Or better yet, he’d love to get her naked in the glass and marble enclosed shower with hot water pouring over her satiny skin from the eight showerheads. Soap up his hands and glide them over all those seductive hills and valleys. Pin her to the wall, wrap her long legs around his hips, and fuck until he couldn’t stand upright anymore.
And the spectacular pool. He wanted to take her for a moonlight swim in the cool waters of the free-form pool that curved around behind the house. Then they could stroke their way to the dark, private grotto for a dip in the hot tub.
Fuck yeah!
Syn’s hand flexed, fingers tightening on his arm. “We need to talk.”
All calm, cool, and collected, she uttered the four simple yet most powerful words in the English language. Words capable of striking fear in the heart of the fiercest male warrior. He suddenly felt like an awkward fourteen-year-old on the first day at a new school. His balls shriveled and his dick deflated. Ice heard an engine sputter then the heavy whining descent of a plane going into a death roll, plummeting straight for the ground, followed by an Earth-jarring impact as his arousal crashed and burned on the beach. Hell, he hadn’t even worked his way up to imagining having sex on the beach before she’d shot him down in flames.
Searching for a means of escape, his gaze connected with Jagger’s. The pained sympathy in his teammate’s eyes had Ice pissed off and anxious to stare down a target through his scope then drop the fucker with a fatal shot right between the eyes.
Glancing down into Syn’s troubled green eyes, he manned-up and said the only thing he could. “Okay, babe. Let’s go.”
Chapter Two
Leaving her car parked at the bar, they walked across the street, slipped off their shoes and let their toes sink into the powdery-white sand still warm from the sun. Syn took a deep breath of the salty air and sighed as some of the tension eased out of her shoulders.
Ice dropped their shoes next to a bench, interlaced his fingers with hers, and headed toward the water. For a while, they walked in the bright moonlight at the water’s edge, sharing a companionable silence. In no hurry to broach the subject weighing on her mind, she simply soaked in the romantic atmosphere while her fingers yearned for the weight of her camera.
The dark blue velvet was covered by a sky dotted with millions of bright stars. Gazing across the shimmering water, she made out the shape of an oil tanker on a slow journey across the horizon. Gulls squawked and waves broke gently on the shore, creating beautiful phosphorescent sprays of surf. Tiny crabs scuttled back and forth, racing to beat the rush of water and complete their nocturnal tasks.
“How long?” She didn’t have to elaborate. He understood.
Ice shrugged. “Supposed to have a week.”
Supposed to rarely happened with the SEALs. Somewhere on his person would be a pager that could go off at any moment. Being on standby literally meant the team stood at the ready for their next mission, whatever and wherever they might be needed.
“You?” he asked.
“Same.” Syn wasn’t much of a talker herself, one of many things they had in common. She wondered if she should just get through the hard part, tell Ice it was over and head home. Spending a few days in his arms would only make breaking it off harder. But she wanted those days. She’d missed the way his big arms sheltered her, his strong body making her feel safe and protected, the perfection of her soft curves fitted along his hard planes as if they’d been created specifically for each other.
She missed the sex. Hours of hot, sweaty passion as Ice took her body to euphoric heights of ecstasy over and over again. The tireless pounding of his hips, the flex and play of all those powerful muscles, the exquisite friction of their bodies joining as one entity compelled to discover the ultimate pleasure a man and woman could create together.
And she missed the talking. While making love was the one time Ice vocalized his feelings and gave himself to her completely. A flash fire broke out beneath her skin merely recalling how his voice would turn raspy the more explicit his pillow talk became.
Ice stopped walking, pulling her to a stop beside him as a deep, masculine moan reached her ears, followed closely by a feminine whimper. She had no trouble recognizing the sounds of sex. Someone was getting busy on the beach. Not a bad idea.
Ice started moving toward the shadowy area where the sounds originated, tugging her hand. What the hell was he doing?
“Ice,” she whispered, “stop.” She made a futile effort at resisting with little hope of keeping more than six feet of solid muscular male from doing exactly as he wanted. “We can’t,” she tried. “That’s private.”