She didn’t know what to say. She was flattered, but only half believed him.
Tucking her loose hair behind her ear, she confided, “I’ve never felt confident about the way I look. Showing any hint of trying to be sexy while my father was alive would have been a one-way ticket to hell. And I never really trusted any man enough to flirt.” She gave him the bottle of water to open for her then poured two glasses, drinking greedily only to make herself hiccup.
She giggled and covered her wet lips, but sobered as she saw Gideon glowering into his glass.
“Men who hit women make me insane. I know it’s not right to answer violence with violence, but if your father were still alive, the police would be involved right now, one way or another.” He took a deep slug of his water, eyes remaining hooded, not meeting her shocked gaze.
His vehemence was disturbing, prompting an odd need to comfort him. She reached across to stroke his tense arm. “Gideon, it’s in the past. It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not,” he said sharply, but when he looked at her, his expression softened a little. “But right now isn’t the time to think about it. Get rid of that,” he ordered with a jerk of his chin at the T-shirt.
“What am I? Your sex slave now?” She did feel a little enslaved, but she wasn’t as resentful as she ought to be about it.
“No. You’re my wife. You ought to be comfortable letting me see you naked.” He set aside his glass to reach for an orange.
She finished her own water and set it aside before easing the shirt off her body and setting it aside while she continued to kneel demurely, feet alongside her buttock, arm twitching to cover her breasts. To distract herself, she watched Gideon efficiently section the orange and bring a piece to his mouth.
He clutched it in his teeth and looked at her. “Bite,” he said around it.
Her heart did a somersault. “Why?” The defensive question came automatically, but then she thought, Just do it, and leaned down to close her mouth on the fruit.
They bit it in half at the same time. Tangy juice exploded in her mouth. At the same time, his firm lips moved on hers in an erotic, openmouthed kiss. When she would have pulled away in surprise, he set a hand behind her head and kept her close enough to enjoy the messy, sweet, thorough act of sinful wickedness.
When he finally let her pull away to finish chewing and swallow, he grinned. “You flirt just fine, Mrs. Vozaras.”
“Do it again,” she blurted, making herself be assertive so she’d quit letting habits of inhibition hold her back from what she wanted.
A flicker of surprise flashed in his eyes before his eyelids grew heavy and his gaze sexily watchful. In her periphery, she was aware of him growing hard and her mouth watered for that too, but she took another bite of orange and splayed her hand on his chest, leaning into him to enjoy the sticky, tart kiss.
The last shreds of her inhibitions fell away and they didn’t get back to the orange for a long, long time.
* * *
“You’re going to burn,” Gideon said as he returned from the waves to see the sun had moved and the backs of Adara’s legs were exposed to the intense rays.
She stayed on her stomach on the blanket, unmoved and unmoving, only blinking her eyes open sleepily, as if she didn’t have an ounce of energy in her. Forty-eight hours of unfettered lovemaking, impulsive napping and abject laziness were taking a toll on both of them. His own ambition had frittered into an I’ll look at it later attitude. He’d left his phone and tablet up at the house, bringing only his sunglasses and wife to the beach.
“I like being on vacation,” she told him, still not moving.
He adjusted the umbrella so she was fully in the shade then flopped down beside her. “So do I. We should definitely do this more often.”
A shadow passed behind her eyes before she lowered her lashes to hide it. She shifted to rest her chin on her stacked fists, the circumspect silence making him aware of all the things they’d avoided while enriching their knowledge of each other’s capacity for physical pleasure. Suddenly they were back in the pool, he couldn’t think beyond his sexual hunger, and she was telling him that she needed to know where their relationship was going.
Restless frustration moved through him. He didn’t know what to tell her. This was perfect. Wasn’t it? He couldn’t think of one thing they needed besides warm sand, the reassuring swish of a calm sea, each other’s heated breath while they—
A faint noise lifted his head and a preternatural tingle went through him as he noticed a speck appear in the distant sky. They hadn’t been tracking time, neither of them particularly interested in a return to reality, but apparently it was descending whether they were ready for it or not.