There was laughter in her voice when she answered, “Yes, please.” But it ended in a gasp when he pulled down her bra cup and bared one delectable nipple to the sun dappling through the leaves of the palm overhead.
“You’re beautiful, Alex.” He brushed the callused pad of his fingertip over the tip of her breast and watched it pucker and pout. “So perfect. So soft.” When he pinched the hard little nub, her hips came off the blanket by a foot.
She was a firecracker. No doubt about it. And experience told him it wouldn’t take much to shoot her into the sky. But before she did, he wanted to watch her burn.
He wanted to make her beg.
He wanted the pleasure he pressed on her to be so exquisite that this memory, this moment, this day would seat itself in her mind too.
In the years to come, when she closed her eyes, he wanted her to see him as he was now, feel him as he was now, hot and heavy with desire for her.
Holding her tightly so she couldn’t wiggle away, he closed his lips over her nipple and sucked until she squealed.
* * *
12:39 p.m.
Alex had never cared for the color of her nipples.
They were too light. Not berry brown or cherry red like the women she’d seen while doing research for this moment. Hers were a pale, baby pink. Sweet. Cute. A far cry from anything she’d consider erotic.
Boy, was I wrong!
Now her nipples were two of her favorite body parts. Because Mason seemed to enjoy them immensely, and in doing so, he’d proved they were highly erotic.
When he sucked on them, delicious aching sensations traveled down to her belly. Farther, to pool hot and heavy between her legs. And when he gently caught the ruched nubs between his teeth, flicking the tips with his insanely talented tongue? Well, she nearly came.
“Mason,” she moaned, her hips pumping. Twisting. Seeking. “Please, I need—”
“Shh, woman.” Her nipple popped free of his mouth, and it was pure torture. Or a reprieve. She couldn’t tell which. “I know what you need. You’ll get it when I’m ready. When you’re ready.”
“I’m ready now.” She tried to break free of his merciless grip. But it was useless. He was too strong.
“Good things come to those who wait,” he growled, and the sound swirled in her ears. Low. Warm. Shockingly seductive.
“‘Come’ being the operative word,” she insisted.
He blew over her nipple and her areola furled so tightly that she cried out with the pleasure-pain of it. Shocking herself because she’d never heard herself make a sound like that. It was primitive. Wild. Keening.
He awakened something within her that had been dormant her whole life. It was as if it’d been waiting for him. For his touch. For his kiss.
“Let go of my hands,” she pleaded. “I want to touch you.”
“No.” He loomed above her, huge and triumphant.
The wind blew a shock of hair over his forehead, making him look almost boyish. But the expression in his eyes was anything but. It was hot. And wonderfully lecherous.
“When you touch me,” he continued, slowly pulling down the other cup of her bra until both her breasts were exposed to the breeze and his ravenous gaze, “I can’t think. And I wanna think, Alexandra. I wanna see and touch. I wanna feel and taste. All of you. Every sweet inch.”
To prove his point, his mouth reclaimed one breast while his free hand cupped and shaped and caressed the other.
She opened her mouth, but no sound emerged. Every wire in her brain crossed and every synapse misfired while he patiently, tirelessly tended to her breasts with his tongue and teeth and fingers.
Mason was a multitasker. He seemed able to do a million things at once.
And he was magic. That’s the only way she could explain how her bra was off and crumpled on the blanket beside her head when she couldn’t recall him removing it.
His dedicated fingers strayed to the button at the top of her shorts, and when he lifted his head to say, “I’m gonna get you naked now,” his expression looked very much like she felt.
Deliciously tormented. Full of aching need.
A line appeared between his eyebrows when she shook her head.
“You don’t want me to get you naked?” She thought she heard a hint of desperation in his voice.
“Oh, no. I definitely want you to get me naked. But I want you naked first.”
She thought herself a genius. If he took off his swim trunks, he’d have to release her wrists. Then she’d be able to touch him like she’d been dying to since the first day she saw him sitting shirtless on a little stool in front of his easel.
So many heavy, roping muscles. Such thick slabs of flesh. All that wonderfully crinkly man hair.
He’d been covered in flecks of paint. She remembered how she’d wanted to offer to help him wash them off. With her tongue.
For a long moment, he regarded her, obviously seeing through her ploy. She held her breath, wondering if he would appease her anyway. She blew it out when he sat up and whipped off his shorts in one quick movement.
Turning back to her, he eyed the button on her shorts, intent on getting her naked as quickly as he’d gotten himself, so he didn’t see her eyes fly open so wide that the breeze coming in off the ocean dried them out and made them tear.
H-h-holy shit.
He was glorious. Also…a bit terrifying.
She’d thought her hours of research had prepared her. But it was one thing to see a very large, fully engorged penis on the screen of her iPad. Quite another thing to come face-to-face with one in real life.
She licked suddenly dry lips. “I guess my curse didn’t work.”
“What?” he asked distractedly, having pulled down the zipper on her shorts. They—along with her panties—were quickly wrenched from her legs.
He’s good. I’ll give him that, she thought with reluctant admiration, at the same time she couldn’t take her eyes off his dick.
It was…impressive. And sort of…aggressive-looking. His shaft was straight and thick, roped with angry veins. And the head? Well, it looked like a plum. Round. Shiny.
Will it taste as sweet? she wondered.
If she hadn’t been so mesmerized by his nudity, she might have been self-conscious about her own. After all, hers wasn’t a figure most men craved.
But apparently, Mason was the exception. Because his eyes roved over her from head to toe, taking pit stops in places that raised her blood. His tone was reverent when he lay down beside her. “You’re perfect. Such a delicate pink,” he murmured, watching her body’s response when he smoothed the callused pad of his thumb over her nipple. Then he hooked a hand behind her knee and bent her leg up and out. Exposing her. Opening her to the warm kiss of the sun.