Simone’s smile widened, and she reached her arms out to him.
He slid his fingers, and the second condom packet popped out from behind the first like a magic trick.
Simone laughed and wiggled her fingers.
He tossed his wallet on the dresser with a tiny railing around the edge and the condoms on the bed where he could reach them, and he caught himself on his arms as he dropped back over her.
Her fingers clawed at his tee-shirt still tucked into his slacks, and he sucked in his stomach and ducked to let her pull the cotton undershirt over his head. Her dark eyes widened looking at his rounded chest and the hard ripples of his abs. She fluttered her fingers over his stomach.
Yeah, Maxence just bet Estebe Fournier wasn’t built like he was.
Oh, pride. He shouldn’t—
Yeah, well, so what?
He kissed her hard because she was beautiful and he’d always wanted to have Simone Maina, his chemistry partner and study buddy and the one he’d never managed to seduce.
His mouth crashed down on hers like he’d wanted to do when they were sixteen. Her whimper was like he’d imagined it. Her body was curvaceous now, not willowy like when they were teenagers. Max wanted to touch her, to feel her curves, but he was holding himself above her on his straight arms.
She’d said she was pregnant. He didn’t want to hurt her.
He tucked his shoulder and rolled, taking her with him.
She ended up with her thighs straddling his hips and her arms braced on his shoulders, giggling.
He asked, “Okay with you?”
“God, yes.”
Simone scrambled backward off the end of the bed and stripped off her dress, flinging it away, and she grabbed his pants at his waistband and barely gave him time to unbutton and unzip before she was dragging his clothes off of him.
Maxence was laughing by this time, overjoyed that she wasn’t crying anymore and was so into this. There was just really nothing better.
As she rolled his pants and underwear off his hips, her tilted eyes widened for a moment, and she jumped a little.
“It’s okay,” he told her. He had a usual line he used because he didn’t want to hurt people. “It’ll be okay. You just have to relax, and I won’t go fast. We’ll take it slow. If it’s too much and it starts to hurt, I’ll make sure you’re satisfied anyway.”
Instead, she smiled a little. “Go for it.”
Oh, wow,and he wished he could keep her on this boat for a month, but she needed to go home to Mauritius.
As she clambered back over him, her arms and legs bending the bed around his body, he almost forgot that he was on a damned boat. She was certainly giving him something else to think about.
He slid his arms up her thighs, and she stretched above him, her raised arms lifting her breasts. The curves and dips of her body enticed him.
Damn,everythingabout her was magnificent.
There was just one thing more that he knew she wanted him to do.
He knew what his reputation at school was.
When she fell back down to kiss him, he spread his palms over her cheek and throat, and he smiled as he gazed into her obsidian eyes. “You’re so beautiful,” he said, letting love roll in his voice. He felt the truth of it. “I love everything about you. You’re amazing.”
Simone blinked, and he could see the thought lodge in her mind, and then her lips curved in a smile as she believed it.
With that, she kissed him, and Maxence wrapped his arms around her back. His hand drifted down the curve of her hip to her ass, and she moaned as he palmed the softness.
From that moment, it was heat and flesh and sweat, a kaleidoscope of the brass and white fabric of the room when he opened his eyes, her satiny skin and his tanned arms and legs and paler chest and hips, the faint rose scent still striped on her skin, and his tongue, his hands, and his body under hers. He rolled her over for a few minutes to run his fingers and tongue over the voluptuous swells of her breasts and her hips and the sweetness between her thighs, but she arched under him too soon, thrashing and rolling him back, and he didn’t want to get rough with her.
