Some women her size wouldn’t dare wear a suit like that, no matter how much it flattered them. Wouldn’t leave themselves unprotected from the judgment of people who might whisper to their friends that big girls like her should know better than to reveal so much flesh in public; that big girls like her should be ashamed and hidden, always.
She knew what it felt like to feel uncomfortable and embarrassed. God, did she know.
While countless things made Callie nervous, though, her body wasn’t one of them. She loved how she looked. Always had, always would.
Thomas clearly felt the same way. He’d never tried to hide that. He couldn’t even if he did try.
He was breathing so hard through his nose that his nostrils flared. Those long fingers had formed full-on fists at his sides. And not to be indelicate, but his swim trunks didn’t exactly hide his reaction to her.
When she strutted back to him, his eyes opened, but not completely. They were heavy-lidded, as if he were ready for that rest she’d mentioned. But the eyes of a half-asleep man didn’t turn molten with heat and focus so fiercely on what stood in front of them.
He lifted a single fingertip and laid it on the curve of her shoulder, where the strap bit into her skin. As he watched with rapt attention, that finger descended slowly, tracing the neckline of the suit. The edge of her collarbone leading to the swell of her breast and the shadow of her cleavage. Then up again, each inch of progress deliberate and unhurried as he turned her flesh to fire.
At her other shoulder, he brushed his thumb in a lazy arc over her gooseflesh.
Then he laid his palm over her heart. His hand lingered there without moving for several suspended seconds, and she swayed with her sudden understanding.
He was feeling her heartbeat. Measuring it. Learning it.
Her eyes flooded with happy, humbled tears, and she couldn’t stand it anymore. She had to touch him.
She moved the final step forward, took hold of his hips, and tugged him until they were standing pressed together from chest to knees. Those dark curls at his neck had tempted her for way too long, so she buried her fingers in them. Tugged lightly and gloried in his harsh intake of air, the immediate response pressing into her belly.
She rose on tiptoe and whispered in his ear. “If you don’t think you can stop at a kiss or two, let’s go back to the room.”
When he swallowed, she could see the agitated movement of his throat.
“Yes.” That low, calm, amused voice had become a rasp. A hoarse gulp of sound.
As soon as she scooped her clothing from the sand, he claimed her other hand and laced their fingers together. She didn’t bother donning the sundress again. She didn’t mind walking through the hotel in her swimsuit, and she was in a hurry. They both were.
Thomas took the lead, and his long legs ate up the distance to the hotel. He guided her firmly toward the main elevator, heedless of any onlookers. But at the ding of the opening door, she reclaimed control, tugging him inside and backing him against one of those mirrored walls.
At that, he smiled at her in an entirely unfamiliar way. With stark possessiveness, rather than his usual kindness and patience. Fingers spread wide, he stroked her exposed back from nape to hip, the sweep of his hand slow and deliberate as he watched her mouth.
She yanked him down to her, and their lips met in a kiss that went nuclear within moments, devouring and hard and wet, as his fingers flexed into her ass, grinding her against him.
Once the elevator arrived at their floor, they raced to their door, breathing harder than justified by the short journey. His fingers gripped hers with almost painful tightness.
Then they’d reached their room. She opened the door and strode inside, impatient for the weight of his body above hers, the claiming stroke of his fingers between her legs, the delicious stretch as he pushed inside her.
No turned backs tonight.
No opposite sides of the bed.
Nothing but her and Thomas, alone, drowning in desire and bare flesh.
Thank God.
Callie, naked and spread across the bed, struck the words from Thomas’s tongue.
Which was unfortunate, because he wanted to tell her that the moon, milky-bright though it was, might have been a shadow compared to her incandescent glow. He needed to explain the glory of her dark nipples and curved stomach and splayed, velvety arms. He should expound on the profound temptation of that rosy, glistening flesh between her ample thighs and praise her unabashed, confident sensuality.
Instead, he stood by the bed, newly naked himself, and silently basked in her beauty.
When she raised her soft, strong arms to him, though, he found words again. Not poetic ones, but the ones he needed. The right ones.
He crawled to her on the bed, as befitted an acolyte to a goddess, and knelt between her legs. “Sweetheart, what do you want?”
