And though he never wanted this kiss to end, he had so much to tell her, so he cupped her shoulders and gently separated from her. “I may have taught you how to give up control, but you showed me something even more important, and that’s how to feel again and how to love again,” he said, and the words were remarkably easy to say. So much easier than he’d ever expected. “Because I love you, Casey. I am completely in love with you, and I want to be your friend, and your lover, and the man you love. I want to be all those to you. I want to be everything to you because you’re everything to me.”
She trembled, and ran a thumb along his jawline. “You are everything to me. You’re the man I love.”
His heart thumped wildly in his chest. He was flooded with happiness, and even though they were heading into the great unknown, he was finally ready for that journey. Because of her. Because she’d stood by him over the years. Because she made him laugh often, she turned him on relentlessly, and she showed him every day that trust didn’t have to be broken—it could be strengthened by the bond of friendship that turned into this beautiful love.
Because she was the only one he wanted, heart, body and soul.
She brushed her fingers across the buttons on his shirt. She was practically bouncing on her toes as she brought his mouth back to hers, stopping when he was millimeters away. “Show me how you kiss me now. Show me what it’s like to be kissed by the man I love.”
“Like this,” he said, crushing his lips to hers, and wrapping her so damn close that their bodies were nearly fused together. He kissed her hard, and passionately, and for a long, long time, savoring every second of her shivers, and her sexy sighs, and of the way she wrapped her leg around him.
Like she wanted him to take her right then and there.
He groaned as she brushed her calf against his leg, and that was all he needed to break the kiss, grab her hand, and make their way to his villa.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Maldives, all through the night . . .
Off.
Her clothes needed to be off. His busy fingers had already lowered the zipper on her dress as they walked along the winding path to his villa, stumbling at times, but holding on, drunk on each other, tipsy on touch, on the kisses he layered on the back of her neck, on her nimble hands undoing the buttons on his shirt. Half-undressed already, they finally made it inside, wrapped up in each other.
His was the most secluded villa on the entire property, the equivalent of the top floor penthouse suite at a high-rise hotel. Perched on stilts over the water, the island hut was framed on one side by the wide, open sea, and on the other by a private little lagoon a mere one hundred-feet away from the long dock at the edge of the villa.
With his hands on her waist, he kicked the door shut. The sound of it closing cordoned them off from everyone else. She was the only one who mattered.
This, them, here, now.
His brain could only process what was happening in one-word bursts. And the word that blared through his frontal lobe now was naked.
He yanked off her dress, letting it pool at her feet by the hardwood floor next to his bed. She stepped out of it and her lacy underthings too, then slipped off her shoes. His hands shot out, grasping her waist, then traveling north across the soft flesh of her belly to their final destination for the moment—her beautiful breasts. A guttural moan rumbled from deep within his chest as he cupped those two perfect globes, rubbing his fingertips across her peaked nipples. She gasped, and then that sound turned into a long, sexy moan.
“I can’t keep my hands off you,” he said, as he reacquainted himself with her tits, her delicious ass, then her hips, his thumbs digging hard into her hipbones. He wanted to claim her body with the intensity of his touch, with the ownership he felt for her.
“Keep them on me then,” she said, with a sly little smirk on her gorgeous face.
He grasped her wrist and led her out to his deck. A bird swooped down, landing on the railing of the villa, singing his avian approval of Nate’s plan to send Casey into bliss under the moon with the ocean breeze kissing her skin.
“Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to see you in these dresses and skirts that you wear all the time?” he asked as they passed the infinity pool at the edge of the deck, then walked down the steps that led to the long dock. Night had turned the ocean inky blue under the starlit sky.
“How hard is it?” Her voice was flirty and playful. He loved that she was so comfortable in her own skin. She hadn’t always been. She’d doubted she could be her true self with a man. But he wanted her to know she could be whomever she wanted with him.
“With you,” he said taking her palm and rubbing it across his erection that strained against the fabric of his pants, “it seems I’m always like this. And every single thing about you turns me on. Every thing you do to me. Every way you move. Every naughty word from your lips. Every time you take control, and every time you give control. All of it.” Her eyes lit up, and she licked her lips, looking both incredibly happy and tantalizingly sexy at the same time. “I have had dirty thoughts about you for years. I’ve seen you naked so many times in my mind before I laid eyes on your sinful body in the flesh. I’d stare at you in the short little skirts and imagine licking my way up your legs. I’d picture my tongue on the inside of your thighs, you shivering, moaning, and then opening your legs for me.”
Her eyes glittered darkly and her breasts moved with each breath she took as he praised her sensuality. He was turning her on, and he loved it. “Tell me something, Casey,” he said, dipping his head to her neck, finding that spot that drove her wild.
“Tell you what?” she asked, her voice breathy as she wrapped her arms around his neck, holding on tight as he brushed his lips lightly against the column of her throat.
“Tell me. If I slid my hands between your legs right now, would you be wet for me?”
“So wet,” she said, jutting out her hips, trying to angle her body as near to him as possible. Her fingernails cut into his skull, urging him to move closer. “But why don’t you find out for yourself?”
“I intend to. Because I’m about to re-enact one of the dirty dreams I’ve had of you. And I didn’t just have this thought last night. I’ve had it all the times I’ve been here. I’ve pictured you on these stairs before,” he said, glancing down at the steps.
“You have?” she said, as goosebumps rose on her arms, revealing more of her want. Telling her he craved her was the ultimate turn-on for this woman.