“Badosa?” I say on a quick exhale mixed with a laugh so hard I feel tequila in my nose. “What’s your name?”
“I’m the Juan to your Juanita, and my last name is Badosa too. Foreshadowing.”
“You know what else I see in our future?” I purr, taking the passports and sitting them down on the table as I wrap my arms around him. “Us finishing what we started back in Beverly Hills.”
“There’s no finishing to the worshiping I’m going to be doing to your sexy as hell body, Juanita,” he says.
“Stop it!” I playfully slap his chest. “Juan.”
We both laugh, but the humor drains from the room the second he seers my lips with a kiss.
“Basically no one has a good first experience with alcohol, nor with what comes next,” he warns me gently.
“I’d rather find out for myself than just take your word for it.”
“As it should be.”
I jump up from the modest flooring underneath us, wrapping my legs around his waist like a belt as he carries me toward the bed, but we don’t even get that far.
My back finds the polished concrete wall behind me as he flattens me vertically, his hungry mouth exploring my lips, the side of my neck, my earlobe, and then tracing its way across my collarbone.
Reaching for his belt I manage to wedge my small hands between us, unclasping the buckle and freeing it from its loops.
Wrapping the thick leather around the back of his neck, I pull his face even tighter toward my flesh as his kisses trickle down the valley of my breasts.
A moan escapes me from the sensation of his lips, his hands, and his body mixed with the warmth of the alcohol which is spreading through my veins. The shot was a good idea. I don’t feel so self-conscious of my body or my inexperience, and it allows me to display the inhibition which is already coming out in spades.
Tossing his belt to the side I slide my hand across the stubble of his unshaven face, the rough and rugged man who showed me how to fish from the boat and then filet the one we caught right on the deck. The freshest sashimi you could ever eat.
“This is one heck of a first time. I’m glad I waited,” I confess. “Who loses their innocence after faking a home robbery followed up by a sexual assault and then kidnapping only to top it off with a sailing trip down what must be the most picturesque coast in the world.”
“The only pictures we need are the ones we’re going to hang on the wall of our family, which starts tonight,” he growls into my chest.
Peeling me from the wall he carries me to the bed, sitting me down on the edge as he grabs his shirt and lifts it up and over his head, discarding it like yesterday’s newspaper.
I grab at my top but he quickly scoops up my wrist. “I get to unwrap my own present,” he cautions while using the other hand to slide out of his pants, wincing as he moves the denim past his waist and over his bulging erection.
The rush of what’s about to happen rips through me, threatening to tear me in two as I watch him finish with all his clothes, then his hands take my top and pull it up and over my head. But as he gets my hands high he just leaves my blouse there. I look at him looking at my breasts, sitting high and hanging better than they ever have because of the empowering position he’s put me in.
“You mean to tell me this is all mine for the rest of my life? Sheeeeit. Surprised those prison guards didn’t have to shoot me because I was in such a hurry to get out and claim you. Claim my little whistleblower who showed up for a visit one day. I thought this was all a trick the first few times, some sort of trap, until I realized you hated Jenson just as much as I did. We might have bonded over our dislike of another person, but we sure as hell are going to stay together over our love for each other.”
My heart hammers so hard in my chest that I swear it’s going to bruise the inside of my ribs. Did he say…love?
Finally, he pulls my top the rest of the way off, slides onto the bed next to me, and unhooks my bra, his thick, crooked, calloused digits as worn as the windswept beach we pulled into not thirty minutes ago.
I dip one shoulder and then the other as he pulls my bra off, not even touching me right now, instead looking at me like I’m some fragile piece of art that he doesn’t want to harm.
Then, at the drop of a hat, everything changes.
He’s on me so fast I don’t even have time to react, his body lurching forward as he grabs me and pins me to the bed, his big body a wall that there’s no way I can get past, nor would I ever want to.
“God, Juniper. You’re so beautiful. How can it be that no man has ever touched you before? It can’t be the truth.”
“It is. I promise.” I swallow hard, wondering if he’s having second thoughts about my honesty, but when he smiles slightly and his eyes soften and then narrow, I know he knows my words are true.
Grabbing my pants he yanks them off me without even unbuttoning them, tearing them away like a hyperactive kid on Christmas morning.
Once those are out of the way he slides in, grabbing my panties with both hands and ripping the fabric that never had a chance against his strength in two, tossing it to the side.