She heard him shift, the words that had formed in her head, a declaration of need, longing, desire, replaying in her head despite her best efforts. But then a light kiss on her shoulder had her swinging round.
‘Come on,’ he said as he climbed off the bed. After discarding the condom, he reached down to lift her over his shoulder.
‘Leo? What are you...?’ She choked out a shocked laugh, pathetically grateful for his playful mood. ‘Put me down! I’m exhausted.’
Not entirely true—getting a bird’s-eye view of his naked butt from her position on his shoulder was having a restorative effect. And helping her forget about everything other than the sex.
‘Tough,’ he said. ‘Now stop wiggling or I’m going to drop you.’
Pressing her hands against his back, she lifted up and twisted. ‘Where are you taking me?’
‘Outside.’
‘You’re... What?’ She shrieked and began to wriggle in earnest as he pulled open the porch door and stepped out onto the snow-covered porch.
‘Leo... Are you nuts? We’re naked.’ She carried on shrieking and wiggling, with him laughing until she was dumped unceremoniously into a pool of steaming bubbling water. She slid under the delicious jets, letting the water envelop her body, her senses as alert as the rest of her. When she popped up, he was sitting beside her on the ledge of the wooden hot tub, the steam bubbling up to guild his handsome features in a luminous film of moisture... And smugness.
She slapped the water, covering him in the steamy froth. ‘You jerk,’ she said, but couldn’t resist the smile at his outrageous behaviour.
‘Hey,’ he said as he caught her wrist and tugged her towards him. ‘It’s Your Moan-esty to you, Princess.’
She laughed as he dragged her up and over his lap, until she was straddling him. Her shoulders above the water felt the bristle of cold air, but it only heightened the sensations rioting through her body as his erection pressed against her belly, and his heavily muscled thighs tensed beneath her butt.
‘I can hear you thinking,’ he murmured as he cradled her cheek with his palm, threaded the wild spray of hair behind her ear. ‘Stop it.’
She glided her thumb down the side of his face, felt the delicious rub of stubble already beginning to darken his cheeks.
‘Could I ask you a question?’ she said as the curiosity overwhelmed her—she’d never seen him so relaxed or so open and it enchanted her.
He had forgiven her and there were so many things she wanted to know about him. Just small things, nothing major, maybe if—
‘No questions, Juno,’ he said, cutting off the eager thoughts. ‘Unless they’re about what I want for breakfast or how to construct a snowman properly.’ He captured her hand, bit into the swell of flesh beneath her thumb. ‘Or when you want me to ravish you next.’
She could see the fierce determination in his gaze and hear what he wasn’t saying.
They had six days together. Six days to explore this intense physical connection. But deepening the emotional connection that had begun in the past week was out. Because all that would achieve was to hurt her more when they parted.
She swallowed past the lump of regret in her throat, forced herself to concentrate on the exhilaration of being in this beautiful place with this super-hot guy. And not the feelings threatening to hijack her breath and destroy her equilibrium.
It was Christmas, they had a week to enjoy this gift and she was not going to ruin it.
Or forget that by the time Christmas was over, what they had together would be over too.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JUNO STUCK RELIGIOUSLY to the no questions rule as if her life depended on it in the days that followed, and developed a rhythm of sorts. She did all the cooking, because she loved to cook, especially for Leo, who it turned out had a voracious appetite, not just for her, but also for food.
The sex too was a revelation for her. She had never believed her body was even capable of this level of pleasure... And each day Leo ramped up the demands he made on her and she found herself meeting those demands with demands of her own.
For a woman who had always been outspoken, she’d never realised she’d had so little awareness of her physical needs, but with Leo there to tempt and tease and tantalise her, to wring every last drop of pleasure out of each encounter—whether it be fast and furious on the kitchen counter, or slow and languid in the shower—she began to realise what she’d been missing.
The more she fed the craving for him, though, the more she seemed to need—but what scared her the most was that the questions just kept
multiplying.
And the more she contained them, the more desperate she became to know the answers.
To stop herself from breaking the rules, she badgered him into snowmobile rides into the forest, evenings in front of the fire, or card games to fill up the time when they weren’t making love.