“For me?”
“Starving.”
Seven
With her clamped to his side, Josh made a swift call to the kitchen to demand that dinner be delayed until further notice. Callie knew that on some level she should be embarrassed. He’d all but stated their intentions to the crew as to what they’d be doing, but instead all she could think of was that there would be some relief to the pounding ache that suffused her.
Josh led her through the interior of the boat and down a flight of stairs. At the bottom he turned and let her go only long enough to grip the gleaming brass handles on a pair of polished wooden doors and thrust the doors open.
The stateroom was sumptuous in its appointments. Light spilled in from the windows on either side, giving the impression that they were totally alone, afloat on the Waitemata Harbour in their own cocoon of luxury. Callie felt a thrill of anticipation ripple through her as she surveyed the massive bed sprawled in front of her. A thrill that was rapidly followed by a surge of fear.
What was she thinking? This was craziness personified. She’d worked for Josh two and a half weeks, had only met him once before that, and now she was going to bed with him? She’d never behaved so impulsively, nor wantonly, before. The dichotomy between her careful lifestyle over the past few years and what she was about to do slammed home.
“Josh?” she said, her voice betraying her hesitancy.
“Don’t think,” he said, taking her into his arms again and lowering his lips to hers. “Just feel.”
As he kissed her, she clung to reason for a fleeting second, then was swept away on a tide of want she’d never experienced so deeply before. Every nerve in her body, every thought in her head, focussed on Josh Tremont and the way he touched her.
Broad hands swept across her naked back, his fingers tangling in the trail of the ties of her halter. In seconds she felt the fabric of her dress begin to loosen, in a heartbeat she knew he held each tie in his hands. Josh straightened and looked at her.
“I’ve been wanting to do this all evening.”
Callie laughed softly, the sound unexpected in the taut atmosphere of the room. “So you haven’t been wanting to do it long then,” she teased.
But then all thought of humour fled as Josh smiled and lowered his hands, drawing the material in a sensuous slide across her sensitised skin. Breath shuddered through her lips as he bared her to his view, as his eyes darkened to indigo and his jaw clenched, his lips compressed in a straight line.
He said nothing, did absolutely nothing—but look. Uncertainty swept through her until he lifted his hands and gently cupped the pale globes of her breasts, his thumbs skimming the hardened, rose-tinted peaks, his touch drawing a cry of need from her mouth that echoed through her entire body. His fingers tightened more firmly on her and she pressed against his hands, suddenly eager for more.
Josh dipped his head and captured one distended nipple with his lips, nibbling gently at the pebbled tip until Callie thought her legs would buckle and send them both to the lushly carpeted floor.
“You like that,” he said, his breath a tantalising caress across the moisture on her skin.
“Oh, yes,” she groaned.
“You want more?”
“Please, more!”
As Josh laved her other nipple with the same attention, he found the zippered fastening of her dress. In an instant the fabric slithered down over her hips and down her legs to fall in folds of darkness onto the floor. Josh stepped away from her, his eyes raking over her near nakedness, the impressive bulge in the front of his trousers saying more loudly how she affected him than any word or gesture could.
Despite the fact that she was dressed solely in black lace panties and high-heeled sandals, Callie felt invulnerable. She wasn’t the only one lost on this wave of attraction. She wasn’t the only one to throw reason to the wind and to want to indulge entirely in sensation.
“One more thing,” Josh said, reaching for the clip that bound her hair.
As her locks cascaded down, he swept her up and off her feet, closing the distance between the door and the bed with two long strides. He ripped back the covers with one hand and tumbled her onto the crisp cotton sheets. Callie reached down to remove her sandals.
“Leave them,” Josh commanded as he tore at the buttons on his shirt and then unfastened his belt and trousers.
Callie heard the thud of his shoes as he dragged the shirt off his shoulders and pushed his trousers and underwear down in an economy of movement that spoke volumes about his need for her.
And then there he was, gloriously naked, his arousal proudly jutting from a nest of dark hair at his groin. Callie’s hands twisted in the sheets as her eyes roamed his body—the taut abdomen, the bunched muscles of his chest. She wanted to touch him. To lick and taste the golden planes of his skin, to cup his manhood in her palm and to stroke the swollen tip until he was near bursting. But Josh clearly had other plans.