Her eyes, half open with desire, met his. He could see her weighing her choices and questioned her resolve as she took a small step back. Shannon reached for the sides of the bathrobe and slowly pulled it off her shoulders.

Victor smiled, his body firing in all directions, praising the prize he was about to receive.

“This is a bad idea,” she said as the robe slid to the floor.

His T-shirt hung on her, filled out in all the right places, and stopped at the tops of her thighs. Long legs, legs he wanted to worship with his tongue, reached to her painted, bare toes. “A really good bad idea,” he countered.

Victor reached for her hand and drew her down the hall to the room where she’d spent the night.

He turned her into his arms the moment they crossed the threshold and kissed away any doubt she had.

Something inside of her clicked. He didn’t hear it, but he sensed it. Her lips traveled over his with renewed energy and need. Her hands roamed the span of his back and down over his ass.

His cock jumped in his pants. If he didn’t get control now, he would embarrass himself before she could take him in her hand, her mouth. And that was how he was going to make love to her. With kisses and strokes of his tongue. It was as if the thought evoked some kind of pheromone from her skin, because it tasted sweeter when he kissed her neck and pulled the T-shirt aside and licked her shoulder.

“You smell so good,” she told him. She nuzzled his neck, took a deep breath. “On the plane I thought it was cologne. But it was you.” Teeth grazed his chin.

“I thought you were sick,” he teased. “Had I known you were trying to smell me, I’d have leaned over and let you.”

Shannon tugged at the edges of his shirt.

His hands rode down her back and then traveled up her shirt. Slender curves and smooth skin had him closing his eyes and imagining what he’d find when he removed the shirt from her back. His thumbs traced the outline of her breasts and ran over the pert nipples. Would they be pink, or dusty mauve? Tan, or a darker brown?

She pushed into his palms and he lowered his head to kiss them through the cotton of the shirt.

“Yes, please,” she said.

Her body responded with tight restraint. She pushed forward, head back.

He sucked in one nipple, through the cloth, and caught her when her knees buckled. Shannon was a ripe berry ready for harvest. He teased and nibbled. Let her pull the shirt from her shoulders.

His breath caught.

Victor had seen her frame through the moonlight over Tulum, but never did he imagine just how majestic it would be to hold and touch. “You’re exquisite.”

A soft, almost doubtful laugh made him tilt her chin and force her eyes to meet his. He didn’t repeat his words, he simply kissed her. And when she went pliant in his arms again, he felt his own knees give way and moved her to the bed.

He guided her back, felt her knee slide up his leg as he lowered her. Her dark hair spread over the pillow. He’d imagined this moment the first time she started singing to him at the bar in Tulum. There were fifty ways to leave the one you were with, to be with the one you wanted.

“Touch me,” she pleaded.

Victor lowered his lips to the hollow of her neck and farther, until he found and captured one dusky nipple between his teeth.

She surged, all of her. Welcoming, asking.

He answered with the spread of his hand over her ribs and down her slim waist until he met the elastic of her underwear. Slow fingers searched.

So wet. How was it possible she was so ready?

Victor had made love to many women in his life. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t enjoyed nearly every one. The first time, with fumbling fingers and a climax that only satisfied him . . . to the women that pretended and called out long before their breath had a chance to be snatched away. But this woman, Shannon. His fingers found her again . . . she jumped, so he repeated the motion.

“Yes.”

Her single word of approval had his lips grazing her skin as he moved down her body, pulling her panties away from her legs until they sat on one of her ankles.

Everything about her was intoxicating . . . the scent, the taste . . . he moved lower and replaced his fingers with his lips. Tease.

He did . . . with his lips, his breath . . . his tongue.

Her hips surged forward and his pelvis pushed against the bed between her legs. The need to bury into her was as carnal as it comes, but he held back and made love to her in a way that left them both in need of something more. He settled between her legs and felt his heart singing when she placed a hand on the back of his head to hold him exactly where she needed him.

The muttered words that he couldn’t decipher kept him going. He listened to the rate of her breath, the way she held it and pressed her hips forward.

Almost there . . . she was almost there.

Shannon cried out. The taste of her fueled every cell in his body.

She squirmed, pulling at his hair. “I can’t take it anymore . . .”

This was where he would have made her climax again, taking her . . .

“Good Lord,” she sighed, her body lax on the bed.

He looked up at the perfection of her body, past her thin stomach, over peaks of her nipples, and watched her smiling.

“You’re not even undressed,” she pointed out.

No. And he wasn’t going to get that way either.

“That was beautiful.” He dropped a kiss on the inside of her thigh. Told his body to behave and go back into the cave.

“You didn’t . . . I mean—”

He crawled beside her on the bed and lay on his side. Somewhere he’d managed to kick off his shoes, and his shirt was open. “Next time, I will.”

Shannon placed a lazy hand on his waist and traced the side of his rib cage. “Let me take care of you.”

He stopped her hand, cursed his resolve to let her be the one who left satisfied while he was kept wanting.

“Stopping now will probably rank up there as the most unselfish thing I’ve ever done in my life. Hopefully it will erase some of the asshole you thought I was.”

Her smile and chuckle ended with a shiver.

Victor reached over and pulled up the edge of the blanket and covered his view.

A damn shame that was.

“Can I tell you something?” she asked.

“As long as you don’t say you faked that.”

Her hand paused the soft petting thing she was doing. Shannon pinned him with a hard stare.

“You don’t really think—”

He placed a finger over her lips. “No. I don’t. Your cry made me feel like a god, so please don’t crush me now.”

There was her smile again. She relaxed and started moving her fingers. “I was going to say . . . I haven’t done this in a very long time. I thought maybe my body forgot how.”

“How to have an orgasm?”

She nodded.

“Not even with yourself?”

“Well . . .”

Victor wanted to swallow her coy smile. He propped his head on his arm. “I have something to tell you.”

“Oh?”

“Promise you won’t hold it against me?”

She sat up, her hair falling over her shoulder. “That sounds like it’s something I might hold against you.”

He closed his eyes, shrugged his shoulders. “If you don’t want to know—”

She pushed on his chest. “Victor.”

“Promise.”

“Fine.”

Fine for a woman was never fine, but he was taking all kinds of risks with her. “My room in Tulum was directly across from yours.”

He opened one eye, then the other, and saw her processing the information.

“The moon was very bright, and it seemed the stories of the sea and mermaids coming to life—”

“You watched us.” Her jaw dropped, but the amusement in her eyes let him know she wasn’t upset.

“I watched you. I’m pretty sure Avery was there, but I wasn’t interested in her.”

“You’re a voyeur.”

He touched the tip of her nose. “And you’re an exhibitionist.”

Shannon leaned back. “I guess that makes us even, then.”

“I think it’s a perfect combination.”

She sank into the crook of his shoulder, her nose to his chest. “How did we end up here?”

He shook his head, closed his eyes. “I don’t know. But I don’t want it to end.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Shannon walked the vast loft space with her mental checklist of what she wanted. Gary, the real estate agent she’d chosen for her new adventure, was highly regarded in his field, stood a half a foot shorter than she did, and used words like darling or sweetheart when he addressed her.

“I know you don’t want a dark space, but try and look past the brick walls and just take in all that natural light, darling.” Gary crossed to one of three arched windows that ran the length of the fifteen-foot ceilings. “You can cover the walls, or maybe just two of them.”

Shannon attempted to ignore the dust that had accumulated in the space since the previous tenants had been evicted.

Gary opened a set of blinds that hid some of the light and pushed open the double windows to let the air in. “And smell that fresh salt air. Isn’t it perfect? The view is to die for.”

Shannon walked to the window and smiled. This wasn’t anywhere near where she’d set roots down before. Santa Monica was a completely new and unexpected shift in her world. Just like Victor. Yet the more she considered the idea of jumping with both feet into a new direction with her photography, the clearer the thoughts became.