release.
Slowly he withdrew his touch and planted two gentle kisses on each of her inner thighs before he rose to kiss her still-trembling abdomen.
“I have to go shower. Now.” His voice grated with strain. “Before I forget my good intentions and take this too far.”
She rolled her head on the hard tiles beneath her, still filled with lassitude. “I’d like to touch you. Help.”
“Do you realize what’s going to happen if you do?”
“In theory.” She smiled with her newfound womanly experience. “That’s why I want to do it.”
He made a noise that was both strangled laughter and defeat. In a lithe move, he settled beside her on the tiles and covered her mouth, kissing her with all the passion in him that had yet to be satisfied.
It made her hungry again and she kissed him with abandon until he growled with suffering. She cupped his jaw, urging him to back off a little so she could see.
His tiny bathing suit was too small to contain his arousal. Fascinated, she started to reach out, glanced at him.
“Be my guest.”
“Show me,” she whispered.
He did, wrapping her hand around him and teaching her what he liked. They kissed again as she caressed him. Kissed until the hand he’d tangled in her hair stung and his body shuddered and his feral cries spilled across her lips.
* * *
They enjoyed a mellow dinner in the dining room, chatting on and off with the couple at the next table.
Luli almost felt as though Gabriel had deliberately drawn those other people in to dispel the intimacy between him and Luli, which stung. She was beginning to realize what he’d meant about how she needed to be careful how much of herself she gave him. He had warned her that physical closeness would make her long for the emotional kind and it was true. She already did.
What she didn’t understand was why he didn’t want to give it to her.
“Can I ask why you were estranged from Mae?” She paused on the bridge to take hold of the rope that formed the rails and looked up at the stars. “I know she didn’t exactly reach out. She was very reserved. Is that a family trait?” she tacked on lightly.
“To some extent.” He moved to stand beside her. “I don’t spend a lot of time navel-gazing and paying therapists to tell me my family of origin is the source of all my problems, but what little I remember of my mother, she was very quiet. Regretful, perhaps, but I may be projecting. Given that Mae drove my mother to marry my father, I didn’t see a point in pursuing a relationship with her and possibly winding up committing a similar act of recklessness.”
“Present marriage excluded.”
“Of course.”
She smiled briefly, but it faded to sadness. “Your parents weren’t in love?” Was that why he didn’t feel he was capable of it? He had no example of it?
“My father was. Perhaps my mother was.” What she could see of his shadowed expression was inscrutable. “I don’t remember them fighting, but I was young.”
“How did she die? Mae never said.”
“A complication with her pregnancy. She wouldn’t let them take the baby and they both died.”
“I’m so sorry. That’s terrible.” She thought of Mae’s inexpressive face on the few occasions when she had mentioned her daughter. She must have been containing so much pain.
Much like Gabriel’s mask of indifference as he nodded toward the end of the bridge where their villa sat.
She didn’t take the hint.
“You lost a brother or sister.” He must be terribly lonely.
His shoulder jerked. “I wouldn’t wish my childhood on anyone else.”
She cocked her head, thinking of what he’d said about being bullied. “Mixed race? I thought America was the great melting pot, accepting of all.”
“What does that even mean?” he scoffed. “I’m pig iron, that’s true, but I wasn’t something anyone had use for until I refined myself into that other American ideal, the self-made man.” He spoke with an infinite depth of cynicism.
“I hate that feeling of not fitting.” Her heart panged with more than empathy. She was living that feeling even now. “The pageant school was a competitive place, but at least we all looked and sounded the same. The whole time I’ve been at Mae’s, I’ve felt like a big, sore thumb. Now I’m with you and I’m a square peg trying to fit into a dollar sign.”
“Fitting in is overrated.”
“I do that.” In so many ways, they were so alike. “I convince myself I don’t want what I can’t have.”
His resounding silence made her look up at him. He seemed so remote in that moment, her heart lurched.
“What I mean is, I always told myself it didn’t matter that I didn’t have money of my own because my needs were always met,” she tried to explain. “It works as a coping strategy. Especially when I looked at all the money Mae had and she didn’t have what she really wanted, which was her daughter.”
Still he said nothing.
“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” she hurried on. “Mae was difficult. I presumed she was controlling and isolated me because she had lost her daughter, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that was her nature from the beginning. Maybe your mother felt suffocated and pushed Mae away. I wouldn’t think your mother giving birth to you was an act of defiance, though. She probably wanted a family. If she had survived and you had siblings, you maybe wouldn’t have felt so set apart.”
“It’s late. We should both get some sleep.” He touched her shoulder.
She hesitated. “Together?”
“I don’t think that’s wise.” His flinty gaze met hers, read the injury she couldn’t hide. “I did warn you,” he said of his gentle rebuff.
If this was how much it hurt to be close to him, then pushed away, he was right. It was too much to bear. More than she wanted to risk.
Forlorn, she went to bed alone.
* * *
He didn’t hear her so much as feel her move through the villa as sunrise approached. He rose from the bed where his mind had been too noisy and his body on fire with the knowledge he could have her—he only needed to compromise what few principles he had.
He had taken things way too far by the plunge pool, rationalizing that he was doing a damned public service by granting her the experience she craved.
He had pushed the boundaries, though. He had seduced her and had wanted all that they’d done and more. Everything. He was quite convinced she would have gone all the way if he’d guided her there.
Her
