"Just enjoying the view."
She turns then, and her eyes are bright with humor and something else, something that makes the air between us go still and heavy. She dries her hands on the towel and sets it on the counter, and the deliberate precision of the gesture tells me she's made a decision.
"Charlie."
"Yeah."
She takes a step toward me. Then another. She doesn't say anything, and neither do I, because words would ruin whatever is building here. She's close enough now that I can see the flecks of white in her blue eyes and smell a faint perfume clinging to her skin. Her gaze is steady and unblinking, and the courage it takes for her to stand this close without deflecting isn't lost on me.
"Sunny." I say her name the way I've wanted to say it all day, low and careful, giving her time.
She presses her palm flat against my chest. My heart slams against her hand, and I know she feels it, because her lips part and her breath quickens and her pupils widen in the dim kitchen light.
"Your heart is pounding," she says.
"It's been doing that since you opened the front door, Sunshine."
Her fist tightens in the fabric of my shirt, and the gesture sends a bolt of recognition through me, because she did the same thing on her porch, the night she pulled me back down and kissed me like a woman who'd stopped being afraid of what she wanted.
"I'm going to kiss you now," she says, and the echo of my own words from our first kiss makes something inside me crack wide open. "Unless that isn't something you want. This is your chance to say so."
I don't need to be told twice. I cradle her face and kiss her like I've been starving for it, because I have.
The kiss isn't slow. It isn't careful. It's the inevitable conclusion of weeks of proximity and restraint and want. She tastes like tomato and basil and something sweet underneath, and the hum she makes against my mouth undoes the last of my composure. I pull her flush against me, and she arches into the contact with a fierceness that electrifies the air between us.
We break apart long enough to breathe, and her forehead drops against my chest. She lifts her gaze and leads me down the short hallway to her bedroom. The room is small, the bed neatly made with white sheets and a quilt folded at the foot. A lamp on the nightstand casts a warm glow that turns her hair to gold when she turns to face me.
I press my mouth to the curve of her neck and I luxuriate in the shiver that moves through her body. Her fingers thread through my hair as she tilts her head to give me access. I trace a path from her neck to the hollow of her throat, where her pulse is hammering so hard I can feel it against my lips.
She finds the hem of my shirt and pulls it upward, and I break the kiss long enough to let her strip it over my head. Her palms press flat against my chest, and her fingers trace the lines of muscle with a curiosity that makes my skin burn everywhere she touches.
"You are something, Charlie Hayden," she murmurs, and her voice is rough in a way I've never heard before.
I reach down and toe off my boots while she works the button on her jeans and pushes them down, stepping out of them in one easy motion. I do the same, and then there's nothing left between us but lamplight.
The sight of her stops me cold. Her skin is golden from the Texas sun, and the flush spreading from her chest to her throat tells me everything I need to know. My hands shake as I reach for her.
"You're beautiful," I murmur, tracing my fingers along her collarbone before I cup her breast, brushing my thumb across her nipple.
Her eyes go bright, and she blinks once, hard. I back her toward the bed and lower her onto the mattress, bracing my weight on one arm as I settle over her.
Her mouth finds mine before we've fully landed, open and urgent, and the patience I promised myself evaporates when she hooks her leg over my hip and writhes against me. The feel of her bare skin against mine, her breasts pressed to my chest, the wet heat of her grinding against my cock, tears a groan out of me that I couldn't hold back if I tried. Her answering sound is low and raw.
I break the kiss to drag my mouth down her throat, her collarbone, the swell of her breast. Her back arches off the mattress when I close my mouth over her nipple, sucking hard, and her nails bite into my shoulders to hold me there. I take my time with her, moving from one breast to the other, learning the difference between the gasp I get when I use my tongue and the sharper cry that comes when I graze my teeth across the peak. I could stay here for hours, but she's already rocking her hips against me, slick and desperate, and the friction is making it very hard to think.
She gasps as I kiss the curve of her hip and reaches for me. But I take her wrist and press it gently back to the mattress.
"Let me," I tell her, my mouth moving down the inside of her thigh. "I've been thinking about this for weeks."
When I settle between her thighs and drag my tongue through her folds, the taste of her hits me like a drug. She's soaked, and the moan that rips out of her when I close my mouth over her clit makes my cock throb against the mattress. Her thigh trembles against my jaw as I find the rhythm that makes her breathing ragged, alternating between slow, flat strokes and tight circles that have her fisting the sheets. Her hand finds the back of my head, holding me where she needs me, and her hips rock against my mouth in a rhythm that's getting faster and more frantic. I match her, refusing to let up, sucking and licking until her thighs clamp around me and she comes apart with my name on her lips.
She pulls me up and kisses me hard, her tongue sliding against mine, tasting herself on my mouth without hesitation.
Before I can settle my weight over her, she rolls me onto my back and straddles my hips, her palms pressing flat against my chest. The shift catches me off guard, and I look up at her, flushed and breathless above me with her blonde hair falling across her shoulders.
"My turn," she says, and her voice carries a rough edge that makes my stomach clench.
Her mouth traces a path from my jaw to my throat before she moves lower, dragging her lips across my chest and down the center of my stomach. Every muscle tightens in her wake. She wraps her hand around my cock and strokes once, slow, base to tip, and my hips jerk off the mattress. Then she lowers her head and takes me into her mouth.
