It was a potent combination that charged what was supposed to be a leisurely kiss into one with more ferocious greed than he intended.
She stiffened in surprise, then melted into him, greeting his tongue with her own as she moaned and coiled her limbs around him.
This was why he still had her here after four days. This response of hers was addictive.
He flexed his arm on the ledge to secure them at the edge of the pool and slid his other hand into the bottom of her suit, palming her bare ass. He’d had time to learn what she liked, and that always made her squirm. She tightened her thighs around his waist and rocked her hips against him.
She knew his triggers, too. She swooped her lips across to suck his earlobe until he could hardly keep their heads above water.
The strings on her bikini were too much bother. He caught the neck strap and stretched it to bring it up and forward, dropping it away under the water between them. Her pale breasts with their pink tips sat just below the surface, pretty and tempting.
He scooped his arm under her butt and lifted her enough that he could suck her nipples, each one going cold and hard as a pebble in the brisk spring air.
“Giovanni,” she gasped, hands scraping through his hair and roaming restlessly over his shoulders. “Let’s go to the bedroom.”
“So impatient,” he teased grittily, even though that eagerness of hers never ceased to thrill him. Hell, he was right there with her, feeling so damned ravenous he didn’t want to let her go for the time it would take to dry off and get to the bed. How would he go months without her when he couldn’t bear to wait five minutes?
“I want to feel all of you,” she said with a pang in her voice and a drift of her touch to delicately pinch his nipple.
He shuddered in reaction, nearly losing his grip on the ledge.
She chuckled softly as she dropped back into the water with a slosh. They were nose to nose again, mouth fusing to mouth with insatiate need. He shoved his hand in her bottoms again, squeezing her cheek and sliding his touch under her thigh. There. His long fingers reached the plump folds and fine hairs. A sweet noise throbbed in her throat as he found the heart of her response.
“If you want all of me, take me,” he said against her mouth. Distant warning bells sounded in his head, but he ignored them. “I want to feel you, too.” He deepened his touch, shaking with want at the idea of being naked inside her.
“H-here?” She blinked dazed eyes at him. “Without a condom?”
He wore them to protect his health. “I don’t ejaculate,” he reminded her.
Her hand dropped into the space between them. She pushed the front of his bathing suit down, freeing his erection. The cool of the water did nothing to chill his ardor. He pulled aside the crotch of her bathing suit, his thumb lingering to coax another jagged noise out of her.
She guided the head of his erection against her folds. Slowly he was enfolded in heat, a sensation so acute his whole body felt as though he was thrust into a furnace.
His one rational thought was that he shouldn’t let them drown, but— He tilted his head back and swore his gratification at the overcast, spitting sky. “You’re so hot.”
“You feel good, too,” she gasped, curling her arms and legs around him, clinging as they kissed and kissed.
The suspension of the water gave him more ability to thrust than he usually had. He used his arm to cushion her against the hard, tiled wall, but gripping the ledge, he was able to use his whole body to make love to her. It was incredibly exciting. The water swirled around them, further stimulating him, while Freja moved in response, making those gorgeous noises that told him he was giving her great pleasure.
He wanted to slow down and make this last forever, it was so impossibly good, but the intensity was more than he could control.
“Giovanni,” she gasped in the fractured breath of approaching climax.
“Come,” he coaxed, speaking Sicilian because his own crisis gathered like a condensed ball of energy, ready to explode. “It’s too good. I can’t hold back.”
He didn’t want to. Ecstasy beckoned.
As the last of his discipline shredded, she released a cry of elation and convulsed against him. A ragged, “Freja,” tore from his throat as his entire body shuddered in a way he hadn’t experienced in years.
CHAPTER FOUR
FREJA WAS FEELING very subdued as she and Giovanni showered off the salt from the pool.
The shower was enormous with a dozen heads and nozzles and taps. He had a special chair he used in here, but there was still plenty of room for her. He’d even had his housekeeper purchase some organic, vanilla-scented body wash and shampoo, making it super easy to linger in the warm spray.
Or maybe she was seizing the excuse to draw out her last few minutes with him. Once she dried off and dressed, she would have to say goodbye and she didn’t feel ready.
Not that she could say so. Giovanni was a sophisticated man. This was the sort of transitory affair that consenting adults engaged in. She kept reminding herself that this was a rite of passage on her part. It was her first tumble into physical intimacy, one that was paired with deep infatuation with a dynamic man. Getting her heart bruised was all part of the process.
If anything, she ought to view the termination of their affair as a healthy end point. They were ending things in a civilized and, frankly, necessary way. In recent years, she’d grown used to being autonomous and making her own decisions, but these last few days, she had found herself accommodating his presence in her life, trying to maximize the limited time she had with him. That was fine for a weekend, but arranging her world around a man had its pitfalls. She knew that.
Nevertheless, the sense of abandonment that engulfed her as their goodbye loomed threatened to crush her.
“You’re being very quiet,” Giovanni noted, turning off the sprayer he was using.
“Hmm? Oh.” She tilted back her head to give her hair one last unneeded rinse, not wanting him to see the morose expression on her face. Her worst nightmare was to behave like some gauche teenager at the last minute. “I’m thinking of all those very compelling things like whether I need to pick up milk on my way home.”
She turned off her showerhead and accepted the towel he handed her. She stayed in the shower to dry off while he rolled out to the spot under the heat lamp.
She realized he was being very quiet as well, sitting up straighter to saw the towel across his back, but watching her closely. Anxious for her to leave? She wrapped the towel around herself and stepped out with a meaningless smile plastered on her face.
“Freja.” He reached out as she came even with him and tugged the bottom corner of her towel.
She scrabbled to secure it, letting out a laugh only to sober when she realized he wasn’t trying to playfully steal it, only to get her attention. The gravity in his expression made her heart lurch.