But I couldn’t seem to move at all at that moment.
I just stood there, tits out, goosebumpy from the cold—or was it from the heated look in his eyes?—as his gaze roamed over me.
The impact of desire through my system damn near sent me back a step as I watched his eyes slide over my breasts, down my belly, over my thighs and what was between, then back up again.
There was a strange, sudden surge of insecurity that I’d never felt around him before. Ridiculous, of course, since Valen had seen me naked countless times before.
But that was years ago.
This almost felt like the first time all over again.
“Remember Turks and Caicos?” he asked, making my brows draw together.
Of course I remembered Turks and Caicos.
The trip we went on because my parents wouldn’t let me go on the originally planned trip to South America.
The whole vacation was full of long, lazy, sun-soaked days. That we barely got to experience. Since we spent most of our time in bed. Exploring each others bodies and making plans for the future.
A future he would rip away from me pretty quickly after we got back to Navesink Bank.
“I remember what happened right after,” I said, making his shoulders slump a bit.
“Fuck, Lulu, can’t we just remember the good shit for two minutes?” he asked.
“The good shit,” I repeated, a little angry that my mind flashed from being in bed to him, to being in bed alone, crying my eyes out because he’d left me.
That was the thing, I guess.
It was impossible for me to think of the good times without the bad ones ruining it.
“Come on,” he said, shaking his head at me. “There was a lot of good shit.”
“I guess that’s the problem then,” I said, shrugging.
“What does that mean?”
“If you had always been a dick, I wouldn’t have been so hurt about you leaving like that.”
“You wish I’d been a dick to you?” he asked, lips twitching a bit. “Lulu, you’d have kicked my ass if I’d so much as looked at you wrong,” he said.
“So, what? You were nice to me because you were afraid of me?”
“I was nice to you because I lo—because I liked you. But I’m not going to deny that you’ve always had a psycho side, and I wasn’t willing to wake up to you trying to saw off my balls.”
“Trying,” I scoffed. “I’d have had them off before you even knew what was happening,” I told him, letting myself smile at the chuckle he let out. “Are you going to give me my towel or not?” I asked.
“Still debating that,” he said, smile going from amused to sultry in a second flat. “Kind of enjoying the view for the moment,” he admitted as he took a couple steps inward.
I had to admit, I was enjoying my view as well.
I usually tried to avert my eyes when he wasn’t fully dressed around me. First, because I’d be damned if he caught me looking at him. But second, because I knew that my body still reacted to him with some sort of sense memory, leaving me turned on in seconds flat. With no hopes of relief.
“Valen, please,” I said, hoping the desperation that was slowly but surely working its way through my system was not clear in my voice.
“Please what? Please give you the towel and fuck off, or please remind me of how good things could be when we happened to find each other without clothes on?” Valen asked as he stepped closer still.
Too close.
Far too close.
My body was practically humming with the need to feel his touch.
“We can’t,” I insisted, trying to hold onto that last little bit of resistance.
“Hmm,” he said, and he was almost close enough to feel that sound vibrate through his chest. “Maybe we can’t,” he agreed, and when I tell you that the disappointment inside me was strong, I mean I damn near doubled over from it. “But maybe I can,” he added.
The wicked smirk he shot me was instantly familiar, something I’d seen hundreds of times.
Before I could understand his intentions, though, he was down on his knees in front of me, and carefully reaching for the ankle of my bad leg, and coaxing it wider just a second before his face was between my thighs.
I was pretty sure my vision went white for a second there.
Shock and need and the whole forbidden aspect just mingled together into this heady cocktail that made me instantly drunk.
No.
Not just drunk.
Plastered.
Fucking obliterated.
So out of it that any thoughts to objection flew right out of my head.
Then all there was… was him.
His tongue sliding up my cleft and working my clit with the familiarity of hundreds of times before, with the perfect pressure and the exact right movements.
I swear my thighs started to shake almost instantly.
Feeling it, Valen’s hand pressed to my belly, pushing me back a step until my back met the cold wall of the shower, letting it hold me up as he continued to work me.
Logically, I knew I needed to push him away. I knew I was going to lose the upper hand. Or whatever ground I had to stand on.
I couldn’t claim to hate him when I’d allowed him to go down on me, could I?
I maybe could have excused sex. I mean, a good, solid hatefuck would be easy to explain away.
But this?
Even as I thought that, though, he was driving me up, pushing me right to that edge.
His fingers moved between us, slipping inside of me. As my walls tightened around him, he let out a growl of approval around my clit, something that damn near shattered me right then and there.
But then his fingers started to thrust as his lips and tongue kept up the perfect pace and pressure.
My hand slapped down on the back of his neck, fingernails digging crescents into his skin as he got me closer and closer, as I felt the forbidden orgasm slam through my system, washing away anything but the pleasure.
For a whole, oh, two minutes tops.
Then it all came crashing back.
As if sensing it, when he pulled back to look up at me, his eyes were heated, sure, but also triumphant.
Because he’d won.
And he knew it.
Damnit.
Damnit.
“I hope you enjoyed that,” I told him as I pulled my leg down, finding myself almost glad for the pain from my wounds because they steeled my reserve and made my words come out with a bit of a bite. “Because it is never going to happen again,” I added, pushing him back a step.
He recovered before he landed on his ass in the shower, and I reached for the towel he had draped over his other shoulder, wrapping it around myself, and walking away with as much dignity as I could muster with my weak knees and sore thigh and ass.
As I grabbed my clothes and got dressed, I kept reminding my needy body the same words I told him until they became a mantra.
Until I almost believed them.
That is never going to happen again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Valen
“Just when you think you have them figured out, they knock you on your ass,” Dezi mumbled to himself as he looked down at his phone.
“What are you talking about?” I shot back, confused.
Dezi loved women.
In fact, I wasn’t sure I’d ever met anyone who loved women as much as Dezi did. Both platonically and sexually. He was constantly tagging along with the girls when they went out. Even when they didn’t invite him. And the girls all seemed to love him back. With the princess, that meant platonically, almost like a brother. But women in bars, yeah, they didn’t seem to have any defense against his charm.