Oh, yeah. She had all sorts of ideas. Her imagination wasn’t the problem.
And then he whipped his shirt off over his head, and her breath caught because oh, my God. Her imagination was most definitely a problem—it sucked. The thousand or so images she’d conjured up in her head while she’d been touching him earlier hadn’t even been close to the reality of his naked torso. Lean. Honed. Muscular, with so many ridges and valleys.
The camera thunked into the sand. Cheeks on fire, she picked it up with nearly nerveless fingers.
“Lay back,” she stuttered hoarsely. “Put your hands behind your head and look up at the sky.”
He did instantly, his biceps bunching up, and he glanced at her. “Like this?”
It was a clichéd pose. So trite and ridiculous but her brain had practically deserted her.
She nodded and crawled to lean over him, framing the shot. But she couldn’t press the shutter. This was the first photograph she’d take of him, and she’d only ever get one first time. Was it so wrong to savor it?
And if she was using the pause as an excuse to gather her scattered wits, he didn’t have to know.
“Take the picture, Lilah,” he murmured, but his eyes were saying something else that flushed across her skin.
Click. That was it. Exactly what she wanted to capture. A heaviness in his gaze, something she couldn’t describe, but it put heat between her legs because it meant that he was turned on. That he wanted her. That’s what she had to understand.
Why her? Boring Lilah Rose Houston interested a man like this? It was insane.
“Take another one.” His voice slid through her like a hot knife. “Feel when it’s right, Lilah. You’ll know deep inside when to hit the button. Trust your body.”
Click. Click. Suddenly she couldn’t get enough shots, and the more she took, the more she wanted to see. But she had no idea how to get to the next level. These shots were good; she could feel it in her bones even without benefit of poring over them later in search of the best.
They weren’t the best she could do, though. The thrill of discovery, of finding power in the lens, rushed through her, enlivening every nerve it touched.
“What else would you like me to do?”
She watched his lips form the words from behind the barrier of the camera, and the suggestiveness wasn’t lost on her.
She’d like him to make love to her, in every sense of the phrase, to make her feel beautiful and wanted. In turn, she wanted to put a mad rush through his veins that matched the one going on in her body. But what she wanted and what she was capable of actually getting from him were two entirely different things.
Somehow her photography skills had gotten tangled up inside her and tangled up with her fear of everything, and all at once she saw Thora’s point.
Lack of passion had translated into boring pictures. Because she was too afraid to seize it.
Helplessness crashed against the thrill of the moment. If only she could let go, like she had on the boat, falling into kissing him and unable to stop herself.
Her fingers froze around the camera, locking up tight so she couldn’t have pressed the shutter at gunpoint. How did she recapture that abandon?
All at once, he sat up and eased the camera away from her face. She blinked.
“Lilah.” Her name washed over her, featherlight, as his fingers tangled through her hair, tilting her head up until her gaze got caught in his. Fire reflected in his irises, mesmerizing her.
She might have made a noise in her throat.
“I was wrong,” he murmured. “Your problem isn’t that you’re afraid. It’s that you don’t know how to talk to me.”
“I’m pretty sure I already told you that.”
Except that wasn’t it at all. She couldn’t talk to people because she was afraid. Of everything. Of failing, of doing the wrong thing, of the idea that she was, at her core, boring due to it.
His smile said that he didn’t take offense. “Then that’s what we need to fix first.”
Eyes wide, she watched as he carefully put her camera back in the case, double-checking the latch, which might have been the sexiest thing he’d ever done given that the lens alone had cost almost two thousand dollars. Her heart got a little workout as her pulse stumbled. How many people would have taken such care with another person’s property?
Then his gaze swung back around to zero in on her again, and her insides erupted in a flurry of nerves and wants and so many things that she had no idea how to manage.
Without a word, he pulled her into his arms and laid his lips on hers in a long, sweet kiss. She sighed and closed her eyes. This she could do. There wasn’t any expectation, no pressure. It was just a kiss, and that emboldened her to explore his uncovered torso a bit.