Island Affair (Keys to Love #1) - Priscilla Oliveras Page 0,86

if to wash away the painful memories in the salty water.

Rivulets ran down his temples and Sara wiped them away with her thumbs to keep them from stinging his eyes. His mouth curved in a sad semblance of the half grin that made her belly flip-flop and her chest tighten.

“And that is the end of my mood-killing sob story. Satisfied?” He squinted down at her before slipping his glasses back into place. The move shielded his eyes from her, hiding the windows into his soul that she longed to peek into.

Satisfied? Not by a long shot.

He’d talked about what had caused his rift with Enrique. Not why it continued. Six years later.

But he had opened up to her, so it was enough. For now.

Tapping her chin with a finger, she frowned up at the sky, pretending to search for an answer.

“I don’t know?” she said, drawing out the words. “Satisfied can take on so many different forms. You know what I mean?”

Above his glasses, his right brow quirked. His arms tightened around her hips, pulling her pelvis closer to his. Desire curled wicked tendrils inside her, sensuous and rich.

Cradling his face in her palms, she stretched up to brush her lips against his. Featherlight. Teasing herself with the need to taste him. Show him how much she trusted him. With her secrets, her body. Maybe even, if she divested herself of all her reservations and fears, her soul.

“Thank you.” She whispered the words a breath away from his mouth before sealing her lips over his.

He groaned, deepening their kiss.

His tongue brushed hers. Once. Twice. A tangle and caress ripe with the heady taste of saltwater and him that made her head woozy, her body pounding for more than kisses and underwater caresses.

She gasped, overwhelmed by the rush of desire. Luis dragged his mouth down her jaw, her neck. She tilted her head to the side, murmuring her pleasure.

“Co?o, I want you so bad,” he rasped.

He licked that sensitive spot behind her ear, and she bucked into him again.

“What if we skipped the rest of the bike tour?” she murmured.

Luis froze, his breath warm on her ear.

Arching back, she glanced up at him. Her pulse pounded in her ears, a bass drum throbbing an insistent, carnal beat.

He removed his sunglasses, holding them loosely on the water’s surface. They bumped against her shoulder where his thumb brushed tiny circles on her suddenly hypersensitive skin. He stared at her, his serious gaze boring into hers.

“We have the house to ourselves for a few more hours,” she went on, making her intent clear.

“Are you sure that’s what you want?”

The fact that he would ask, even after her invitation, was further evidence of the height he reached on her good-guy meter.

Unhooking her legs from around his waist, she stood on wobbly legs. Her feet sank in the ocean’s sandy bottom. She caught his hands in hers. Threaded their fingers together and tugged him toward the shore.

“This mermaid is ready for land. And a bed. And some privacy. With you.”

Luis’s dark eyes sparked with hunger, and a promise of the delectable afternoon ahead.

Chapter 16

Hot and sweaty after their Tour de France pace from the beach at one end of Duval to the rental house on the other, and with a different, more exhilarating activity on their minds, Luis and Sara didn’t bother storing their bikes when they arrived home. Instead, they parked them in the grass in front of the pygmy date palm trees and flowering bushes hiding the corner storage unit from view in the backyard oasis.

Luis sucked in a deep breath, trying but failing to slow the pulse hammering in his chest.

His body thrummed with anticipation and . . . hell, flat-out eye-crossing lust. Things had gotten so freaking hot and heavy in the water, he’d barely made the walk from the shore to the bike rack without giving bystanders a peep show of his hard-on.

Co?o, had he and Sara been alone, at one of the secluded areas around the tiny islands and sandbars out in the Gulf, they wouldn’t have waited for niceties like a bed, clean sheets, or a shower.

The image of Sara standing under the chrome rain showerhead in their upstairs bathroom, water cascading down her body, now a captivating rosy gold after her time under the Key West sun, had Luis growing hard.

She hurried up the porch steps ahead of him, the cheeky grin she sent over her shoulder inducing him to pick up his own pace. She tapped the