“How does that feel?” I already know the answer from the sounds she’s making. But I want to hear her say it. I need to hear her say it.
“So deep.” She can barely get the words out. “You’re so deep like this. Don’t stop.”
I lean over her back, one hand braced on the wall next to hers, my mouth close to her ear. “You remember floating today? When you held my hand and it was just quiet?”
She nods, panting.
“I thought that was the best part of today.” I thrust deep and hold. “Until right now.”
She reaches back with one hand and grabs my hip, pulling me into her, and the possessiveness of that touch is what finally pushes me past the point of return.
Her body starts to tighten around me again. The squeeze builds, rhythmic and relentless, and her moans climb until they break, and when she comes the second time her whole body shakes and the sound that tears out of her is hoarse and wrecked and perfect.
I last about two seconds after that. My orgasm hits like a high-speed crash. Both hands on her hips, my body buried as deep inside her as it can go, and the release that rips through me is so complete that I lose track of everything for a stretch of time I couldn’t measure if I tried. My mouth is against her wet shoulder. I can hear myself saying her name but it sounds far away, like it’s coming from someone else’s chest.
We stay there for a long time. Water pouring over us. Steam thick enough to blur the edges of the room. My arms around her waist, her back against my chest, both of us breathing hard andnot talking. Her fingers lace through mine where they rest on her stomach. I press my face into her wet hair and close my eyes.
This. Right here. This is the quietest my head has ever been in thirty-four years.
Here, with the woman I clocked as an annoyance when I met her on that plane a week ago. Now I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be than right here with her.
Holy shit. Am I falling for Ella?
In the quiet between our bodies coming back to earth and the sudden clarity that’s settling over me, my brain wakes up. Not by choice. It just does what it does, like a security system cycling back online after a power surge. And the first thing it flags isn’t the woman in my arms or the water going lukewarm or the pleasant ache in my thighs.
It flags the gap that still exists between us.
Ella’s given me nothing but honesty since we arrived here. She’s been fully open, holding nothing back because that’s simply who she is. She’s told me about her lottery win. She’s told me about her ex, Jake. About the years of being told by that asshole that she was too much. She’s been stripping herself bare for me, emotionally and literally, since the moment we met, and she’s done it with a trust so total it makes my chest hurt to think about.
And what have I given her back? A first name. A job title so vague it could apply to half the tech workers in Manhattan. I told her about my health condition, but only because she’d already sussed it out for herself anyway. The sum total of what Ella knows about Alec Beckett would fit on a business card with room to spare.
That omission used to feel like common sense. I don’t lead with my net worth. I know what happens when people adjust themselves around it. But that logic was built for strangers and first dates and cocktail party introductions. It was not built for awoman who feeds me vegan bacon because she’s worried about my heart and laughs with her whole body and trusts me with every unprotected piece of herself.
Ella’s not going to recalculate my value based on a number.
She’s going to feel lied to.
She won’t understand the delay. She’ll do the math on how many days have passed when I could’ve told her, and the total will look like a choice. A deliberate one. The kind a jerk like her ex might have made. Or she’ll think I don’t trust her enough to be fully honest with her, even now.
Damn it. I have to tell her. Not now. Not in this shower while my dick is still inside her and she’s got her cheek pressed against the wet tiles. But soon. I need to find the right time and the right words. I owe her that.
She shifts now, turning around in my arms so we’re face to face again. “I had a really great day, Alec.”
I nod, guilt gnawing at my gut. “Yeah. Me too.”
She leans forward and rests her head against my chest. I hold her closer. Kiss the curve of her shoulder and taste clean water where the ocean used to be.
She nestles into me, her heartbeat pounding in time with mine, steady and trusting.
CHAPTER 20
ELLA
My body is still carrying a low, pleasant hum when I enter Palm Court’s swanky boutique around noon the next day. I can still feel all the places Alec’s body pleasured mine, all the ways his mouth and hands have now ruined me for anyone else. To say nothing of that amazing cock of his. I may be going back home soon, but after Alec my so-called sex life will never be the same.
Really, that thought should bother me more than it does. It definitely shouldn’t have me grinning like a cat who gorged itself on a big fat canary last night, but my face doesn’t care what my brain is saying.
I had an incredible day—and night, and morning—with him. And tonight he’s taking me on our first official date. He refused to tell me where we’re going, instead cryptically instructing me to dress up while his thumb traced the curve of my hip under the sheets this morning.
