He hissed out a breath and thrust hard into her a couple of times. When she shuddered, he kissed her throat before reaching down to fondle one of her ass cheeks. “That was fucking incredible sex.” Hard and rough and primal.
“You didn’t touch my nape.”
“So? We’ll work on that.” He kissed her sulky mouth. “As long as I can throw you on the bed like a caveman and pummel you to orgasm with my love-club, I’m good.”
Her shoulders shook, a little snort escaping her as she said, “I am not laughing.”
“And I’m not about to give you a love bite on your pretty breast.” Which he then promptly did.
She demanded a kiss after, tussling with him as she threatened him with a love bite where he couldn’t hide it, then arched her back in shivering pleasure as he began to move in and out of her once more.
He wasn’t as rough this time, the caveman satisfied enough to have mellowed out. Instead, he petted her all over, kissed the marks on her skin, bit her playfully, and generally had a great deal of fun driving his Ms. Baird crazy. She got her revenge by digging her heels into his butt, sinking her teeth into his shoulder, and coming so fucking hard around him that he had not a prayer in hell of holding out.
AN HOUR LATER, HE finished washing the soap off his body while watching Charlotte dry her petite one. He’d made her deliciously sweaty and sticky. Sated, he wanted nothing more than to just sprawl on the couch with her, but she’d given him an ultimatum. Either they went out together, or she was going to go out on her own.
Gabriel didn’t react well to ultimatums, but Charlotte seemed to think she was doing this for his own good. He had to set her straight.
Dressing in jeans and a striped rugby jersey while she put on a pretty yellow sundress teamed with a sky-blue cardigan, he ate the rest of the cold omelet as well as three pieces of toast. Then they went out.
He stopped at a coffee place to buy her a frothy thing, getting himself a plain black one.
“You should try this,” she said to him. “It’s yummy.”
“Black coffee puts hair on the chest.”
“In that case, I’ll keep on avoiding it. But you go right on ahead, Mr. Love-club.”
God, he loved her wit, loved even more that she trusted him enough to let down all her walls. “Where do you want to go?” he asked once they were back in the SUV.
“How about the Wintergardens?”
He pointed the car toward the Auckland Domain, the sprawling green space in the center of the city. Coming in through the entrance nearest the two huge old greenhouses known collectively as the Wintergardens, he drove past a small pond with a fountain and found a parking spot down the hill from the museum.
The majestic building at the top of the hill dominated the skyline, the lawns sloping down from it sheets of manicured green. Beyond the landscaped areas, complete with playing fields that included a cricket pitch, the Domain was full of old trees, the limbs thick and twisted and interesting.
“I love it here,” Charlotte said, slipping her free hand into his with a cheerful smile.
Suddenly, it didn’t seem so bad that he wasn’t working on the files he’d intended to go through. Breaking the handclasp, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders instead. “Are you over the mad?”
“Nope.” She drank more of her coffee. “We’re going to talk about this.”
“About what?” Finishing off his own coffee, he dropped the cup in the trash can right before they walked into the first greenhouse.
“Funny, Gabriel.” Her face lit up at the profusion of blooms inside the glass structure built in the early 1900s, the vaulted ceiling high enough to be home to a number of large trees alongside the flowers.
“Oh,” Charlotte said, “look at the daffodils.”
Gabriel wasn’t really a plant guy, but he was a Charlotte guy. He enjoyed her enjoying the plants, got rid of her disposable coffee cup when she was done, and made her stand under a hanging fern so he could take a photo with his phone. Laughing, she pretended the ferns were her hair, the resulting image making him grin.
“Let me see,” she said, tucking herself under his arm.
“I demand payment.” Leaning down, he took a sweet, hot kiss before the two of them walked out of the first greenhouse and outside. The long, rectangular decorative pool that separated the temperate greenhouse from the humid tropical one was full of lilies, the sunshine bright on the green of the lily pads.
The area around it was relatively empty except for a small girl who leaned on her hands and knees at the edge of the pool, looking intently within while her parents watched over her from a nearby wooden seat. Vines wound through the large pergola behind them. Running parallel to the pool, it offered fleeting glimpses of the marble statues within.