She went quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s been many years now.”
They continued to walk on in silence until they came up to a set of houses that were directly on the beach. “My house is right up there.”
“Is it?” He looked at the house and then back at her. “It’s nice.”
“It is nice. Would you like to see it?” She was inviting him inside. She didn’t want this night to end. It had been surreal and comfortable and wonderful, and it wasn’t even 8:00 p.m. yet.
“Yes, I very much would.”
Her heart beat faster as they walked quietly up the path that led to her beachfront home. She had never done this before. She had never met a man who she was this attracted to, who she wanted to spend so much time with. First dates had always been horrible for her. Awkward. Panic inducing. But she had met Elias by chance. There was no time for her to get worked up, to overthink, and tonight she wasn’t allowing herself to think at all. She was living in the moment. Doing what made her feel good.
“Whoa,” he said when she let them in.
Her home was beautiful, a gift from her parents, but Cricket really knew it had been her father’s idea to give her this house when she finished her second doctorate. It was an overly generous present, but her father adored her and knew how much she loved this island and cherished the summers she had spent there as a child. It was nothing to him to give her this gift, even though her mother was against it.
Cricket, after all, was the heiress to one of the largest tech fortunes in the world.
“I know it’s a little sparse right now. I haven’t spent much time here until recently.”
“Where were you?” he asked, looking around.
“My lab was based in Boston, but I traveled a great deal.”
“I heard you say something about research. What kind of research do you do?”
She hesitated for a moment. There was nothing romantic or sexy about her job, but she was proud of her work. Her mother told her she should never be embarrassed of showing off her brain. But the older she got, the more she realized that men didn’t necessarily want to date a woman with a bunch of fancy letters after her name. “I’m a medical scientist.”
“A PhD?” he asked, stepping closer.
“Yes, I’m afraid I have two of them.”
A devastatingly sexy smile crossed his lips. He then grabbed her bag and tossed it aside before he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her again. His lips were open, his mouth wet, his tongue warm. She immediately went slack, and he brought her body closer to his. Large, hard, hot. Those were the only words she could think of to describe him. He smelled so good, like ocean air and aftershave and soft-serve vanilla ice cream. She could get drunk off his scent.
“Tell me to go home,” he said into her mouth. “Right now. Tell me to leave.”
“I can’t. You leaving is the very last thing I want.”
“I was hoping you would say that.” He pulled her cardigan off and kissed that little curve that connected her shoulder to her neck.
A moan escaped her as his hands slipped up her dress to skim the backs of her thighs. “You’re so beautiful,” he told her as he hooked his thumbs into her underwear and slid them down. “I want you so damn much.”
She sought his mouth again, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him with a heat that she had never experienced before. She felt his erection against her belly, and it caused her to grow wetter, even more aroused than she was when he had started all of this. She’d had only one serious boyfriend, one sweet, lovely man whom she would have happily spent the rest of her life with, but he’d never made her feel this way. He never wanted her with as much hunger as Elias possessed.
“Take me to your bedroom.”
She took his hand without thinking, and he winced.
“I’m sorry!”
“Don’t be. You can kiss it better.” He lightly pressed his lips to hers.
“When’s the last time you took anything for your hand?”
“This morning. But I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”
“I am worried. I need you to touch me all over my body, and for that to happen I need to know you’re not in pain.”
“If you take me to bed, I promise you the only kind of pain I’ll be in is the good kind.”
She smiled at him and took his other hand, leading him into her en suite bathroom. It was a luxurious bathroom by anyone’s standards, with a huge jetted tub and a rainfall shower. There was a view of the ocean from the window.
“This bathroom is bigger than my bedroom,” he said to her in a low voice. “I would like to spend some time in here if we can.”
“We can.” She went to her medicine cabinet and opened it up in search for a bottle of pain reliever. Some of the contents came spilling out, including her birth control.
“I guess I don’t have to wonder about that,” he said and then unzipped her dress. She had on the ugliest underwear. A beige strapless bra. Her white cotton panties had been left on the floor somewhere near her front door. She had never thought she would be here in a million years. She didn’t even own sexy underwear, but Elias didn’t seem to mind at all. He unhooked her bra and with his uninjured hand cupped her breast, squeezing it ever so slightly as his thumb stroked over her nipple.
She swallowed hard, almost forgetting what she was supposed to be doing. But then she remembered she wanted him to have two pain-free hands so that she could experience even more of his pleasure. She picked up the bottle and closed the door to the medicine cabinet only to come face-to-face with herself in the mirror. Only she didn’t recognize herself. Her hair was windblown and wild, her mouth was slightly open, her lips pouty and kiss swollen. She was completely naked, and a large fully dressed man was looking at her with such open appreciation that it made her knees weak.
But the most marked change was the look in her eyes. There was arousal there, pure and naked lust. She hadn’t thought it was possible to look like that. It didn’t mesh with the image she had of herself in her mind.
“Do you see how sexy you are?” he asked as he pulled her nipple between his fingers. She bit her lip as the pleasure took over her. “I can’t wait to be inside you. To feel you wrapped around me. I can’t help but feel that you are what I need right now.”
She trembled. The power of his words alone made her tremble. She took a small step away from him and filled a glass with water and handed it to him.
“Pills now.”
“Open the bottle for me.”
She complied, but she did it as she walked back into her bedroom, feeling freer and more confident in her body than she had in all her twenty-nine years. “Sit down,” she ordered. He did so with a sexy
