“I should go,” she said.
“So you said.”
“I’m not going to.”
His breath left him. A quiet, controlled exhale, the first crack in the composure he’d been holding all night.
She rose up and kissed him.
There was no taste of bourbon on his mouth, no wine. Just him. His free hand settled against her jaw, his thumb along her cheekbone, and he kissed her back with a slowness that made her chest ache.
No rush. No urgency. Just his mouth on hers, thorough and deliberate, like he’d been thinking about how to do this since the first song on the first dance floor and had decided to take his time.
She pulled back just far enough to breathe. “You’re still in wet clothes.”
“I am.”
“That seems like a problem.”
His mouth curved against hers. “It might be.”
“How about a shower for the both of us?” She took his hand and pulled him toward the bathroom. The steam had mostly cleared, but the mirror was still fogged and the tile held the lingering heat under her bare feet. She reached into the shower and turned the water on. It came up hot almost immediately—you had to love expensive hotels.
She turned back to him. He was standing in the doorway, watching her, his hands loose at his sides. She stepped in front of him, reached for his buttons. Her fingers were steady. She undid them one at a time, pulling the damp fabric away from his skin, and he let her. He stood still and let her work, and when she pushed the shirt off his shoulders it clung to his arms. She offered a small smile, reaching down and tugging at the sleeves until the fabric fell to the tiles.
His chest was broad and hard and marked. A scar along his left side, maybe four inches, healed clean. Another one near his collarbone, smaller, older. She didn’t ask about them. She ran her fingers across the scar on his side and felt his stomach tighten under her hand.
She shrugged the robe off and let it drop. The damp dress clung to her, and his eyes followed her hands as she reached behind her back for the zipper. She pulled it down and let the dress fall, then hooked her thumbs in her panties, pushing them down her legs. His eyes moved over her—slow, careful, and she could see the effort it took him not to reach for her.
She reached for his belt. Got it open. Got the zipper down and pushed the wet trousers and boxer briefs off his hips. He kicked them off along with his socks and shoes.
He was hard. Her gaze dropped, and a slow pull of heat settled low in her belly. She let herself look, and when her eyes came back to his, whatever he saw in her face made his jaw tighten.
She took his hand and stepped backward into the shower, pulling him with her.
The hot water hit them both, feeling just as good as it had the first time. She kissed him under the spray, harder this time, and his hands found her waist and pulled her against him. Skin against skin, nothing between them now. His hands were splayed wide against her back, and when he slid one up into her wet hair and tilted her head back, the water ran down her throat, and he kissed the path it took.
He sank to his knees in front of her.
Her breath stopped. She looked down at him through the spray—this broad, scarred, beautiful man on his knees on the tile, water running over his shoulders, his hands sliding down her hips—and something cracked open in her chest that she wasn’t going to be able to close again.
The water ran down his back as he lifted her left thigh over his shoulder and pressed his mouth between her legs. Her hand shot to the tile wall, bracing hard, and her other hand found his hair. His tongue was slow and deliberate, tracing a line along her clit that made her hips jerk forward. He steadied her with both hands gripping her thighs.
Three years. It had been three years since anyone had touched her. Three years of solitary beds in sublet apartments and borrowed rooms and cities she moved through without making a mark.
She’d shut this part of herself down so completely that she’d forgotten what it felt like to want someone’s hands on her. Now his tongue was on her, and his fingers were pressing into the soft skin of her inner thighs, and the sound she made bounced off the tile,and she didn’t care.
He listened. Every shift of her hips, every tightened grip in his hair, every sharp breath—he registered it and adjusted. When she pressed into him, he gave her more. When she pulledback, he slowed. The rhythm built and built until her thigh was shaking on his shoulder, and her fingers were locked in his hair, and she came with her back arched against the wet tile and his name in her mouth.
He held her through it. Both hands on her hips, his lips pressed against her inner thigh, his thumbs tracing slow circles on her skin while the tremors worked through her. The water ran over both of them. She stared at the ceiling and tried to remember how to breathe.
He stood up. Water streamed off his shoulders and his chest. His eyes were dark. His hands came up to frame her face and he kissed her, slow and deep, and she could taste herself on him. God, that was so sexy.
He was hard against her stomach. She wrapped her hand around him and felt his breath catch against her jaw. His forehead dropped to hers. His eyes closed.
“Fallon.”
Just her name. Just the sound of it in his voice, low and rough with the water running over them both.
