He woke her when the food came, she could sleep like the dead, and she waited until the hotel staff had loaded the dining table and lit the candles on it and left before slipping from the bed, her hair a tousled cloud around her pale face.
She was almost to the table when she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror and with a horrified expression detoured towards one of her bags. ‘Give me one fine minute,’ she said, and started pulling out clothes.
He’d never dined with a woman wearing a white cotton shift, pin-striped grey vest and a black bowler hat before. To be fair, her smile was nothing but appreciative as she surveyed his raggedy grey shirt.
‘Why the hat?’ he asked as he reached for a pork belly tapas square.
‘Hides the hair.’
‘I like your hair.’
‘I forgot to condition it. And then I slept on it. It’s barely hair anymore, it’s felt.’ She set about loading her plate in methodical fashion and then she was gone and back between what seemed like one blink and the next, this time with her phone in hand. ‘Gotta take a picture for Sophie. She’d go ape over this food and this table – the presentation anyway.’
Photo taken and sent, Zoey once more took her chair.
‘Do you call your sister every day?’
‘I do at the moment. She wasn’t altogether at one with me sharing a room with just anyone. Happily, you were you. If this were a real honeymoon I’d be well pleased with your initiative and creativity.’
‘It was just a bit of water, Sherlock.’
‘Yes, but it was
so
well placed.’
He grinned, even as he ducked his head.
‘You look smug, Eli.’
That’s because he was. He ate his little square of pork belly and then did what his not-so-lady wife had done and piled his plate high with enough pretty finger food to sate him.
Five years since he’d last held a woman in his arms. Five years, and all the hand jobs in the world hadn’t prepared him for anything more than following her so fast over the edge of pleasure that it was almost embarrassing. It probably
would
have been embarrassing had he been with anyone else, but this was Zoey and she had a habit of wallowing in sensation and letting it take her where it would. She hadn’t been embarrassed by her body’s eager response.
It seemed a little churlish to be embarrassed by his.
He could do this: savor the moment, live for the now, slake his hunger and walk away with no regrets. Be like his brothers – not that his brothers’ exes ever stayed friends.
‘Are we friends?’ he asked suddenly, and Zoey looked up in surprise. Her expression grew thoughtful, and then wary as she studied him.
‘Friends as in we’ve known each other forever, went to school together and can recount each other’s defining moments? No. We’re never going to be that.’
‘New friends,’ he kept on doggedly. ‘The kind that stick around and stay in touch, even if this other between us doesn’t quite work out.’
‘I hope so. Eli, where’s this coming from?’
He didn’t know. ‘I want—’ He couldn’t finish that sentence either. ‘Sometimes I don’t have a goddamn clue what I want, but I do know that I don’t want to see you get hurt.’
She stayed quiet for a while as they concentrated on eating. People often did keep their mouths shut when confronted with someone else’s existential angst.
‘I want everything,’ she said at last. ‘Pain. Happiness. Pleasure. Despair. Sophie says I’m cracked to want the bad with the good, but I can’t taste one fully without the other. I want it all. Every ray of sunshine. Every burning breath.’
‘You’re going to get hurt.’
Her smile curved soft and sweet. ‘Probably.’
‘There are easier ways to live.’
‘I’m sure there are. Lives full of half measures and careful, studied moves. My sister lives like that. Maybe you do too. I’m not judging. But it’s not for me.’
He was one of three outspoken brothers, but this woman could outspeak them all. And he knew the sting of implied criticism when he felt it and his voice was low and tight when he spoke. ‘I gave my all to someone once. I held nothing back. I’m not sure if I can do that again.’
‘And yet you can’t do casual encounters either, or so it seems.’
‘Maybe something in between.’ He felt like a heel for offering so little.
‘I’d like that.’ Her smile crept up on him gently. ‘Or we could aim for something a little more imaginative and a little less real.’ She pushed her chair back, picked up the sweets platter and headed for the four poster bed, no panties beneath that little cotton shift and he shifted restlessly in his seat. ‘One night, and a brand new world where you can be whoever you want to be. No lost love. No tomorrow. A night where your battle-weary lady wife takes what she wants from you, healer, and you get to do the same.’
His tongue suddenly felt thick and unready for use. ‘So, uh, roleplay?’
She set the tray of sweets on the bed and then went around the suite dimming lights here and there and pulling curtains across windows and finally untying the drapes around two sides of the four poster bed. ‘Or we could just have a picnic on the bed.’
Either way, he got with the program fast. Collecting a bottle of cognac from the sideboard, along with two brandy balloons with patterned pewter stems. He poured for them both as she settled on the bed, knees demurely together and her legs tucked to one side. He handed her one of the glasses and watched her drink deeply, imagining the burn, imagining a far simpler room in an old stone inn, and a day full of battle and a night rich with promise.
She picked up what looked like a tiny citrus tart and bit into it before leaning forward to press the rest of it to his lips, her lashes at half-mast and her gaze never leaving his. ‘Close your eyes.’
He closed his eyes and ate the dessert and tasted sweetness and lemon on his tongue, and then he ran his hand along her forearm and held her by the wrist as he licked at her fingers, sweet and sticky.
‘Picnic or role play?’ she murmured.
‘Don’t know yet.’
She fed him strawberries next, sweet and juicy and again he closed his eyes and took his time, and this time when he leaned forward and tasted flesh it was at the junction of her collarbone and neck. Her hat was gone and so was the vest. Only a simple white shift stood between her and pure nakedness and it put him in mind of wedding nights and what a man might do to ensure it was a good one.
This time it was he who fed Zoey’s hunger for touch and for taste, some kind of mousse in a chocolate cup, and he fed it to her on his fingers and by the time she’d finished licking him clean his cock was an iron bar, straining at the fabric of his jeans. She picked up his brandy next and set it to his lips and urged him to drink deep, and when a droplet spilled, she wiped it away with her thumb, a simple touch that burned far hotter than the brandy in his belly did.
‘Milady.’ My lady. His.
‘Healer.’
And then the food tray got pushed away and the brandy set aside and she was straddling his lap and her hands were caressing the skin of his arms and chest, and he was completely on board with that, sliding his own hands beneath frail cotton to cup her buttocks and press into her more deeply. She whimpered into his mouth, and he liked the sound of that and the taste of her even more. She was wet when his thumbs slid along the crease of her leg and into the apex of her, wetter still when he delved deeper and ground the heel of his palm against her mound.
Take what you want, she’d urged him, so he did just that, lifting his fingers to his lips to taste her sweetness, and then he was pushing her back on the bed and sliding onto his stomach and parting her thighs and putting his mouth to her center and licking in deep. He wanted to savor her. He wanted to honor her and please her, make her writhe with pleasure, and if he’d taken to undulating into the mattress for a little light relief of his own then so be it.
He loved this, every slick and messy minute of it. Loved the gasping tension of keeping a body on the edge and the ragged litany of praise and pleas streaming from Zoey’s mouth.
‘What do you want?’ A ragged whisper of his own this time.
‘Everything.’ With her arms above her head in ultimate surrender. ‘Anything.’
No holding back and it hit him like a hurricane that this was the way he wanted things to be between them. All in, no holding back, a filthy stream of promises and threats coming from him as he shed his jeans and pushed her shift up underneath her armpits and tongued first one nipple and then the next before taking it into his mouth and suckling hard. Like tugging on a string as she arched up into him and her hand came down to cradle his head and it was yes and yes, a broken yes.
More.
Gentler now as he helped her slip the shift over her head and then she was leaning up into him, running her lips over his nipples and his chest, seeking, biting, leaving marks there, right there, in an erogenous zone he never knew he had.
Condoms, he needed one, and he had a box full, courtesy of his brothers, and he was off the bed and reaching for them, and Zoey was rolling onto her stomach, her own fingers drifting low to circle her clitoris as she tracked his every move with passion-glazed eyes.
She watched him roll the condom on and he’d never resented that thin strip of protection more.
And then she licked her lips and slid her fingers inside herself and he didn’t know which part of her he wanted more.
Anything. As she lifted up on her knees ever so slightly. Everything, as he covered her, one arm either side of her small frame.
‘Let me.’ Leaning forward now to press a reverent kiss against her shoulder as he pushed inside her tight wet heat. She parted as if she’d been made for him, as if he’d been made for her.
He took her slow and sure because that was what he wanted and because he liked the sound of begging. The breathless ‘Eli’. The broken ‘
Please.
’
All hands and arms and lips, the pair of them, as he rolled onto his back and brought her with him, as she scrambled around and fed him her breast and sank down on his cock once more, deeper this time, and that suited him plenty and her more.
She came on his cock, a wisp of a woman with an appreciation for physical touch that ran so deep that he couldn’t quite comprehend it. Shadows in her smile and generosity in her heart as she kept right on stroking and kissing him. Loving him softly until he could barely think, only feel.
‘You lied,’ he whispered, as he captured her mouth in the sweetest of kisses. ‘You said this was role play.’
‘It is,’ she whispered against him. ‘I get to love you like there’s no tomorrow.’
‘And what do I do?’
‘What do you want to do?’
Even as he snapped up into her he knew what he wanted, what he’d always wanted when it came to the give and take of skin on skin. He wanted the other person to know that they were safe and cherished and that he was right there with them, wide open to love.
So silently he gave her that too.
Z
oey woke to
the smell of freshly brewed coffee, but the only thing she could manage in response was a heartfelt groan. It was too early to get up yet, she could barely move her limbs and heaven help her she really didn’t want to open her eyes. Even with the promise of seeing Eli gazing out of the window at the ocean, coffee cup in hand. ‘Not waking up, can’t make me.’ If he could decipher her pillow-muffled mumble he’d be doing well.
‘You don’t have to.’
Magic words. Big night. Rough seas. Zoey burrowed deeper into the bedding.
‘Sleep,’ he rumbled. ‘I’m going to swim.’
That got her attention. She turned her head, the better to breathe and stifled a whimper at her body’s protest of even that much movement. ‘Are there flags?’
‘No.’
‘Be careful.’ She could feel him coming close, smell the musky masculine scent of him beneath the coffee in the air as he pressed his lips to her cheek.
‘Sleep,’ he whispered.
He had the best ideas.
The next time Zoey woke, it was to the sounds of food being laid on a table and the smell of eggs and bacon in the air. Room service breakfast, provided they ate before nine thirty. After that it was breakfast downstairs until eleven.
‘Time is it?’
‘Half nine.’
Oh.
She sat up as soon as the hotel staff had left, sheet to her chest as she searched for her nightshirt. A little late for modesty given her abandon of last night, so she abandoned it with a sigh. They were moving so fast, she and Eli. Possibly a little too fast.
Eli walked over to the end of the bed, picked her shirt off the floor and handed her it to her with a shy half smile. ‘You okay?’
‘You ask me that a lot.’
‘I do. Are you?’
‘Yeah.’ She nodded and smiled to make it so. ‘I just need to get moving,’ she offered as she slipped from the bed, her arms and legs leaden as she limped towards the bathroom. She’d put her body through a washing machine in yesterday’s surf and last night with Eli had wrung her dry. She’d loved every sparkling minute of it but there was no denying that today her body was going to make her pay for all that play. ‘Is there coffee?’
‘With cream?’
‘Perfect.’ She closed the door and went about her business. Looked for her medication in the suitcase in the bathroom and swore when she realized that it was probably in the suitcase by the day bed. She put her hands to her face and sighed, rubbing hard at her forehead and her eyes with the heels of her hands.
Eli had a dead girlfriend. Zoey had a few issues of her own that she hadn’t yet shared.
She didn’t quite know how to explain to the man that she’d fallen for so swiftly, that sometimes, health wise, she could be less than okay.
Hey, Eli. My body lets me down at times. Surprise.
Rejoining him in the living room and crossing to her suitcase was hard. Rummaging around for her medication and bringing it to the breakfast table was even harder, but she did it, and sat down and snapped open the little compartment that said Sunday and let the assortment of pills big and small fall into her hand. She brought them to her mouth, and washed them down with a full glass of orange juice.