“Wait,” I pant, and as much as it pains my cock, I clench my hands at her hips and stop the roll of our bodies together.

“What’s wrong?” Banner’s breath labors, her chest heaving, the bodice of her dress half-up, half-down, covering one breast and exposing the other.

I lift the dress more, ruched at her waist, exposing us to the cool air christening the place where our bodies join. “Look at us.”

Confusion sketches a tiny furrow between her brows until she looks down and sees what I see, me disappearing inside of her. Her body absorbing mine. I coax her hips into a gentle wave, and we watch the slick slide in and out, see her wetness, her juices coating my dick with each withdrawal. These are the pretty lips I wanted wrapped around my cock tonight. With one hand between her breasts, hoisting the skirt high, and one hand at her neck, I press my forehead to hers.

“You see yourself on me?” I ask. “You see how you take me in? How that greedy little pussy eats my dick?”

She nods against my forehead, her breath stuttering.

“Answer me, Banner,” I say sharply.

“I see,” she says, looking up to catch my eyes.

“I want to be inside you all the time,” I say, urgency making my voice rough. “I want to be in your head.”

I kiss her temple.

“To know what you’re thinking.” I press her away from me enough to kiss between her breasts and over her heart. “To know what you’re feeling. To know what you need.”

Our bodies take over, and I’m pounding up into her again, despite my best intentions. The muscles of her legs clench on mine with every rise and fall. She kisses me, her tongue taunting mine. A sparring match of parries and feints.

“Okay,” she breathes into our kiss.

I grip her face and solder our eyes together in a heated gaze.

“This is more than sex for me,” I say. “Do you understand?”

Her eyes widen, darken with realization.

“I understand.” She never looks away, even as the pace of our bodies increases. “It is for me, too.”

Her whispered assurance starts filling that hole, that empty space having only her body doesn’t touch. I kiss along her jaw, down her throat, inflict tiny bites on her collarbone.

“Mean it, Ban,” I say fiercely into the scented cove behind her ear. “I need you to mean that.”

“I do.” Her breath chops up against my neck. Her fingers twine in my hair. Her knees tighten at my hips the harder and deeper and faster we fuck. “I promise it’s more.”

“I won’t share you.” I pull back and grasp her chin, forcing her to look at me. “I know it’s hypocritical. I know I took you. I don’t care. I won’t share.”

“You won’t have to.” The breathless promise tumbles past her lips and into that hole, filling it more. Soothing the empty ache of it. She takes me by surprise, grabbing my chin and clenching her inner muscles around my dick possessively, making me groan. “And I won’t share you.”

The idea that, with all the women I’ve fucked and never felt even a fraction of this intensity, I would jeopardize my connection to Banner is laughable, but I don’t laugh because I see the same questions, the same need for reassurance, for more, in her eyes that I know is in mine.

“It’s just you, Ban.” I reach between us, stroking and pinching her clit as an electric bolt strikes from the base of my spine and down my legs, strangling my next words. “I promise.”

That vow steals the last of my control, and every doubt, every hesitation leaves as I spill into the warm welcome of her body. My release triggers hers, and we both cry out, our voices loud and echoing on the empty terrace. We’ve forgotten the server could come back any minute. We don’t consider some misguided diner possibly stumbling into our private space. There is only the Caribbean Sea, a sheet of blue-hued glass beneath us. Only the sweat-damp parts of us soaking up the breeze. There is only a promise we whispered before we both came, stronger than steel and as fragile as the beam of moonlight illuminating us.

30

Banner

“Did you save room for dessert?”

My question reminds me of our server who must have been horrified when he realized what we were doing on that terrace. Since I was under the table with Jared’s dick in my mouth, I couldn’t see his face. The memory burns my cheeks, but an irrepressible grin spreads across my lips.

“What’s so funny?” Jared asks from his side of the table. “And I’m good for now on dessert. Stuffed actually.”

“Okay.” I rise from my seat, pick up my plate and reach for Jared’s.

“I got it,” he says, gathering his plate, wine glass, and fork, and heads toward the kitchen. “Now what made you smile like the cat who ate the cream?”

An uncharacteristic giggle pops past my lips.

“Ironically, I was thinking about that poor waiter from the restaurant.”

“He was anything but poor after that tip I gave him.” Jared laughs and loads his plate into the dishwasher. “His eyes got bigger when he saw his gratuity than when he realized what you were doing under the table, believe me.”

I cover the portion of the enchiladas we didn’t eat and set down the buñuelos I prepared for dessert.

“These do look good,” Jared says, plucking one of the doughnut-like sweetened balls from the basket I placed them in.

“They’re so good.” I breathe in their aroma and sigh. “Mama used to cook them for us all the time. I haven’t had them in years.”

Jared chews one, groaning his approval.

“Delicious.” He grabs another one, biting half and offering me the other half. “Taste.”

I hesitate, unable to turn off my inner calculator, tallying points.

“Just one bite,” Jared persuades, rubbing the sweet fried dough across my bottom lip. “We’re on vacation.”

I nod and accept it, squeezing my eyes shut when the flavor explodes on my tongue along with a thousand memories from my childhood.

“So good,” I say, swallowing the last of the dessert. “It’s been forever since I had them. A few Christmases ago when Mama made them.”

I look up and catch a thoughtful expression on Jared’s face, the one I’m learning usually precedes a probing question.

“How do you think your family will react to you and Zo breaking up?” he asks.

I’d left that question with my points, checked at the door of this island villa, but now it intrudes. The closer we come to leaving, to returning to LA and dealing with the inevitable fallout of what we did, the harder it is to forget I have several difficult conversations awaiting me, including my family.

“They’ll be surprised.” I turn off the light in the kitchen, and we stroll back to the well-appointed salon. As we walk, Jared takes my hand, linking our fingers and drawing me into his side. He touches me constantly, possessively. Each caress and kiss and touch subtly establishing ownership. I don’t mind. I touch him the same way. I feel the same way, like I need to mark my territory even though there’s no one here to threaten my claim.

“Surprised and upset?”

Jared flops onto the leather couch positioned prominently in the center of the room and pulls me onto his lap. There was a time I would sit tense and tight, wondering the whole time if I’m too heavy, if my weight is too much for him, but I relax, sitting sideways, my shoulder pressed into his chest and my head tucked into his shoulder.

“They will be upset. As I’ve thought about it, my family was part of the reason I ignored the little voice that kept telling me not to start with Zo. They’ve wanted us together for years.” I toy with the collar of his T-shirt and squeeze the hand linked with mine on my knee. “I can’t sugarcoat it. They’ll have a million questions, and I need to think about how I’m going to answer them.”

“Honestly,” he says. “Tell them about the doubts you had and the things that convinced you to ignore them. Tell them about us. I mean, you don’t have to go into details about how we practically broke your desk.”

I suppress a grin, not quite prepared to see any humor, but knowing one day I might be able to.

“And me?” he asks, a forced lightness to the question. “What will they think of me? Of us together? I know compared to Zo, I’m not exactly the boy you bring home to Mama.”

I look up from my spot on his shoulder, studying his face for the things he’s not saying. The tightness around his mouth. The concern in the eyes searching mine.

“I didn’t think you would care what they think,” I say and flatten my hand over the hard muscles of his stomach under his T-shirt.

“I don’t. For me, I don’t care. We’re going to be together if the Pope himself doesn’t approve.”

“I don’t think our relationship requires Papal approval.” I laugh and caress his back. My hand freezes under the shirt as the word “relationship” lingers in the air. Even after all he said on the terrace, telling me he wanted more than sex, that he wouldn’t share me and I wouldn’t have to share him . . . it still feels like I’m assuming too much to call what we’re building a relationship.

“Not Papal,” he agrees with an easy smile, obviously not nonplussed by the word. “Is Mamal a word? I think your mother will be the hardest to get on board.”

“True.” I nearly shudder thinking of the tongue lashing in store for me over Zo.

“I know you love your family,” Jared says soberly, reaching down to gently grip my jaw. “I love mine, too, but they have no say in this. No one does except us.”

I search his face for perfidy or any duplicity, but there’s only the same sureness I saw in him last night. Sureness about me and our relationship. I simply nod and lay my head back on his shoulder, content to listen to his heartbeat and the wash of waves a few yards beyond the villa door.

In the distance, a phone rings shattering the comfortable quiet we’ve been lounging in.