“With absolute pleasure and utter dedication.”
She rolled her eyes. “Focus on putting sunscreen on those areas, not your mouth.”
“I’ll try, babe, but no guarantees.”
I moved in behind her and started applying lotion at the nape of her neck. Even the heat from the sun couldn’t keep her from breaking out in gooseflesh as my hands molded and shaped her strong arms and shoulders. Made me a little crazy to see how much my touch affected her this way. As much as I wanted to drag this out, discover all of her hot spots inch by inch, there was no way to mask a hard-on in board shorts.
“I suppose you’re too macho to wear sunscreen,” she said.
“Nope. I’ll let you coat my back when I’m done because I’m sweating through this shirt so much it’s gotta come off.”
She muttered something I couldn’t make out.
“Done.” I stepped back and yanked my T-shirt over my head. “My turn.”
Trinity hadn’t bothered to put her sunglasses back on, so I saw those green eyes widen. Then her gaze roamed over my chest and belly with frank admiration. “Of course you’re built like that.”
I liked the way she was eyeing me. So did another part of my body and I willed the damn thing to stand down.
Then she muttered, “Of course you have a blond happy trail.”
I quickly skirted her and dropped into the chair. Maybe if I leaned far enough forward I could hide my body’s reaction.
And what happens when she puts her hands on you?
I was screwed.
The bottle of sunscreen made an obscene noise and cool droplets landed on my shoulders. At first her touch was tentative. Exploratory. And that was pure torture.
“Trinity—”
“I want to sketch you,” she said huskily. “The way your muscles bunch together here”—she traced my triceps and the upper bulge of my biceps—“you have exquisite form. I’d like to try to capture the power of them even in rest.”
“Sweetheart, you can do whatever you want.”
She squirted more sunscreen in the middle of my back, rubbing it in with slow, sensual strokes. “Anything? What about doing a nude?”
I chuckled. “Anything but that.”
“But this would be strictly for my personal collection.”
“So I’d just be one of many male forms in your private portfolio?” Why did that bother me? As an artist she’d probably drawn hundreds of nudes over the years.
“No.” Her lips grazed my ear and I shivered. “You’d be the first one.”
I turned my head until my cheek connected with hers. “Then I’m yours anytime you want me.”
“I’ll take you up on that later, when there’s more shadow to highlight the contrasts.”
When she kissed the hollow beneath my ear, my blood turned molten.
“Now that I’m protected, I’m ready to soak up the sun.” She moved to the seat beside me and stretched her legs out. Lowering her shades over her eyes, she aimed her face skyward and exhaled. “This is the perfect way to spend an afternoon. Thank you. I needed this.”
We didn’t talk for the longest time. The lapping of the waves against the side of the boat, the drone of other motors and the occasional high-pitched shrieks of happy kids lulled me into the peaceful state I only ever found here. Which is one of the reasons I usually came to the lake by myself. Bringing other people meant a rowdier time, loud tunes, free-flowing booze, requests to go tubing or wakeboarding. Sometimes I wanted that, but it was rare. Mostly I wanted this peaceful feeling.
After a bit I heard her shift in her seat.
I cracked an eye open and watched her settle a floppy orange hat on her head that put her face entirely in shadow.
Without looking at me, she said, “The hat is hideous, isn’t it?”
“It’s . . . colorful.”
“Artfully dodged,” she said dryly. “My stepmonster gave it to me. She said I wear entirely too much black and it depressed her.” She snorted. “It depressed me that she thought this ‘pop of color’ was what my wardrobe lacked.”
“Why’d you keep it?”
She shrugged. “A perverse sense of pride? It is actual proof she doesn’t know me at all.”
“That reminds me . . . Yesterday you said your family calls you Amelia. Why? What’s wrong with the name Trinity?”
Her body tensed. “Short version of my early life. My mom and dad met when he started an internship after law school clerking for the judge she worked for as a paralegal. They dated; she got pregnant. Mom refused to marry him, but she didn’t deny him or his family access to me. By the time I was three, he’d married the stepmonster. I saw him maybe twice a year. His mother—my grandma Minnie—I saw every couple of weeks because she adored me even when he didn’t. Anyway, when I was nine, my mom died in a—” She paused. “She died suddenly. Since she didn’t have family, and Grandma couldn’t take me because of her health issues, Grandma guilted her son into bringing me to live with him.”