***
It took a while to come down. Once she’d caught her breath and disentangled herself from his body, Leo moved to get out of the water, bracing herself for the tight-bellied regret that almost always came after sex.
Only it didn’t this time. Not when he joined her in the cold, wet rain, wrapped her in a blanket, and picked her up. Not when she giggled all the way to the old cabin, let him dry her and dried him in return, before snuggling into the bed they’d set up earlier. Not when he made his slow way down from her mouth, over her body, giving every pore, every hair the kind of attention it had never received, winding up between her legs, where he made slow, sweet love with his mouth.
And tongue.
And teeth and nose and beard.
Good Lord, he was good at this.
She didn’t scream when she orgasmed—they’d been quietly cautious even in their wildest moments—but she felt it in the deep, dark reaches of her core.
In the aftermath, she looked down at his silhouette in the dark and knew that this was it.
They’d probably have nothing in common outside this place, probably wouldn’t even get along, but she didn’tcare.
Getting along was overrated after all.
He moved slowly back up, kissed her taste into her mouth, and flopped to his side with a happy groan.
“My turn.” She started to move, but he stopped her with his hand on her shoulder.
“No…I…” He snorted, giving her a sheepish smile. “I want to see your face. The first time we…you…go down there.”
Oh boy. Something twisted in her chest. “Okay.”
“I want to be inside you again.” Another smile. “But we’ve got to eat first.”
“Keep up our strength.” Their shared smile tapered off.
“You want this, Leo? What we’re doing? You like it?”
A funny sound escaped her. “Like it?” She started to shake her head and stopped when it occurred to her that it might send the wrong signals. “‘Like’ is too weak a word for this. Whatever it is.”
He didn’t move. Not an eyelash stirred, not a muscle twitched, but something changed in the way he watched her. “What do you think it is, Leo?”
“Do I think this would have happened in the outside world? Is that what you’re asking?”
“Maybe.”
The question fluttered in her throat. If she stood up now, her knees might not hold her. “This is where it happened. Where this”—she flapped her hand between them—“was made.”
He blinked, narrowed his eyes and waited.
“My parents used to tell the story of how they fell in love. People went wild.So romantic, they’d say. Now that I think about it, though, it wasn’t really their story. It was my dad’s.”
Elias’s brows rose, but he didn’t otherwise move.
“Saw her in London. 1975. Starring inAida.” She huffed out a little breath and threw him a smiling glance. “Mama was known for her charisma.”
“Bet she could sing, too.”
She laughed. “That’s putting it mildly. Growing up, there were a ton of framed reviews on the music room wall. They called her the Ethiopian Queen.”
“That where she was from?”
She nodded. “In one of them, the critic said that she had the voice that launched a thousand ships.”
