“I am! I just think it would be so much more beautiful if the water were cleaner. I can’t help if my thoughts go to dark places.” Hazel reached over and grabbed his hand. “That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate how amazing this place is. You know, I’ve been to New York before for conferences, but I’ve never done anything touristy like this. I always mean to do these things, but I get busy, and then I get tired.”
Ian stood up straight. When she followed him, he took her other hand and brought them both to her lips. “Darling, I want you to promise me something.”
“I-I um. Okay?”
“You have all of the strength and determination of a bloody tank. And it’s wonderful. Regardless, I want you to promise me that you won’t let your mission prevent you from wresting everything you can from life. In the short time I’ve known you, you have never missed an opportunity to learn or fight.” He leaned forward until their faces were almost touching. “Promise me you’ll try to exercise a similar verve for your own happiness.”
***
Hazel blinked slowly. She bit her lip, then breathed, “I promise,” before reaching up to kiss him. She gave his lower lip a wet suck before raking her nails down his neck.
Her mantra was broken. No more swearing that she wouldn’t be with him again. She would be with him as many times as she could physically stand, and then maybe some more. Ian seemed energized by her sudden interest, and he wrapped his arms around her, pressing her back against the slat between the openings of the crown.
Hazel looked back and felt her heart leap over the distance between them and the ocean. Meanwhile, Ian had begun licking and sucking on her neck, and the area between her legs began to grow warm and throb. She wanted him, needed him, inside her as soon as possible.
She slid her hands down the back of her leggings, pushing them and her panties out of the way. Ian looked up at her with a wicked glint in his eye and muttered, “Time for dessert, then?”
Before she could guess his meaning, two dexterous fingers were rubbing against her lips down there. Teasing and riling her up in a way that made her buck her hips and gasp in spite of herself.
“Oh, love. We’re just getting started.”
Ian kissed her once more before dropping to his knees. His fingers continued to stroke her gently, but soon his tongue was moving inside of her. He lapped broadly over her lips, and pushed inside, and sucked, ever so gently, against her sensitive nub. Hazel writhed helplessly. It felt so damned good. No one had ever touched her like this. She’d only had straightforward sex or a few sad attempts at oral. She’d never had a man come at her with such gusto, such hunger, that it seemed he wanted to take in all of her.
Clearly, Ian was very hungry. He lapped and sucked tirelessly until she felt her pleasure rising like a wave. She shuddered, almost afraid of how it would feel, and if it would last. She had often worried about the time it took her to get there, but Ian always had a stamina that outlasted her stubborn body. He could coax an orgasm out of a rock if he set his mind to it. Now, he slid a finger inside of her and continued to tease.
“Right there! No… Yes! Harder! Harder!” Hazel gasped. She gripped the opening in the crown.
A staccato cry rose from deep inside her as she began to come. A brief, wild firework of pleasure… But as she came, Ian’s fingers moved. He continued to stroke her lips, and Hazel gasped again as a second orgasm struck her, and then a third. She lost count, her body so awash in feeling that she almost couldn’t breathe.
At last, it died down, and Hazel quivered from the intensity. She sunk down, letting Ian wrap his arms around her as she panted.
“Oh, God, Ian, that was, so, so amazing,” she muttered. “I can’t…” She fumbled for words. “I love you.”
Ian said nothing, but kissed her forehead and pulled her panties and leggings back up to protect her from the cold. They stayed there for some time, curled together in the afterglow high above the New York skyline.
It wasn’t until later that night that it dawned on Hazel what she’d said, and how true it was.
Chapter Nine
“You’re looking healthy.”
Hazel pursed her lips at her mother and refused to rise to the bait. “Healthy” was code for “Did you gain weight?” It was possible, even probable, that her semester of late nights and Pop-Tarts had resulted in some college pounds, but it was nothing she’d noticed beyond a little bloating, and she was due for her period soon anyway. But, of course, Martha Greenwood would notice and felt obligated by law to comment.
Instead, Hazel chopped squash at the table. She hated Thanksgiving. Beyond the political problems with the holiday, it meant a moral obligation to go home and take on an undue portion of the work while the boys fooled around, all while trying to survive the absolutely nasty smell of wet roasting turkey carcass for an entire day. If she were honest, Hazel would admit that sometimes she got a craving for a burger around that time of the month, and she missed rotisserie chicken, but turkey was just nasty. She’d been trying to block off her sense of smell since the moment she walked into the house.