“Yes?”
“You’re holding yourself off me. Stop it.”
She blinked, coming to herself at his hard tone. She realized she’d placed her hands on the outside of his thighs and that her arms were tense.
“Oh,” she said. It wasn’t as if she’d literally been suspended over him, but she had been resisting giving him all her weight. She relaxed her arms, letting herself sink fully against his hard thighs and cock.
“That’s better,” he said, his hands still massaging her breasts. “Why do you always act like my cock is going to burn you or something?”
She heard the focused puzzlement in his tone. It both amazed and aroused her, the way he always spoke of sexual things without a trace of self-consciousness.
“I guess because it does,” she admitted honestly. His massaging hands slowed. She felt him swell beneath her ass. “Not literally, obviously.” She rolled her eyes in frustration at her lame explanation. “I just mean you overwhelm me,” she said, closing her eyes, glad he couldn’t see her scrunched-up face.
“And that’s a bad or good thing?” he asked warily.
Her eyelids sprung open. Had he actually sounded worried? Vanni Montand?
“It’s a very, very good thing,” she assured. “I’m just not used to so much . . . potency.”
He resumed massaging her breasts. She could almost hear him thinking behind her. He rubbed her nipples with his thumb and forefinger, the sensation delicious with the lubrication. She flexed her hips into his cock and whimpered.
The moment felt very ripe with sensuality—the hot sun beating down on them, his cock growing erect beneath her ass, his big, warm hands massaging her bare breasts; but there was a tenderness to the unfolding seconds as well, a breathless fragility. She’d sensed a crack in his golden, rigid armor and realized that despite all his effortless confidence, he wasn’t all that different from her.
“Vanni?” she asked quietly, not looking around, but hyperaware of his face just behind her right shoulder.
“Yes?”
“Have you ever . . . done what we did . . . in the dressing room today?”
“Had sex in a department store?”
She laughed uncomfortably. “No . . . had sex without protection. I’m only asking because I haven’t,” she said quickly, anxious when he didn’t immediately respond.
“You haven’t?” he asked, his hands sweeping over her ribs and sides, spreading the lotion there. She shivered in pleasure and shook her head.
“Even though you were on birth control? Wasn’t your relationship with Colin monogamous?”
“Yes. Or I thought it was,” she said, thinking of Amanda and frowning.
“Why did you still use protection then?” Vanni asked behind her.
“It was my choice. And I don’t know why,” she said quietly, studying the rippling pool in front of her. “I was just thinking about that while I was showering before I came down.”
A silence ensued as he rubbed some lotion along the tender strip of skin above her bikini bottoms. That thick, heavy pressure in her sex amplified. She suddenly felt hot. Very hot.
“Just once. With one woman, I mean . . . a long time ago,” he said. She forced her attention back to the topic she’d broached. He was speaking of his wife, she knew by the tone of his voice. She wished she could ask him about her, but knew that had to be something he brought up. She couldn’t force him to talk about it. His finger glided along that sensitive patch of skin. Her clit prickled with excitement at his nearness. “But otherwise, no,” he mumbled. “Never.”
“What?” she asked, her attention diverted once again by his magical hands.
“I haven’t been with a woman like that in almost a decade. And there have been a lot of women, Emma.”
His brutally honest words seemed to hang in the air around them.
“Is that because of what you told Astrid that night?” she asked shakily, continuing to avoid his gaze. It seemed safer somehow, talking to the shimmering pool. “About having little to offer a woman? Is it because you don’t want to get too close to begin with?”
She sensed his tension at the question, but also his intent focus. Was he as caught up in the fragile moment as she was?
“Yes,” he said quietly, still rubbing that strip of skin so close to her pussy.