What did I know about making people happy? Skylar and I had been on two dates, but instinctively, I knew I wanted to make her happy, to see that smile of hers. And once I understood what my goal was, I always made it my mission to make it happen.
“I should have arranged something,” she said. “I just didn’t know how today would go.”
“Today has been a thousand times more than I could have expected,” I said.
The corners of her mouth twitched. “Really?”
“I might not be a man who says a lot or is big on sharing, but everything I do say is the truth.”
She slid her hand back into mine and leaned her head against my shoulder. “That’s the thing I like about you best. You’re exactly who you say you are.”
Except I wasn’t just a deckhand this summer. And I wasn’t the drifter Skylar seemed to assume I was.
I made hotel reservations on my phone while enjoying the feeling of Skylar’s body tucked close to mine.
For the rest of the journey, we silently watched the softening light against the water before the noise of Monte Carlo pulled us from our appreciation.
“Hotel de Paris?” she asked, gazing out of the cab window.
“I like the view and the baths, apparently.”
I didn’t argue too much about her paying for the cab, even though it was like nails on a chalkboard as I watched her hand over her money. As long as she was happy.
“A home away from home,” she said as I switched on the lights of the room we’d been in just a week ago.
“Let’s use the shower first this time,” I said, pulling off my shirt and then unbuttoning my shorts. “I need to fuck you in there.”
“You can fuck me anywhere,” she said.
I growled and pulled out her hair clip, letting her blonde waves fall onto her shoulders.
I walked toward her, and she stepped back, pulling off her top and shrugging out of her trousers.
Yanking her bra down to expose her breasts, I bent, covering her hard nipple with my mouth as I circled my arms around her waist.
Her fingers pawed at my neck as she gasped and shuddered.
I pulled back, lifted her off her feet and into the bathroom. “How I kept my hands off you all day, I have no idea.”
“Well, you didn’t. Not really,” she said, stripping off her underwear.
We’d “made out,” as she called it, in the sea for what seemed like hours, but I wasn’t about to fuck her outside. There was no way I would risk exposing her like that. Kissing was as far as it had gone.
“Compared to what I’m about to do to you, believe me, I’ve kept my hands off you all day.” I reached into the shower, turned on the spray then pulled her inside. The warm water began to wash the sticky seawater from our skin.
“Well, I want you clean first.” She picked out one of the bottles of shower gel and poured out a handful, dunking it on my chest.
“You’re going to wash me?”
She nodded, making small circles all over my skin—up over my shoulder to my neck, up over my face, across my back—slowly working a lather all over my body.
“You’re very thorough,” I said as she kneeled in front of me, making me tip my head back as she worked her palms up my inner thigh and around my balls but avoided my erection raging against my stomach.
“I like to think so.”
She lifted my foot and placed it on her thigh, working the wash between my toes.
I’d never had a woman tend to me before. Never spent this long in a shower, just enjoying the feeling of the water running down my body rather than focusing on getting clean. But then I’d never met a woman like Skylar—sweet and caring was at her very core. How she’d managed to keep that at her center given what she’d lived through was a miracle and made her all the more special.