“Mmmpph,” she replied, which he’d learned by now was her usual morning greeting. “Not human yet.”
“Well, drink your coffee and get human. I need to shower, and then we’ve got a journalist to impress.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she grumbled. “So early.”
“I know, Sleepy.” He sat on the side of the bed sipping his own coffee, marveling not for the first time at the way her curls took over her entire pillow. Wondering what it would be like to wake up every morning with them straying onto his. Slowly, she sat up and reached for the coffee. The relieved little groan she let out when she swallowed her first mouthful shouldn’t have turned him on, but it did. Almost everything about Carly Montgomery turned him on now, even her half-human harrumphs first thing in the morning.
“How’s the surf this morning?”
“It’s good. Bigger swell than we’ve had the last few days, but I did all right. Getting my legs back under me after so many years away.” Marcus had given him a few pointers last week, and since then he could feel his balance improving and his instinct for how a wave was going to move and shift beneath his board growing. Maybe if he stuck around after the wedding, he’d have a chance to improve further, he thought, studying the lid of his coffee. But that would require a plan for what his life looked like a week from now, and he still didn’t know where in the world he’d be or what he’d be doing there.
He looked up to find Carly watching him. “Your hair’s all salty,” she said, reaching up to rub a few strands of it between her fingers. Nick sat still, letting her work her hand into the damp strands, her fingertips thrillingly cold from her coffee cup. His pulse tripped, and then sped, as he remembered how she’d clung to his hair as she came last night, fingertips scraping against his scalp as she bucked against his mouth and begged him not to stop.
Carly disentangled her fingers from his hair and trailed them down the side of his neck. He was disappointed when she pulled her hand away, but a second later, she slipped a fingertip into her mouth and sucked on it, and his throat went dry. “Tastes salty, too,” she said huskily.
“I need a shower,” he repeated, watching her mouth. “Would you like to join me in the shower?”
“No, I insist on joining you in the shower,” she grinned.
“Thank God,” he stood and set both their coffees on the bedside table, and a second later she was laughing as he scooped her out of the bed and carried her into the bathroom.
“Last time we tried this I fell asleep,” she said, when he’d set her down on the bathmat and turned on the water.
Nick turned back to face her, his entire body hungry for the taste of her, the way she arched into his hands and whimpered his name. “I promise this time you’ll be wide awake. If I have my way, you’ll wake the entire hotel.”
She was going to hold him to that promise, Carly thought, stepping forward and seizing the hem of his shirt. His skin and board shorts were damp, but they worked them off together, and by the time Nick was naked, steam was billowing out of the shower. She watched the delicious shift of his chest muscles under his skin as he reached out and pulled her tank top over her head, and the unmistakable need in his eyes, the determined set in his jaw, as he tugged her damp panties off her hips and slid them slowly but deliberately down her thighs. They fell to the ground, leaving her pussy aching with want. It had only been hours since she’d last come and it felt like years.
He stepped backward into the shower and tested the water, then reached and pulled her in gently by her waist. Carly groaned with relief as the warm water sprayed her shoulders and soaked into her scalp. He hadn’t let go of her, and his large body crowded her pleasantly, pushing her further under the spray. She wanted to tip her head back and close her eyes against the water, but that would mean missing the glisten of his wet skin and the play and slide of droplets over his chest and down his stomach. She reached out and brought his hips flush to hers, pulling him closer to the water and letting his thick, hard cock press against her lower stomach. He growled and ground against her, the sound desperate and addictive, then took a small step back and guided her backward until she felt tiles against her shoulder blades.
She gasped at the sudden press of cold on her back, but he caught the sound with a fierce kiss, and within a few seconds the sensation had passed, replaced by a feverish heat that crawled over her skin, magnifying every stroke of his tongue and slide of his hands. It only intensified when he pulled his mouth from hers and put his hands on the tiles on either side of her body, then slowly lowered himself to his knees.
Distantly, Carly remembered a tipsy conversation she’d had with Heather, about a year before her engagement to Jack had imploded. They’d been hanging out at Heather’s place on a Sunday evening, after a matinee performance, with the promise of Monday off. Jack wasn’t there—in hindsight Carly had realized that he was probably out fooling around with one of his many side pieces. She and Heather had sprawled, jelly-legged and wine-loose on Jack’s deep velvet couch, and ranked sexual positions from most overrated to least.
“Everyone thinks shower sex is such a good idea,” Carly had said, gesturing with a sloshing wine glass for emphasis. “Like, let’s go fuck against cold, hard tiles and hope we don’t slip and break a wrist before we come.”
Heather had giggled and insisted that shower sex had its merits and should be lower on the overrated list. Carly had shook her head, wondering in silence how she was expected to enjoy being repeatedly stabbed in the vagina while her fingertips went pruney from the water. But then, past-Carly had never had shower sex like this.
Nick settled himself on his knees in front of her, the water sliding down his long, taut back, and looked up into her face. Droplets beaded on his dark lashes, threatening to fall into his eyes, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“I want to stop if anything hurts, okay?” he said, just like he had last night. Just like he had every time. “Promise you’ll tell me.”
“Of course,” she said, surprised to hear that her voice was steady, a stark contrast to the anticipation and need that were rocketing through her. He nodded but didn’t move. “Ofcourse,” she repeated, realizing as she spoke that she meant it. Of course it would be easy to tell Nick she wanted to stop. He knew the truth about her body. He understood it, and didn’t ask her for more than she wanted to give. Not yet, anyway.
He took his time stroking up the insides of her thighs, tracing teasing circles on the slick, sensitive skin, before replacing his fingers with his lips, and then his tongue. One hand slid back up her body, caressing her rib cage, then reaching up to flutter teasingly over one nipple. With the other hand, he anchored himself on her hip, and then, when she thought she might pass out from wanting him to touch her, he dipped his head and ran his tongue lightly, almost imperceptibly, between her slick folds.
The sound that escaped her was something between a sigh and a sob. She knew he heard it, because he repeated the motion with even less pressure, and for a moment she felt a familiar twinge of irritation at him. Of course he was going to tease her. Of course he was going to make her squirm against the tiles, twisting her hips and widening her legs to urge him for more. She wanted to strangle him, but that would interrupt what he was doing, and that was unacceptable.
“Please,” she managed, her eyes squeezed shut and the back of her head grinding against the hard tiles. She looked down and met his eyes and saw that he wasgrinning, the absolute bastard.
She was about to tell him that he was an absolute bastard when he flicked his tongue over her clit and she lost the ability to put even that sentence together. With his fingers gently pinching her nipple, his other hand tight on her hip, and his tongue dancing over her most sensitive place, she was incoherent, capable of little more than gasping and whimpering at the ceiling as he moaned against her needy flesh. He was good at this. Of course he was good at this, the absolute bastard.
She felt her climax taking shape, a wave gathering in her muscles, and she chased it, putting a hand in his drenched hair and holding him against her so she could grind against his mouth. He moaned louder, and the vibrations spiraled through her until she was breathless and desperate, until the world beyond this shower, beyond his mouth and his wicked grin and her buzzing, screaming nerve endings, ceased to exist.
“Fuck,” she gasped. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, Nick, don’t stop.”
He didn’t stop. Instead, he removed his hand from her hip, moaning against her, and when she looked down, she saw that he’d wrapped it around his cock and was sliding it up and down in firm, rapid strokes to match the rhythm of his tongue on her clit.
The wave broke. She shuddered against his mouth, her fingers scrabbling to find purchase in his hair as that strange sigh-sob escaped her again. A second later, she heard him groan and felt him spasm, and realized that even as he’d come, he’d never stopped lavishing attention on her clit. He kept licking her, his pace gentling as the wave receded and she caught her breath.
