A Dangerous Solace

She eyed the bathroom door. Perhaps if she just checked.

Swallowing hard, she approached the door, carefully laid her ear against the woodwork and listened. Definitely water...and another sound—was he singing?

Somehow the idea that he was singing lifted her spirits. He couldn’t be very angry with her if he could hold a tune. Maybe she could just duck her head in and say— What, Ava? I’m sorry for being defensive. I just hadn’t worked out what I wanted, and now I have. I want you. I want you so much I think I might die of it.

The worst he could do was say no.

He would probably say no.

Would he say no?

The shower partition would be fogged. She wouldn’t even look. And if, say, she glimpsed the shadow of his body behind the opaque glass she’d hardly be breaking any great taboos. Everyone knew men were a lot less modest about these things than women.

Any further reasoning dissolved as she was hit by steam, a partition that wasn’t opaque at all, and six feet six inches of naked male, with spread shoulders, a long, broad back and taut, streamlined buttocks above long, powerful legs.

Gianluca stood with his face in the water stream, drenching his hair to black, and he was singing. His voice was a deep, rich baritone, and of course the Italian made everything so much more resonant.

He was just about the sexiest thing Ava had ever seen.

If she backed out now he’d never know she’d been there, but she simply couldn’t take her eyes off him.

She told herself she was thirty-one years old. She’d seen plenty of men naked in showers... All right, two. Two perfectly nice, athletic, healthy men of around six feet—average men.

He turned around, eyes closed, throwing back his head under the spray, drawing one arm up to soap the back of his neck. The breath stuck in Ava’s throat as her eyes dropped to the prize.

Gianluca Benedetti wasn’t average.

He opened his eyes and hot molten gold stared back at her through black lashes stuck together with droplets of water. His gaze dropped to her unfettered breasts and Ava just knew her nipples were doing all sorts of interesting things as her body went into meltdown.

She drank in his olive skin, the dark shadow of chest hair arrowing down to the hard, compact ridges of his abdomen, and his beautiful penis, swelling, darkening with arousal before her eyes.

How can he find me attractive in my boy-leg shorts when I don’t have stick-thin legs?

It was one of those puzzles, like the mystery of the Mary Celeste, destined to go unsolved. But there was no doubt he was looking her over with an expression that would have put any woman’s body issues to rest.

He said something basic in Italian and Ava gave a little gasp as naked, dripping, pumping testosterone, he picked her up as if she was a featherweight and dragged her into the shower, making a cushion of his arm for her as he flattened her against the tiles and kissed her. Just like that. His tongue was in her mouth, his stubble was rubbing against her skin, and her lips felt caressed and devoured all at the same time. She hadn’t known kissing could be like this.

He dwarfed her with the size of his shoulders. They were a wall she couldn’t climb. But she wound her arms up around his neck anyway.

Up, up, up... He was the only man she’d ever kissed she’d had to reach up to. It was a completely different experience.

Yes, that was it—his height, and his build...the big, hard, masculine body she was sliding against which made him impossible for her to resist. It was the water that made everything far too slippery. She couldn’t help the circular motion of her hips against him, wordlessly encouraging the pulsing industrial-strength push of his erection against her rounded belly.

His hands were around her waist, under her sopping camisole, peeling it up. ‘Il seno bello,’ he growled, and Ava was suddenly hyper-aware of the heaviness of her breasts as her erogenous zones leapt into action.

One big hand cupped the underside of her left breast as he bent and sucked her nipple into his mouth through the wet cotton, rubbing it with his teeth until she was positively shaking. He did the same with the other, his hands pushing down her shorts, finding the bare curve of her behind and squeezing with a gratified groan of appreciation.

The water felt warm as it sprayed over her, his mouth was hot and slick wherever it strayed, and all she could do was hang on to him, stroking the hard, hot expanse of his shoulders and back, his chest, wishing she was better at this. It was as if she’d played all her life at local level and had then been recruited into the big league. She wove her fingers through his hair and brought his head up to hers again, kissed him as passionately and wantonly as she felt.

‘Are you protected?’ he asked her in Italian, his voice almost guttural.