Less than thrilled, Frankie tossed his hat and pulled his collar over his head, then tread warily into the dark water to join me with his head on a swivel as he reached my depth.
We circled one another timidly in the shallow, cool water. Frankie’s gaze kept dipping down to my bare chest, where the tight tips of my nipples were becoming exposed every so often with the change in tide.
“Is this the type of show and tell where you pass it around the class, Ms. Brody?”
“It’s more like the kind I leave on the table, if you want to come see for yourself.”
“Hmm,” he hummed, getting another searing look at my chest and then using his size to his advantage—catching my wrist in his hand in one calculated reach.
He pulled my body to his, arms winding around my lower back until my toes left the sand beneath the water and my entire upper half was pressed tight against his chest. His skin was warm, fever touched, and I could feel just how hard he was tucked into his waistband against my stomach.
“You should lose the shorts,” I breathed. “It’s only fair.”
“I don’t think you’re the authority on playing fair right now.”
Still he released me just long enough to slide his trunks off and throw them the impressive distance to shore.
“If my balls get stung by a jellyfish, you’re pissing on them for the rest of the week.”
“That’s fucking disgusting.” I laughed. “And it’s not even true.”
“Yeah it is.” His hands trailed down my naked ribs mindlessly as I clasped my arms around his neck. The feeling of being held went straight to my center. “I got stung in Guam and Cap insisted on being the one who peed on it for days.”
I pinched my lips together to stifle a grin, watching helplessly as Frankie went ghost white and pieced another one of his best friend’s rouses together.
“Fucking asshole!”
“I’m sorry.” I winced, rubbing a comforting thumb over the back of his neck. Our gazes met through watery eyelashes and I offered a sympathetic head tilt, one that seemed to take the breath clear out of his lungs. His eyes danced from mine down to my mouth and back several times.
I couldn’t think of a place I would have rather been: caressed by a beautiful man in the shallow, lapping ocean, stars above twinkling around the full moon. And he was naked, so gloriously naked and looking at me like the world may pause just to let us live in the blinking cursor of it a little bit longer.
Maybe Natalia was right—there could be something so indulgent about giving myself to Frankie, be it only for three weeks. We could figure that all out when the time came, but for now the only pressure I felt was the one in between my legs. A pulsing ache that amplified every second Frankie spent looking down at me like he might lose himself trying not to tear me apart.
“You’re very beautiful, you know that?” he said.
I bit my lip. “This is a bad idea and we both know it.”
“I’ve never seen a bad idea that looked this damn good.”
My legs wrapped around his hips as his hands instinctively dropped to cup my ass, holding my pelvis against him. I sighed in unabashed approval. To hell with it.
“Are you gonna kiss me now? Or are you still thinking too hard about it?”
“Yeah.” He licked the seam of his lips in preparation. “Yeah, I’m gonna fucking kiss you now.”
And he did with so much need that my eyes drooped closed on impact.
Frankie held me tight against the first sweep of his tongue through my mouth. There was no coy warm-up; kissing him was like being consumed, drowning under a wave and not even caring to come up for air. He tasted like sea salt, and I licked it off his lips greedily as I wound my fingers through the damp locks of his hair.
Every part of my body was screaming to be touched, and predictably, I couldn’t help but rut my hips in tiny swivels against him, searching for the sweet relief of friction. He grunted from deep in his chest and swallowed the sound with my mouth as his hands began to explore.
“I am so fucking hard for you right now, O. You’re making me lose my mind.”
I tugged his bottom lip with my teeth and then grazed his chin, the patch of stubbly hair on his jaw, again on the lobe of his ear. I was completely in control of the situation, and hearing him react, unashamed to groan in that husky baritone of a voice, I was slowly becoming enraptured. I felt sexy. Frankie was making me feel that way.
“This smart mouth of yours.” He prodded my lower lip with his thumb. “I just want to stick my dick in it. You have no idea how many times I’ve thought about you on your knees since I sat down on that plane.”
I felt the impact of his every word in my lower half like a tidal wave. I reached down between our bodies and grasped him under the water, and I could tell from touch alone his size would stretch me to my limit. Just thinking about it sent my neck rolling back.
Frankie righted me immediately, his fingers tightening in my scalp to the point of pain. “You can play with it all you want, sweetheart, but I’m not fucking you until I can get you spread out on a hard surface. I’m not one of your little boyfriends.”
Christ, he really was not. Frankie had outdone every man I’d seen in the last eight years in about eight fucking seconds.
“I’ll play with you, too, though.” He snagged my lips between his for a balancing kiss. “You want me to play with you, Ophelia?”
“Mm-hmm,” I managed, feeling the first brush of his fingers between my legs, before he abruptly pulled them away.
“Use those words for me. I know how much you love to talk.”
I hurdled past the point where my brain turned off and left my vagina to rationalize. Embarrassingly, I would have sang him a fucking song if he asked. The best thing about it, though, was that he wasn’t asking me—he was telling me. He held my stare with parted lips like an atom bomb was about to drop if I pushed the right button.
“Play with my pussy, Frankie.”
His eyes darkened as my words landed, pulling an appreciative grunt from deep in his throat. Frankie could dominate my senses, but I unraveled him with one sentence and a sultry bat of my eyelashes.
“God damn,” he gritted out, then crushed his lips to mine.
It was like his fingers and tongue were battling for my attention. Inside my mouth he swept that devious muscle in perfect circles, flicking it against my own, claiming me desperately. His hand that wasn’t wrapped in hair at the nape of my neck was cupping my sex, stroking eagerly at that throbbing bundle of nerves that had my thighs tightening around his hips.
He unwound one of my legs from his waist and pushed it open, giving himself the access he craved, and I clung to his side.
“I want to feel you from the inside so badly my cock is fucking aching, baby.”
I gasped and stroked him faster, giving back to his mouth the desperate tongue fucking he’d taught me he liked. I wanted to learn so much more of his body, the things that made his breathing stunt and his muscles flex. What special twist of my wrist or motion of my hips would have those gorgeous brown eyes glazing over.
Frankie released my lips to bite at my neck the same moment he slid a finger down my core and pushed it into me. As if he wanted to hear what sounds I would make the first time he penetrated me completely uninhibited.