“Let’s go skinny-dipping. Like we used to in the river.”
Rogen stood. Jewel whirled around and strolled over to the pool, taking the tiled steps into the shallow end. He dove into the deep end. When he surfaced, she dove under and swam toward him, meeting him in the middle. Her arms circled his neck as their legs swirled in the water. Her blond hair was slicked back from her sculpted face and her eyes glimmered in the firelight.
Her nipples brushed his chest, taunting him. He pulled her more tightly to him, her breasts pressing below his pecs again, her stomach cradling his erection.
He kissed her, loving the feel of her soft body against his, savoring the sizzle along his nerve endings, the need mounting with every second that passed. Rogen hadn’t wanted a woman this intensely since the last time Jewel had been in his arms.
As desperately as he yearned to be buried inside her, though, he was glad she’d suggested the quick dip. Might help to cool him down just enough so that he didn’t come the second he entered her.
Watching her strip away her dress and then tasting her pussy had revved him a bit too much.
He felt a little more under control now.
A little.
Her fingers glided over the tattoo on his left biceps. “This is new.”
“Senior year of Yale. I was feeling rebellious.”
She traced the black-inked blade of a dagger stabbed into a chunk of ground, a trio of vines entwined, braided as they coiled around the edges up to the hilt, where they split. Two veering off to twine around the respective arms, one snaking around the handle. All left straggling as though a breeze might carry them anywhere. Separate from one another.
“Pretty symbolic,” she said, catching on quick to what the graphic represented. “Our threesome is a bit twisted, isn’t it?”
So unlike any of his and Vin’s threesomes, at least in the tormented sense …
“I’m not sure exactly how twisted,” Rogen told her. “Vin doesn’t talk about you, as a rule.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she said. “We severed ties. He went off in one direction; I went off in another. As did you. So … accurate depiction with the tattoo.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” She was here with him now, wasn’t she?
“Remember the first time we did this in the river?” she asked, changing the subject.
“How could I forget?” They’d been sixteen and Rogen had come home for a long weekend. Vin had not been with them that day. He’d been getting his driver’s license, just weeks before his parents had died. “You were nervous as hell to take off your clothes. Even though I’d seen you in a bikini dozens of times.”
“That’s not naked.”
It’d taken some coaxing to get her to slip out of her lacy bra and thong. A bit of goading, actually. The effort on Rogen’s part had been well worth seeing all of her for the first time. The water had been chilly and her nipples had been hard. Rogen had been mesmerized.
After their dip, she’d tried to hide behind a towel as they’d lain on a blanket spread beneath a tree while the sun set. Her head had been resting on his shoulder and he’d tugged at the end of the towel that was tucked between her breasts, unraveling the material. She’d gasped, shocked by his audacity but also turned on by it, he’d suspected. He’d whisked the pad of his thumb over a pebbled bead and felt the shiver down her spine.
“Have you ever done it?” she’d asked in her breathless tone.
“Who would I have done it with, if not you?”
She’d nibbled her lower lip, as she was prone to do when anxiety got the best of her. “Some girl at Trinity?”
“Not a chance. I love you, remember?”
“Then maybe we should do it.”
He’d grinned. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
He’d kissed her endlessly. Felt her body relax. Sensed the need and desire blooming within her.
When she’d eventually broken the kiss, she’d said, “I want to feel you inside me.”
He’d stared into her eyes, entranced. Then his lips had grazed hers and he’d said, “I only want you, Jewel. Even if we can’t really be together. Distance and all that. It doesn’t matter. You’re all I think of.”