Twenty minutes later they were in the pool. His laps were a purposeful crawl with flip turns and patterned breathing, hers a less disciplined breaststroke that made one lap to
his four. Tiring, she moved to sit on one of the long tile stairs in the shallow end, half out of the water as she watched him. The pool was fully shaded now, leaving her quite comfortable watching his athletic build cut through the water.
When he stopped and joined her on the step, he was breathing heavily, probably having swum a mile though she’d lost count ages ago, distracted by the steady thrust of his arms into the water and the tight curve of his buttocks as he kicked. She really couldn’t fathom what a sexy, virile man like him was doing with mousy, boring her.
And even though he’d pushed himself with thirty minutes of hard swimming, his gaze moved restlessly, as if he was looking for the next challenge.
“You’re not comfortable with downtime, are you?” she said.
He glanced questioningly at her while diamond droplets glittered on his face and chest hair.
“You’re driven,” she expounded. “I keep thinking of all those plans we made, but what does it matter if we have a floating hotel? I know it’s top-notch, but who cares? We don’t need the money and the world doesn’t need another behemoth cruise ship.”
“It matters to the people we’ve employed and the ones who invested with us. But you’re right, I suppose. Wealth isn’t something either of us really needs. Not anymore. It’s a habit I’ve fallen into, I guess.”
“You worked hard to get here and now you don’t know how to stop,” she paraphrased.
He made a noise of agreement.
“If we don’t have children, what would we fill our lives with? More hotels and boats?” Involuntarily, her ears strained to hear the words each other.
They didn’t come. After a long moment he said, “Our last five-year plan took months to mold. This one can, too. There’s no rush.”
“There is,” she insisted. “I feel like if we don’t have everything sorted out before we sleep together again, our marriage will go back to the way it was and I’ll be stuck in it.” There. She’d said it. Her worst fear had blurted out of her.
He stared at her for a long minute, absorbing her outburst, then he chuckled softly and shook his head. “And I can’t think of anything but making love to you again. New plans?” He shook his head as if she was speaking another language. “We’re at quite an impasse.”
He wasn’t being dismissive, just blatantly honest. Her heart constricted as she absorbed that this was what he’d meant about trusting him. Somehow she had to dredge up the faith to believe he’d continue working on their marriage along with the courage to surrender herself to him. The potential for pain was enormous.
While the yearning to feel close to him was unbearable.
She looked up to where the afternoon sun had bleached the clear sky to nearly white. Not even close to evening or bedtime. She hadn’t brought either her green-light or red-light nightgown. How else could she possibly signal to him that she was receptive to his advances?
Oh, Adara, quit being such a priss. They were learning to communicate, weren’t they?
Her internal lecture didn’t stop her heart from beating frantically in her throat as she set tentative fingertips on his wrist where it rested on his thigh. Leaning toward him, she shielded her eyes with a swoop of her lashes and watched his lips part slightly in surprise before she pressed hers to them.
Heat flooded into her. The very best kind of heat that had nothing to do with Greek sunshine and everything to do with this man’s chemistry interacting with hers. He didn’t move, letting her control the pressure and deepening of their kiss, but he responded with a muted groan of approval and drew on her tongue with gentle suction.
Runnels of sexual hunger poured through her system, spreading out in delicate fingers that excited her senses and made her want to tip into his lap.
Shakily she pulled back and licked the taste of him off her lips before she gripped the railing in slippery fingers and forced her weak knees to take her weight as she stood.
“Will you, um, give me a minute to shower before you come up?” The question was so uncouched and blatant she felt as though she’d stripped herself naked here in public.
“I’ll use the shower in the cabana and be up in ten,” he replied gruffly, eyes like lasers that peeled her bathing suit from her body.
Adara wrapped a towel around herself and went to their room.
CHAPTER SIX
THE PARALLEL TO their first time kept ringing in Gideon’s skull. He was just as keyed up as he’d been then, his masculine need to possess twitching in him like an electric wire, while his ego inched out onto that wire, precarious as a tightrope walker.
No room for false moves. The message pulsed as a current, back and forth within him.
He climbed the stairs as though pulled by an invisible force. No matter how many times he told himself it was ridiculous to place so much importance on this—he’d done this before. They had. It didn’t matter. This meant something. The last time he’d felt this sense of magnitude, Adara’s initiation to sexual maturity had been on the line. He’d felt a massive responsibility to make it good for her, especially as he’d been selfishly determined he would be her only lover for the rest of their lives. The pressure to ensure they were both satisfied with that exclusivity had been enormous.
Without being too egotistical, he believed they had been. He certainly had. Her subtle beauty had flourished into his own private land of enchantment.