“Well, I’d hate to be the one to turn you to truancy.”
He held his breath as she slowly leaned forward. She very carefully kissed the drops of moisture off his lips one by one, and then rose to do the same for his nose. He closed his eyelids when she transferred her attention there, her quick, elusive caresses creating a riot of sensation in his body. By the time she’d dried his whole face with her sweet, seeking lips, he was starting to hurt with desire.
Her mouth settled on his. He could just as easily have single-handedly stopped the rotation of the earth than prevented himself from transferring his hands to her upper arms and sliding her closer to him. He gave himself twenty seconds to drown in the taste of her, twenty seconds to show her how much he wanted her, twenty seconds to glory in the fact that her hunger seemed every bit a match for his.
She whimpered softly when he sealed their kiss and moved away from her.
“I think I’ll do a lap or three dozen,” he muttered before he plunged into the water. He tried to banish Mari’s dazed expression and flushed cheeks from his mind’s eye as he set a hard, brisk pace for himself, but it didn’t really work.
Not in the slightest.
Slightly winded from his swim, he finally rose from the pool. Mari glanced up from her magazine. He gave her a reassuring smile when he saw her uncertain look. The last thing he’d meant to do was make her feel guilty. He was the one who’d asked for it, and, given the same circumstances, he’d gladly suffer his momentary discomfort again just to feel her supple body gliding next to his and her lips caressing every inch of his face.
“Do you mind if I look over a couple things in the shade?” he asked, pointing toward his briefcase beneath the umbrella.
“No, of course not,” she assured.
He dried off and settled himself for the next forty minutes, going through his phone messages and making a priority list for things that needed to get done in the next few days. He was proud of himself for staying on task with the alluring distraction of Mari reclining just feet away in a sexy bikini.
Everything was going great until she pulled some suntan lotion out of her bag and started smoothing the emollient onto her long legs. Like a bee drawn to honey, he rose slowly from his seat at the shaded table and walked toward her.
“You need any help with that?” he asked as he plopped down into the recliner next to her.
“I think I can manage.”
He didn’t reply as he watched her work the lotion into her thighs. She glanced over at him as she poured some more into her palm.
“I thought you were working,” she said with a touch of asperity.
He studied every detail of her hands smoothing over her belly.
“I was. I’m not anymore. You have beautiful arms,” he said distractedly.
Mari snorted. “Thanks. I don’t think I’ve ever received that particular compliment before.”
He smiled and just continued to watch her. He might have looked relaxed to a casual observer, but in fact, his body was tensed like an animal’s ready to spring. Why wouldn’t anyone tell her she had gorgeous arms? They were like sensual poetry, the way they gleamed in the summer sun, the way she moved them. Why hadn’t he told her before?
He sat up when she reached her shoulders.
“Here,” he said, reaching for the bottle. “You’re going to get it on your new suit.”
She glanced at him doubtfully but released the lotion, nevertheless.
“Lean back,” he encouraged as he transferred positions so that he was sitting beside her on her recliner. “It’s best to be in the exact spot where you’re going to lay when you put the stuff on, or else you take the risk of missing the exposed parts.”
“You sound like quite the expert on suntan lotion application,” Mari said sarcastically as sh
e reclined in the chair.
Marc poured some of the warm liquid in his palm. “Well, I don’t want to brag or anything…”
Mari rolled her eyes, but he sensed her focused attention as he carefully began to rub the emollient onto her shoulder, careful not to stain the fabric of her suit.
“You really take this seriously. You’d think you were doing surgery,” Mari murmured as she watched him work the lotion into her skin along the line of the suit.
“I’m a perfectionist,” he said in a deadpan tone.
She laughed. The smile remained on her mouth while he did her other shoulder. It faded when he squeezed more lotion in one hand and started matter-of-factly working it into the exposed skin in the V of her halter top. From the periphery of his vision, he saw her mouth open to protest, but he just continued rubbing the lotion over the top of a breast with two fingers, sliding and circling over firm, curving flesh. He leaned down farther, taking his time and true to his word, completing the task with meticulous attention to detail.