hand to her calf and gently moved her foot toward the water. “Not if I’m controlling the water, I won’t,” he said, and his voice was husky and raw and oh, so sexy.
Babette quaked as he held her foot under the water’s stream, then rubbed his hands all over her heel, her sole, her toes, slowly washing the sand away. Then he eased both hands up her ankle, then higher, massaging her calf as his thumbs and fingers worked magic, and slowly, very slowly, washed the sand away.
Her knees went weak, completely, totally, and she started to fall forward. Reflexively, she grabbed him, her hands finding his shoulders, strong and muscled and firm. Then he looked up, and she felt her panties dampen, and it had nothing to do with falling in the water earlier. And everything to do with the way those turquoise eyes made her need.
“You okay?” he asked, in the same thick, rich, husky voice.
No. No. No. “Yes.” She forced the word, then worked even harder to force the next ones out. “But I can do it.”
He nodded, then backed away, and she tried to catch her breath as she finished rinsing that foot, and then the other.
Then she backed away from the shower while he put one tan foot beneath the water’s stream. She watched the way that liquid pooled across his feet, dripped off his heel. And to think, she’d never known how sexy feet could be. She turned abruptly, and hoped he didn’t realize why.
In a few seconds, or minutes—she didn’t know because her brain was frozen on the image of Jeff washing her feet, and his—the water shut off, and she praised herself for not attacking him on the spot. Quite a feat for a girl who’d been way too long without sex. Real sex, that is. She’d brought herself to orgasm on many an occasion and would do so tonight, as soon as the condo door snapped closed and she knew Jeff was out of earshot. From the way her body was already burning, tonight’s would be a screamer. And probably a panter.
Finally, they entered White Sands and walked to the lobby. Again, neither of them spoke. She wasn’t sure what to say, and she wasn’t sure she could control her surge of emotions if she did. So she got on the elevator with him by her side, and didn’t even balk when he stepped off with her at the second floor.
He’d already stated that he wouldn’t let a woman walk on the beach alone at night; he was simply seeing her to her condo for the same reason. Safety. He didn’t expect to go inside, didn’t expect her to invite him in. And she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. She was down here to get him back with Kitty, and she needed to remember that, and not remember that he was the kind of guy who walked a girl home at night, remembered which kind of seashells she collected, and tenderly, oh so tenderly, washed the sand from her feet.
Then again, the fact that he walked Babette to her door didn’t really mean anything more than walking with any other female. He’d probably walked Perky to her car too.
Babette stopped at her door, turned. “That brunette.”
He leaned against the wall by her door, folded his arms at his chest. Babette remembered that chest, and the fact that his nipples were about two shades darker than the remainder of his beautifully tanned body, and she vividly recalled the way she’d flicked her tongue across them, bit them, kissed them.
“The one you called Perky?” he asked, and she blinked back to the here and now.
She nodded. Did you sleep with her tonight? “What’s her name?”
“Her name is Kylie Banks.”
“How did the two of you—” She didn’t finish the question, because he moved closer, much, much closer.
“How did the two of us—what, Babette?” He ran a finger across her lower lip, slowly, so that her tongue longed to ease out and lick it, to taste him again, just a little.
She had to focus, to force the right words to come out, instead of the ones that were inching their way forward—Love me, just once, before you go. Delicious heated waves rippled through her, pushing downward, to the spot that wanted to feel him most. Then she thought about Kitty, and the fact that he’d asked her to be his wife. She eased away from the tempting finger. “I was curious about how you met, but you