“I love it when you laugh. You don’t do it enough.”
True story. I spear her hair with my fingers. “What can I say? Your mouth makes me happy.”
“Is that so?” Her smile is smug. As well it should be.
I roll her to her back while clumsily but efficiently dragging my boxers off my legs. “Ecstatic.”
“Archer Owen, there’s no way you do ecstatic.”
“How about orgasmic?”
She hums, her grin fading into a mischievous arc. “I know for a fact you do orgasmic very, very well.”
“Don’t you forget it, honey,” I tell her, then I return the favor she gifted me, going down on her in a way I guarantee she won’t forget.
Talia slidesa soapy washcloth over my chest and down my torso, moving in circles like she’s washing a car. With every other circle, she cradles my balls or massages my dick and then starts over again.
While sweat beads my brow and my mind travels to the ways I can have her in here, she talks about the night spa. And talks and talks. She’s seemingly unaware I’ve gone rigid with need and want nothing more than to revisit her incredible mouth—with mine, and other parts of me.
I don’t dare stop her while she’s on a roll. If touching me and turning me into man-putty is helping her brainstorm, who am I to argue? She pauses to ask if she’s overstepping by suggesting things outside of the aesthetics/design areas. The question temporarily pulls me out of my sexual stupor.
I stop the sensual massage, take the washcloth, and scrub her back. While I do, I explain as calmly as possible that I don’t give a flying fuck what “area” she’s advising me about, so long as she’s doing it.
“Good input is good input, Wildflower.” I soap her heart-shaped ass, enjoying the view as suds drip off her cheeks. She has the most beautiful skin. “You and I are collaborating. Don’t draw lines around what you do the way Ed Lambert drew them around you.”
She turns, her smile bright and grateful. She takes the washcloth and rinses it under the spray until the water runs clear. “I’m sorry I turned our shower into a board meeting.”
I drape the washcloth over a bar in the glass-walled shower. The tiles are slate gray, and a tiled bench takes up the back half of the square. It’s big, plenty of room to do a lot of fun things with her. But since we both finished each other off in bed and I have shit to do today, we’ll have to wait.
Pity.
“Best board meeting I’ve ever had.” I cradle her face and kiss her nose. “I like how excited you are. It gives me permission to be excited too.”
“You aren’t usually excited?” She tilts her head in a show of concern.
“I am,” I tell her honestly, “but I got in the habit of tempering my excitement in the past.”
“Because of your dad,” she guesses correctly.
“He likes to challenge the decisions I make. Rather than rejoice in my successes, he often criticizes them. I became accustomed to it and prepared accordingly.”
“So you’re never excited?”
“The last time I remember feeling vibrating, unyielding excitement was with Chance.”
“Who’s Chance?”
I shut off the water and squeegee droplets from her arms. “Your body is perfection.”
“Focus.” She turns my chin to her face. I kiss her. Slowly, intentionally.
“Focusing on your face doesn’t keep me from thinking of how beautiful you are. Is there a single part on you that’s not?”
“I could say the same to you.” She pokes my stomach and I clench my abs. She rewards me with a husky laugh. She halts the sound immediately, like she didn’t mean to make it. “Who’s Chance?”
“Not who. What.” I touch her nose. “Chance was the first club I opened.” I push open the glass door and pull a towel for her and one for me off the shelf. “It’s in Columbus. Nice place. Classy and ritzy and sufferingly generic. But I was in love with it.”
She follows me into the bedroom where we talk as we dress—she into her clothes from yesterday, while assuring me she’s going to change the second she goes next door, and I into a gray pair of slacks and a button-down purple shirt Vivian and Nate bought me for Christmas. I debate on a matching tie before deciding what the hell and knot it around my neck.