A hunk of Tiramisu dropped onto the lapel of her robe.
She kissed away the crumbs of red velvet clinging to his lips.
It took half an hour to straighten up. He made sure the fire was secured and picked up the towels they left lying around. Double-checking the spa controls, he then dimmed the courtyard lights and met up inside with a flustered-looking Summer.
“My phone is a piece of shit,” she grumbled.
“What’s the problem?”
She threw her hands up and huffed. He knew the sound. It was the universally recognized typical behavior for those frustrated by technology. Waving the phone, she grumbled with a fierce frown. “The minute I plugged it in, it started to update. Look,” she snapped. “Time remaining one hour? Are they kidding?”
When she got mad, her halo snapped and crackled like fireworks on the Fourth of July.
Knowing better but too weak to stave off his need to invade her mind, he opened up, and in the space of a heartbeat, she filled him. It was almost too easy. And it also wasn’t fair. She had no way to shield herself from his prying.
In short order, he picked up a lot. Exhaustion nipped at her heels. She felt raw and uncertain. Excitement was there too, but she was reining it in.
Her nervousness got his engine running and drew him back to the moment at hand. She spied her dress draped over his arm and asked if he had her panties. He fished them from his robe’s pocket.
“Laundry,” she drawled.
Without waiting for him to say anything, she dashed into the tiled bathroom, and yelled, “Hey, do you mind if I use the hotel toothbrush? I don’t have a sleepover game. If I did, I’d have an auxiliary toothbrush in my purse, and rinsing my undies in the sink wouldn’t be necessary.”
He laughed. She had such a refreshing way of expressing what she was thinking. No filters.
No filters meant no agenda, either. Summer lived every minute. She existed in the present. He needed that in his life.
He needed her.
While she did her thing, he tidied up the dining room and called the special number he had for the chef’s personal crew to unobtrusively remove everything.
When he didn’t find anything amiss after a last glance, with no reason to stall, he headed into the bedroom suite and shut the door.
9
Her hair didn’t look half bad—not after she hit it with the hotel hair dryer and tamed the curls. It wasn’t as sleek and carefree as she preferred, but she wasn’t at home where a bunch of products and tools were within reach.
Washing her undies was easy. Swishing the stretch lace boy shorts in sudsy water, Summer wavered between giggling and embarrassment. She giggled from the absurdity of washing her panties in a sink and colored with embarrassment for the same reason.
Was this really what women did? Wear hotel robes, have wild monkey sex in and around a Jacuzzi, and wash their damn panties in a sink?
Squeezing the water out of her underwear, she looked around for a spot to hang them and decided the hook next to the shower stall, the one meant for a robe, was perfect. Draping them over the knobby metal fixture got a laugh out of her. The cute lingerie waved as a flag of sexy honor flying in her lover’s bathroom.
Her lover. Yikes! The way she responded to the blond Adonis had her doing and feeling things totally foreign and confusing. Like blurting out the L-word.
Wasn’t bringing up love the ultimate in rookie moves?
Oh, dear. Did inexperience and being overwhelmed by their intimate activities make her pathetic and needy? That must be it. Why else would she bring up love?
Uh, because you’re falling for him. Admit it.
She removed the robe and took a step back to assess her reflection in a full-length wall mirror. Her body looked the way it always did—strong, a little on the lean side, and healthy. Her boobs wore a visible trail of love bites left by Arnie’s greedy mouth. The man certainly had an oral fixation. Each nip and the marks left behind excited the fuck out of her.
“Good grief.” Her eyes landed on her hips, where she found a series of smudgy bruises.
Recalling how it happened, she gave a quivery moan as the memory played out of her wicked lover holding her hips as he pulled her onto his hard cock, over and over. He did things to make her scream with pleasure even while floating on