She looked back as well, hoping he was right.
* * *
Angelo rarely took vacations and knew this one would be a memory he would recall as one of the best times in his life. In fact, he was hoarding as many small moments as he could, making a point of enjoying the simplicity of his wife feeling for a dry bathing suit, failing to find one and seeking a new one from a drawer. She wore only a sarong, hair loose so she was an exotic island maiden. They were castaways in paradise and he never wanted to be rescued.
She stepped her bare feet into black bikini bottoms, pulled them up then loosened and dropped her sarong. She closed a strapless, neon pink top across her breasts, ran a finger around the edges, gave a jiggle and a wiggle and moved to the mirror. Frowned.
“I’m gaining weight!”
If she had gained a full kilo since telling him she was pregnant, he would be shocked, but there was a lovely ripeness to her figure that made his palms itch. The tug in the flesh between his thighs shouldn’t have happened. They’d been in that bed only minutes ago. This entire vacation was nothing but combing beaches, snorkeling and making love. Lather, rinse, repeat. Quite literally, he thought with a private smirk, thinking of the shower they’d taken before their most recent nap.
“I believe you’re supposed to gain weight.” He went across to stand behind her, hands finding the waist that might be a fraction thicker, but the changes were happening so gradually, he couldn’t see it. He kissed her shoulder. “You’re beautiful.”
She turned in profile, eyed her abdomen. “The baby won’t care if I’m fat.”
He bit back agreeing or mentioning that he wouldn’t, either. Only a very stupid man offered an opinion on weight.
“I want to hold our baby,” she murmured, settling a hand beneath her navel. “It’s what I’m looking forward to the most. The comfort and affection of holding someone.”
“Hello?” he teased, pulling her arms around him before wrapping his arms around her.
She made a face as she came into contact with the damp bathing suit he hadn’t been afraid to pull on. “You know what I mean.”
“I don’t. Explain it.”
“My parents weren’t demonstrative. I’ve always felt... I don’t know. Lonesome, I guess. Needing affection.”
“Even now?”
“Maybe not right now,” she murmured, leaning against him, cheek nestling into his shoulder. “I wish we could stay here forever. Everything will change in a few days.”
He couldn’t refute that. He had the same sense of being in a bubble with thinning walls. It couldn’t sustain this height of positive pressure and would burst any second.
His hands moved on her, trying to hold as much of her as possible against him. It was desire, the passion that always gripped him when he touched her, but it was more. He wanted to seal this connection they’d found, clamp it so tightly it became a part of him and could never be torn apart.
The need put urgency into the kiss he dropped on her mouth, but something else twined through him. A determination to hold on to what they had. Play it out. Make it last.
So even though the luscious sound in her throat told him she was instantly receptive and eager, he gentled the stroke of his hands. She ran her open mouth up his neck and caught hungrily at him, and even though he was hard and ready and so desperate to be joined with her he might have begged if she commanded it, he took his time. He cupped her face and slowed their kiss and let it deepen until she was trembling against him.
He pressed soft kisses to soft skin, soothed her with long plays of his hands across her bare skin, giving both of them ample opportunity to enjoy the sizzle, allowing anticipation to build to a screaming pitch before he found the next plane of silken skin to worship.
He melted his beautiful ice princess inch by inch, waiting until her arms were heavy around his neck, her knees weak, before he eased her onto the mattress and stripped their minuscule bits of clothing.
Then he joined her. Kissed her. Cruised his mouth everywhere, tasting strawberry nipples and vanilla skin and the honey between her thighs. Her fist gripped his hair and her knee curled up and, because giving her pleasure gave him so much pleasure, he lazily swept her over the cliff into the smashing waves of orgasm.
Her cries of release sent the demons of desire into a frenzy within him, but he lashed them down, forced himself to patience, not allowing himself to rise over and thrust into her no matter how damp he was with perspiration or how badly he shook with craving.
He pressed kisses against her thighs and her calves and rolled her onto her stomach so he could lick the indent of her spine and pool his breath between her shoulder blades.
She shivered and squirmed and gasped, “What are you doing to me?”
“I’m making love to you.” He wasn’t sure if he said it or thought it, but it was all that was in his head. Sexual desire, but also a yearning to caress and please, explore and taste. Possess and give.
He combed his fingers into her hair, lifting it away from her neck so he could suck delicately against her nape. He bit lightly against her dampened skin so gooseflesh peppered her and she shuddered and groaned and lifted her hips with invitation.
He caressed her with his whole body, loving the feel of her beneath him like this. His erection nestled in the crease of her buttocks. Her thighs parted at his lightest touch, allowing him to stray his touch into her damp center where she called to him so inexorably.
Her movements beneath him drove him mad and still he only gathered her beneath him, stilling her so he could keep her right here. His. Forever.