Chapter Six
She saw the way he was looking at her, his bluish-green eyes gleaming from beneath heavy eyelids. She felt his stare in her lungs. It made them heavy and difficult to expand. Then he was leaning closer. His warm mouth brushed against her lips, and her lungs released. She gasped softly and moved her mouth against his.
It was the sweetest kiss: questing and sun warmed and gentle. Laila had never known there was a part of her that was frozen, deep down inside, until she felt it thaw beneath Asher’s mouth.
His tongue dipped between her lips. Heat unfurled in her belly and expanded like a heavy ache to her sex. He cradled her jaw with one hand and kissed her more deeply, their rubbing, tangling tongues, his taste, all of it making her dizzy. She ran her hand along his naked shoulder, loving the sensation of dense muscle gloved in smooth, sun-kissed skin. He made a low, rough sound in his throat and leaned further into her, his kiss growing hungrier and more demanding. The ache at her core grew sharper. She twisted her hips toward him, increasingly desperate to relieve the pressure there. The air mattress slipped out from beneath her.
Suddenly, she was plunging beneath the surface of the cold water.
She felt his hand on her upper arm. He hauled her up to the surface. He struggled to stay on his raft while holding her. She found her footing at the rock-and-sand bottom of the lake. She sputtered with laughter.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, wiping water and wet hair out of her face. She grinned from ear to ear. He smiled.
“It’s kind of a rare talent, making out on air rafts,” he said.
“One that apparently you possess, and I don’t,” she replied dryly.
“It must be a genetic talent, because I’ve never done it before,” he assured her with a pointed glance. “Screw it,” he said, swinging his body into the lake and shoving his air mattress toward the shore. “It’s a wasted talent if I’m the only one who has it,” he said before he took her into his arms.
All her amusement faded at the sensation of his long, hard body pressing against hers in the cool water. She stared up at him—he was a good eight or nine inches taller than her. His head blocked the afternoon sun. His face was cast in shadow, but she saw that he’d sobered as well. And suddenly, he was kissing her again, and she could feel his body through the thin material of his swim trunks. It was like that moment when she’d first seen him on the beach and witnessed his arousal, the sheer flagrancy of his maleness, but this was a thousandfold times that experience. It shocked her a little, the intimacy of it all. Before she’d considered male desire exciting, but also coarse, somehow. Crude. Often tiresome. Never beautiful.
Until now.
His arms closed tighter around her. One large hand cupped her hip and shaped it to his palm, the other wrapped around her waist. She moaned softly into their kiss, loving the way she fit into his embrace. Her fingers dug gently into the muscles of his back, and then she was delving them into his wet hair. She pressed closer to him, using her hold on him to tilt his head slightly as she twisted hers, deepening their kiss. Distantly, she was a little amazed at her sexual aggressiveness, but he’d started a fire in her. She felt it sizzling at her core, making her hunger. Ache. His hands began to slide up and down her body, as though he were learning her and pleasuring her at once, stroking and rubbing . . . building the friction in her. She felt his erection swell against her belly, and suddenly, he was lifting her.
She rose out of the water. Their kiss continued, even more wild and ravenous at the new angle. He grabbed one butt cheek and pressed her tightly to him, the long, rigid column of his cock pressing against her sex. They moaned in unison.
He broke their kiss and pressed his mouth to her throat. She opened heavy eyelids, dazed by the bright sunlight and Asher’s hot mouth moving on her neck. And all the while, his arousal burned against hers.
“Tell me how to say ‘I want you’ in Moroccan,” he said gruffly against her neck.
She smiled and pressed her lips to his cheek. He was so unexpected. “Kan bghik,” she murmured.
“Kan bghik,” he said, and he lifted his head. His gaze smoldered as it toured her face. His fingers moved on the bare skin of her buttock just beneath her bikini brief. She felt his erection lurch against her. “And you, Laila?”
“Yes,” she whispered, swallowing thickly. “I want you too. Isn’t it obvious?”
A shadow passed over his handsome face. “Ah. I sense a but in there.” When she didn’t argue, she saw his jaw muscles tighten. He set her back on her feet. Reluctantly, she moved back from the temptation of his body several inches. The barrier of the cool water did little to soothe her firing nerves. He released her slowly but grasped her hands in his beneath the surface of the water. She was thankful for that.
“I barely know you,” she said, staring down at the rippling, glistening water. It was the most obvious of a whole host of concerns she had, like that her parents would never allow her to date a rich white boy who was only in Crescent Bay for a last summertime fling with his friends, or that he was moving to California soon, or that she wasn’t even sure he wanted to date her. Possibly he just wanted to have sex.
And then there was the fact that she was a virgin . . .
Yeah. That was a pretty big worry.
He released one of her hands and touched the bottom of her chin with one fingertip. “I realize that. I do,” he said seriously when she gave him a doubtful look. “I didn’t ask you here to have sex, Laila.”
“Really?”
He exhaled in frustration. “Okay, I do want to have sex with you. Obviously. A lot,” he added dryly. He held her stare. “But I meant it when I said I didn’t ask you here specifically for that. I like you. You’re beautiful and sexy and sweet and . . . special. I’ve never wanted someone the way I want you,” he said in a preoccupied fashion, as if he were having the realization for the first time. Euphoria rushed through her at his words. But then this his mouth went hard.
“I am being selfish, though. You’re not the kind of girl I should be fooling around with, under the circumstances. That’s what you’re thinking, right?”
“I don’t know what I’m thinking,” she confessed. “I know what I’m feeling. And it’s a little . . . overwhelming.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. His damp fingertip caressed her cheek. She went still beneath his touch, her nerves tingling in awareness. When he noticed her entranced expression, he dropped his hand with a rough sigh.