically feel her freckles emerging as the light licked at her face.
Suddenly, she felt brave. Reckless. “You’re sure the staff is gone? They won’t come back to check on you?”
He barked out a laugh. “No. They’re not going to cut short a night off. That’s certain.”
She bit her lip, pondering the idea. Why not? Flynn Banks was out of his comfort zone here. Shouldn’t she be willing to push the envelope a little too? To indulge her desires instead of taking care of everyone else’s? “I’d like to go for that swim now. But we don’t need to find me a bathing suit.”
Chapter 21
Jesus Christ, this woman was going to kill him, and she had no idea of her own power.
Flynn tried to calm the unbearable stiffness in his nether regions that had arisen at her suggestion that they swim naked. Livvy leaned down and pulled her shoes off, unbuckling the straps on her little wedges that wound their way around her ankles in a tantalizing fashion. He resisted the urge to kneel and lick at the indentation beneath her ankle bone.
She set the shoes aside on his deck, and he locked on to the pale-pink polish on her toes that sparkled in the sunlight. She really was the most adorable woman he’d ever encountered.
Nervously, she reached for the buttons of her dress, and he coughed, turning around and using the moment as an excuse to adjust himself in his pants.
“You can look,” she told him, quickly undoing any attempt he’d made at returning himself to a state of decency. “I don’t mind.”
He bit his lip so hard he tasted blood. “No, um, you should have your privacy.”
“Oh, but I thought—”
He clocked the disappointment in her voice and cursed himself. She had bared her insecurities and sense of inadequacy tohim, and now, he was rejecting the opportunity to watch her undress.
“Not because I don’t want to, mind. Just that, erm… Well, you’re making my body respond in ways that I would rather it didn’t right now. For both our sakes.”
He cast a glance over his shoulder and noticed that two rosy-pink circles had bloomed on her cheeks. “Oh. I see.”
“So it might be best if I go down to the shore and get in the water first.”
“Yes, I hear that cold water can be helpful.” She was teasing him. And it was the cutest bloody thing he had ever experienced. He was suddenly possessed with the urge to take her and ravish her on the glass patio table right then and there. But he had a sneaking suspicion she had never been with a man in that way before. And he’d be damned if her first time was anything but the gentlest, most tender experience of her life.
Jesus, she really was making him soft, wasn’t she? But only when it came to matters of the heart. Little Flynn was not getting the memo.
“So, if you’ll excuse me…” This was getting painful now, the throb of his cock pressing through his shorts into the cold, hard metal teeth of his zipper. He sprinted down the ramp that led from his outdoor patio to the sand, whipping his shirt over his head as he went. Once he was safely in the shadow of the deck, he removed his pants, and the inconvenient sign of his desire immediately diminished as the air hit it. It might have been unseasonably warm, but it was still November. He folded his trousers and laid them on the sand before sprinting into the waves and diving beneath one that was breaking.
The water was brisk and bracing, but refreshing. He didn’t remember the last time he’d swum naked. Probably in theCherwell at Oxford with some of his mates. Here, it might have been his home and private little patch of sand, but that didn’t mean his valet needed to be confronted with the family jewels on a daily basis. His father had needed a servant to dress him top to bottom every day, but Flynn had a shred more dignity and self-possession.
He flipped onto his back and did a few strokes, paddling out through the foamy waves to a calmer, deeper spot. Now safely shrouded by the ocean, he called back to the shore. “Come on in. The water’s fine.”
She ran to the edge of the deck, completely naked now, and he plunged beneath the water before the sight of her curves and valleys could rattle his brain any further.
Before he knew it, she had swum out to him and was treading water, luxuriating in the sea.
“You look like a selkie,” he told her.
