He was asking her which room they should retire to—and she was glad their evening together wasn’t over. “Not Mom’s and …”
“And what?”
He was carrying her up the stairs seemingly without effort. But then, Alix thought, she weighed less than a tuna. “Well, with the Captain watching us …”
“He won’t be there,” Jared said, and when Alix started to say more, he kissed her to silence. “There are some things you need to take my word on.”
He gently put her down on the master bedroom’s big bed and she wasn’t sure how it happened, but in just seconds she was naked. He stretched out beside her, putting his mouth on her neck while his hands began running over her upper body. “You are beautiful,” he whispered.
He was still fully dressed, only his jacket missing, and it felt odd for her to be naked but for him to be covered. The shades in the room were down but light filtered in, golden and shadowy.
As Alix lay there, surrounded by the silken drapes of the bed, her body fully nude, she looked at Jared, at his eyes, hooded, sultry, unfathomable. She reached up to start unbuttoning his shirt but he kissed her fingertips and took her hand away.
She started to ask why, but didn’t. Her experience of sex was that it was something quickly done and finished. In school, sex had fit in between classes and assignments.
But this man—key word being man, not boy—seemed to have other ideas.
He began to caress her body as he looked at her. His lips soon followed his hands over her breasts, her ribs, down onto her stomach. She lifted her hips, wanting him to touch the center of her, but he didn’t. His hands ran over her legs, down to her ankles.
He kissed her mouth as his hands wandered over her and Alix felt the urgency building inside her. There was something intensely erotic about being bare while he was clothed, something she’d never felt before as his hands touched and caressed her.
When he did reach the center of her, she arched up to meet him. It didn’t take long for her to reach a crescendo, to come against his hand.
She buried her face in his shoulder. “Where did you learn that?” she asked.
“Made it up. I’m very creative.”
She laughed and for a moment they were still, then she began unbuttoning his shirt. She’d never seen him in anything but long sleeves. They’d been rolled up to expose strong, tanned forearms and she’d wondered what the rest of him looked like.
It took only seconds to get his shirt off and she gasped at the sight of him. He was tanned all over, a deep, golden brown, and there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. She put her mouth on his skin and it was as warm as it looked.
It was an hour later that Alix, exhausted and sublimely happy, heard him say, “You have beautiful lips.” When a laugh escaped her, he drew back to look at her. “Why is that funny?”
“I don’t know you well enough to answer that.”
“After what we’ve just done you can’t tell me what about your lips causes you to laugh?”
“Not mine. Yours. Specifically your lower lip.”
He ran his teeth over his lip. “What does that mean?”
“Someday I’ll tell you. Show you, I guess.”
“Are you keeping secrets from me?” he asked.
“A few. What about you? Weren’t you going to talk to me about something?”
“Not now. Later.”
She could tell that he was falling asleep, and that meant the part of sex that Alix hated was about to happen. The man either left or he turned away and started snoring. “You’re going back to the guesthouse?”
“I will if you want me to, but I’d rather stay here. If it’s all right with you, that is.”
Smiling, she snuggled up to him. “I don’t understand why some woman hasn’t snatched you up.”
She meant it as a joke but he seemed to take her comment seriously. “Since you’ve been here, what have we spent most of our time doing?”
“Working.”