But he had to, just for a while longer. Until she accepted that what they shared was worth the fire and brimstone their fathers would rain down on them.
The moment lay between them like a suffocating cloud of fizz-edged awareness, stretching for long seconds.
Finally she looked away, frowning. “I was trying to imagine you as a boy.”
Yeah, right, Nick thought. She was wondering why he hadn’t moved, leaped across the table, pushing and demanding as he usually did when she looked as him with naked desire in her eyes.
Your move, baby.
The silence lengthened as they stared at each other, rocking gently in the swell of the waves lapping the jetty.
What was the deal? Jordan wondered. Didn’t he want her anymore?
Nick’s smile was strained at the edges, his eyes feverish with want. She recognized that because she saw it every Friday when he opened the hotel door to her.
Yet he sat there, one hand spread on his thigh as he lounged in his seat, the other on the table. Looking at ease and yet ready to pounce.
Why wasn’t he pouncing? He always made the moves. In the time it took for them tonight to prepare dinner, eat and then have a nice little chat, they would normally have made love two or three times.
Was it a test of some kind? Jordan shifted in her chair, a meter away from a man bristling with sexual tension and yet concealing it—not even that. Accepting it.
What was his game?
She stood abruptly, needing some space. “Do you mind if I take a shower?”
He moved his head from side to side, his eyes hooded.
Jordan made her way to the small bathroom off the second cabin. True to his word, there were unopened toiletries, toothbrushes in their wrappers and a stack of soft white towels on the vanity. She turned the shower on and scrutinized her grubby clothes. After clambering around a dusty house and up cliff and vale, the white lacy top was a shambles and the cutoffs weren’t much better. She stripped and took the top and her panties into the steaming shower with her; the cutoffs wouldn’t dry before morning.
The hot blast of water was bliss after a long day. She’d drunk too fast. Nervous. He made her nervous because he was different. Holding back, even though every look told her he wanted her. The only conclusion she could make was that he wanted her to make the moves. But why?
She turned and let the water pummel her back while squeezing shower soap through her clothing. It was all so confusing. At the ball, she’d told him it was over. Now she wished they could return to sex on Fridays, where they both knew where they stood. Two unattached people sharing an amazing attraction.
That reminded her of what he’d said at the ball. “I want more.”
She turned off the shower and grabbed a towel. Did she want more? Of course she wanted more. The idea grew and grew until it pushed everything else out of her head. More with Nick than Friday afternoons. Dating Nick. Making love with him in her apartment, his house. Talking about their day. Making plans.
She had drunk too much to be thinking along these lines. The prudent thing to do in the circumstances was to poke her head back into the saloon, wish him good-night and go to bed—alone—in the second cabin.
She rubbed the steamed mirror with a corner of the towel. Looking at herself, her naked body, reminded her of when he’d made love to her in front of the mirror at the hotel. She could see him behind her, his dark hands on her white breasts, his face above hers, eyes holding hers fiercely, compelling her to watch…unmentionable pleasure coiling through her body as he moved inside her, came with her.
Jordan flushed bright red. God, she was hot for him. He was addictive. She craved him. And trying to deny the craving, she began to justify herself. It was she who’d said they weren’t going to pick up where they left off. Her rules, she could break them. Going meekly off to bed alone was going along with him, changing the direction of what was a great sexual relationship.
The best solution was to go out there and seduce him. Remind him that they were about sex. Remind him how good they were at it. Keep things on the only level she was prepared to contemplate. Because she didn’t want to risk her heart, which she feared was already attached.
She dried herself, brushed her teeth and her hair, and hung her panties and top over the towel rail to dry. Then she went out to seduce Nick Thorne before he turned her head with his charm and his patience and his tests.
Jordan walked out into the stateroom wearing only a towel. He lifted his head and watched her approach, his eyes gleaming. She tried to pretend this was the Presidential Suite at the hotel on a Friday afternoon. She’d done this a dozen times…
He’d cleared the table and now sat on the sofa, holding his glass. “Shall I find you a robe?”
Jordan shook her head, confusion welling up again. Why wouldn’t he just stand and take charge? Tear the towel off, put his hands on her…
“Would you like coffee?” His voice was so soft that she strained to hear him.
“Maybe later,” she said huskily, moving closer. Her bare legs were just inches from where his stretched out in front of him.
“You want me, Nick?”
He moistened his lips. “You’ve never asked me that before.”
“I’ve never had to.”
He laid his head back on the back of the couch, watching her inscrutably. Never had she known him to exhibit so much restraint. Admirable restraint, considering the impressive bulge at the apex of his trousers.
Goose bumps rose on her arms and she shivered, the tension coiling up her insides.
“Remember our first time?” he asked suddenly, his voice low and hard. “You trembled then, too, just like now. Were you nervous?”
She exhaled in a rush. “Just like now.”
She hadn’t meant to admit that.
She took a tentative step closer.
“Why?”
There was nothing in his upturned face she could read, no clue as to what he was thinking. “Because I was overwhelmed.”
The back of her neck—her whole back prickled like freezer burn.
“And now?”
“Because I don’t know what you want anymore.” Jordan hadn’t intended to say that either. But she couldn’t think with his impenetrable eyes boring into her.
“I told you the other night,” Nick said quietly. “I. Want. More.”
Someone had switched scripts. She suddenly felt all at sea again—she nearly snorted but it wasn’t funny. Desperate to regain the lead—wasn’t that what he wanted?—she slipped her fingers between the folds of the towel, under the knot, peeling the sides back a little, slowly revealing what was underneath. “You can have everything.”
Nick smiled then, as if to himself. “Oh, I intend to.”
It sounded like a threat.
Firmly pushing her worries aside, she stepped inside his legs and sank down onto her knees before him. That got a result. Quickening breath, eyes widening and alert. The column of his throat bobbed in a hard swallow. Got your attention now, she thought.
She reached out and spread her hand on his groin, soaking up the heat that radiated out. The answering surge of welcome under her palm made her smile and she pressed down gently. “You want this?”
His chin dropped down to his chest. Nick always liked to watch.
“You know what I want.”
She bent to her task, brushing off the niggling unease about his unaccustomed passivity, the way he answered her every question with a variation of “I want more.” His arms were still, hands on his thighs, when usually he moved, directed, arranged her to his satisfaction.
Thankfully as she unzipped him, her natural instincts took over. Jordan was enthralled, turned on beyond belief. She didn’t need to ask again. She knew by the fire in his eyes. The way the veins on his hands stood out, even though they appeared to be relaxed. The muscles in his upper thighs tightened with each swirl of her tongue around his swollen flesh.
She knew exactly what he wanted when she felt his hands in her hair, firmly holding her in place while he moved under her.
But then someone changed the script again. His hands tightened in her hair and he lifted her head and pulled her up over him.
Nick had never stopped her before.
It cost him. The strain on his face, a single bead of sweat crawling down his temple, told of the cost. He framed her face with his hands and kissed her, deeper and deeper, and it was somehow more intimate than her ministrations a minute ago. She felt heavy, dragged down by desire.
They kissed and kissed, cupping each other’s faces, learning the shapes of their cheekbones and skulls, fingers lacing through hair. There seemed to be no urgency and neither of them closed their eyes. To Jordan, the sight of him was just so good.
His hands slid inside the still-knotted towel, stroked slowly down her body, massaging gently while they kissed. Lying on top of him, feeling him hard and wanting underneath her, she drowned in pleasure.
Maybe she’d begun by seducing him, showing him how sexy he made her feel, teasing him until he begged. But he was involved now, involving her completely, taking her under. She needed skin and squirmed to get her arms down, trying to get to his buttons. There was too much between them. She fumbled and tugged and got his shirt undone so at least she could feel his warm skin on her front, the hairs on his chest causing fantastic friction on her breasts.
Under her towel, he stroked and stroked, his hands questing and probing. She lay across him, lifting her hips. His fingers played her like music, inside and out, and she flowed into orgasm with blinding ignorance, not even realizing she was close. Her hands fisted, her knuckles pressing into his chest and for the first time since she’d walked out from the bathroom, she broke eye contact and sank into deep and shuddering satisfaction.