“It’s not stupid.” He kissed the area behind her ear, biting the spot gently. “Does it blow my mind that you’re hesitant to show me your naked body when I would swim across a lake of fire for it? A little.”
Her face warmed. “You might be picturing something else, though.”
She felt him frown against her shoulder. “Would it help if you knew what I’m picturing?”
“I don’t know. Maybe?”
His mouth settled in the hair above her ear. “I think you’re soft. No, I know you’re soft. I think you work hard in the sun and the dirt . . . and it shows in your hands and calves and shoulders. But the fact that you’re a woman is also very . . . fucking . . . obvious. You have these incredible tits.” He slid his hand up the front of her towel and slowly squeezed each mound, bringing her nipples to attention. “You’ve got hips. The kind that let me be a little extra rough last night.” Her vision started to double, then triple, the perfume bottles on top of her dresser multiplying into an army. “I can still feel my sweaty stomach sliding up and down on top of your belly. I already love every inch of it. I probably left some chafing behind to prove it, huh?”
She managed a dazed nod.
“You show me when you’re ready, sweetheart.” His hand dropped, fingertips trailing up the inside of her thigh. Toward her wetness. This she wasn’t afraid for him to know. To see and feel. They were past the point of pretending they didn’t turn each other on, and, right now, she was so far over the borderline of turned on, she needed a passport. “In the meantime, can I leave you with a final thought?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
His huge hand closed around her sex. The whole thing. He just swallowed it up in his grip and held it. Hard. “I know every little jiggle of this body. They’ve taken turns making my cock hard. One by one by fucking one.” He clutched firmly enough to make her whimper. “Your curves shake when I’m packing this thing tight. I know it for a fact now. The parts you’re nervous to show me are actually what make me hard, Hallie.” Slowly, so slowly, he parted her flesh with his middle finger and dragged that digit through her soaked valley. “You think about that until tonight.”
Secret admirer who?
Involuntarily, the letters were pushed to the back of her mind. To be thought about again . . . tomorrow.
Definitely tomorrow.
Chapter Twenty
When Julian woke up that morning, he thought his biggest challenge would be the speech he was about to deliver. He’d put together some acknowledgments for the association recognizing Dalton Vos, their founding member—people Julian didn’t know, who greatly admired his father. He was accustomed to that. To smiling and agreeing with admirers who spoke of Dalton’s ingenuity, his revolutionary techniques and dedication to quality.
But as an adult man who knew a lot more now about responsibility, it had grown harder to grin and bear the compliments about his father. On the way through the lobby of the resort-winery, he’d shaken hands with winemakers and critics who spoke Dalton’s name as if they were conferring about a saint.
But it turned out trying to navigate the current moods of the three extremely different women in his life was even more difficult. His mother sat to his left, a smile glued so securely to her face, she looked almost maniacal. Natalie was already on her second helping of Cabernet and appeared to be looking very intently for the meaning of life in the bottom of the glass.
And then there was Hallie.
She was on his right, her eyes on the speaker at the front of the ballroom. But there was a very distinct pinkness scaling the back of her neck, probably because his eyes were most definitely not on the speaker. Nowhere in the vicinity whatsoever. They were on those little curls at the nape of her neck, and she obviously felt him staring. Before they’d left her cottage, she’d worked her hair up into some sort of twist on the top of her head, and he’d never seen those extra-small ringlets of blonde up close before. If they were not sitting at the very front of a watchful audience, he would press his face to the spot from which they sprung and inhale the hell out of her.
To say she looked good in the dress he’d picked would be an unforgivable understatement. Did she realize the pink and green flowers splashed across the front of her dress corresponded with the exact parts his hands were dying to touch? Although he suspected the flowers could be in any location and he would want to touch that exact place, because every inch of her consumed and fascinated him.