To hell with that. She let her plastic cup fall to the sand and snaked her arms around his waist, yanking him closer so she could feel every inch of that delicious torso against hers.
With a sexy groan that rumbled in his chest, he dropped the floodgates, hefting her deep into his arms. His hot tongue swirled out to mate with hers and she met him halfway. The sensation of his onslaught corkscrewed through her core, lighting her up, and she tilted her hips against his erection, seeking it, reveling in it. He was hard for her already, and answering moisture gathered between her legs.
Oh, yeah. She liked this kind of kissing much better. Then he slid his fingers through her hair to cup the base of her head, and she had about a half second to applaud the decision to lose the headband before she lost the ability to think at all.
Charlie was definitely the best thing she’d ever picked up parasailing.
The bed in Charlie’s suite sucked. Mostly because it was empty save one very surly SEAL.
He stabbed the remote to the flat-screen TV mounted to the wall, flipping through the channels for the four hundredth time, and cursed his own sense of honor that had insisted he walk away from Audra on the beach after that extremely hot kiss. Hot and short. It had been a short kiss, way too short, because he wasn’t still doing it.
Why couldn’t he have talked her into coming back to his room again? Oh, yeah, because he was an idiot who thought it was more important that she set a good example for her brother by going back to her room—alone—by eleven o’clock.
That was not what he’d have preferred.
Instead he’d have liked to carry her back to his room, then unzip that white dress to reveal those creamy breasts he could not get out of his head… he groaned, envisioning his mouth on her skin, and that was officially the last of his will.
He wasn’t the saint his guys painted him to be. Not all the time.
He took himself in hand to stroke away the worst of his bad mood with the five-fingered solution all deployed guys resorted to more often than not. There was no law against fantasizing about Audra. It just wasn’t close enough to the real thing to kill his need.
Date. Tomorrow. Swimming with dolphins. And not your run-of-the-mill deal with a boat full of other tourists. He would be checking off that item in style via his own personal dolphin expert, which almost made the ache in his groin worth it.
Please, God, let her wear the green bikini.
That image got him off. Fast.
He finally drifted off to sleep, and instead of the typical unpleasant borderline nightmares his combat-fatigued brain seemed to serve up most often, he didn’t dream at all. That was Charlie’s definition of a vacation right there.
Audra did wear the green bikini, coupled with a pink-and-white sarong knotted at her hips that dipped low on one side, allowing the string of her bikini bottom to peek above it. Every drop of saliva fled Charlie’s mouth as he hustled to the dock where she’d instructed him to meet her. The fantasy of last night roared to life in his mind, flashing at him in full color.
Down boy. Didn’t help. The boner in his shorts would be there for the duration then.
“Eager. I like that,” Audra called as Charlie took the splintered steps to the dock in twos.
“Gotta check the items off my list.”
God, she was gorgeous in the sunlight. Maybe more than she had been by moonlight, and that was saying something. All he could think about was pulling the band from her red ponytail and letting her hair fall around her shoulders. What the hell was wrong with him that he couldn’t talk to a pretty girl without going full-bore perv on her? They’d just met. Pawing at her person wasn’t the way to make an impression.
She smiled and something loosened in his chest.
Oh, yeah. Audra Reed was what was wrong with him. He hadn’t met someone who rang his bell like she did in a long time. Not since Naomi, and that was such a nasty subject, he’d need brain bleach if he dwelled on it too long.
“You never did say what else was on your list besides parasailing and dolphins,” she accused with a laugh. “We got sidetracked with the new addition.”
Kissing. Recalling the soft intensity of her lips put a hitch in his lungs.
“Yeah,” he said, and his voice scraped through his suddenly raw throat. “As sidetracks go, it was a doozy. I’m afraid I added a few more things to the list as a result.”
“Tell me,” she murmured.
You. Naked. My mouth on your body as you gasp and arch under me.
Before he could voice the fantasy he’d suffered through last night, the boat captain Audra had booked for the trip to Ilhota Rosa called them aboard. Charlie didn’t hesitate to take Audra’s hand and lead her over the sidewall, holding steady as the boat dipped and rose in the water.