Jack stood without breaking the kiss, drawing her up with him. Her purse clattered to the stone. The letter drifted under the table. Neither of them looked down.
He gathered her against his chest in a single motion that stole the breath from both of them. Her legs hooked around his waist, tight and secure. Her arms looped around his neck as her lips found the underside of his jaw, pressing warmth into his skin.
“Take me to bed, Jack.”
He carried her through the glass doors, into the cool interior. Sunlight filtered through stained glass, gold, and sapphire.
Her breath teased his throat as his bare feet moved soundlessly over marble, through the vestibule with its Art Deco sconces and geometric inlay, past the corridor where Myrtle’s herbs perfumed the air from the kitchen.
The staircase curved upward, and Jack took it without slowing, his arms tightening around her as the landing opened into the second-floor corridor. She weighed nothing and everything. She was the lightest burden he would ever carry and the heaviest truth he would ever hold.
His bedroom door was already open. Pale morning light filled the room through tall windows dressed in ivory linen, the curtains stirring in a cross breeze that smelled of cut grass and the distant salt of the sea. The bed was wide and simply made, cream sheets pulled taut over a dark walnut frame with clean geometric lines. No canopy. No crimson draping. Nothing that resembled a cage.
He set her down at the foot of the bed, and the loss of her warmth against his chest registered like a wound. She stood before him in bare feet, having kicked off her shoes somewhere between the garden and the stairs, and the sight of her stripped the remaining air from his lungs.
Faded jeans worn soft at the knees. A white t-shirt that clung to the modest curve of her breasts. No armor. No pretense. Just Daisy, standing in his bedroom with her heart racing visibly in the hollow of her throat.
He gave her a split second to change her mind before closing the distance. She pulled the tie of his robe. Silk whispered and slid down his arms, pooling at his feet in a dark puddle.
The morning air kissed his bare torso, finding every scar, every ridge, every damaged inch of him, and, for once, he didn’t feel the need to hide. Her gaze moved over him, unhurried, tracing the terrain from his heaving shoulders to the bulge of his black swim trunks. When her gaze returned to his, the fierce desire he saw in her eyes made his stomach flip and clench.
She reached for the hem of her t-shirt and pulled it over her head in one fluid motion. Her hair tumbled loose around her shoulders, catching the light, turning from honey to spun gold.
A plain white cotton bra cupped her breasts, and the ordinariness of it, the absence of lace or silk or performance, made his throat close with a tenderness so sharp it bordered on violence.
She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
His hands found her waist. The pads of his thumbs traced the ridges of her ribcage where the skin was impossibly smooth, impossibly warm, and she shivered under the contact despite the summer heat. He mapped the gentle dip of her navel, the slight flare of her hips, memorizing her topography with the reverence of a man who knew how quickly beautiful things could be stolen.
Her fingers moved to the button of her jeans, opening the closure with one flick. When the zipper glided down, and the denim loosened around her hips, he swallowed tightly.
She pushed them past her thighs, ducking to slide them below her knees as she stomped her feet free. Then she stood before him in nothing but white cotton and sunlight.
Jack tugged her to him and lowered his mouth to her shoulder, tasting the salt of her skin where the sun had warmed it. His lips traveled the slope of her collarbone, dipping into the hollow of her throat, then finding that delicate curve where her pulse fluttered against his tongue. She arched into the contact, her fingers clutching his biceps, her breath quickening as his mouth mapped her with slow, deliberate precision.
He unclasped her bra with steady hands and drew the straps down her arms, letting the fabric fall between them. Her nipples tightened in the open air, flushing from pale pink to the dusky rose of arousal, and the sight sent blood surging to his cock with enough force to make his vision swim.
He cupped one breast in his palm, feeling its modest weight settle against his hand like something entrusted, and dragged his thumb across the stiffened peak. She gasped, her head falling back, exposing the long column of her throat. He took the invitation, pressing his open mouth to the sensitive spot beneath her ear, tasting her racing pulse while his thumb circled her nipple in slow, maddening rotations.
“Jack.” His name escaped her in a breathless plea that traveled down his spine and coiled low in his belly.
He kissed his way down her sternum, sinking to his knees before her, his mouth following the subtle ladder of her ribs. Each kiss became more deliberate than the last.
Hooking his fingers into the cotton hem of her panties, he dragged them down her thighs with aching slowness, his knuckles grazing her skin until the fabric cleared her ankles.
She stood bare before him. The soft thatch of honey curls between her thighs glistened with arousal, warm and sweet and unbearably tempting.
His cock strained against his trunks with a ferocity that bordered on anguish. He pressed his lips to the crest of her hip. To the soft plane of her stomach, where the muscles quivered under his mouth. To the crease where her thigh met her pelvis, so close to where she needed him that her fingers sank into his hair and her knees softened.
“I want to taste you,” he murmured against her skin, nuzzling his nose against her heat.
He licked, stealing a taste, but he needed more. Rising slowly, trailing a hand up her outer thigh, past the delicate curve of her hip, over the concave divot of her belly, he took her hand and led her to his bed. He lifted her precious weight in his arms and laid her out like an altar.
“Lie back.”
She lowered herself onto the covers, scooting backward until her head found the pillows. Golden hair fanned out against cream linen. Sunlight caressed every inch of her bare skin as she lay splayed before him.
He would remember this image of her for the rest of his life. In the dark. In the silence. In every quiet moment he had.
