Page 40 of The Cruiser
“You didn’t mention this at the Yacht Club,” I say, trying not to sound accusatory. “If the Khaled deal is a sandbox war, that’s a whole other tactic.”
Briefly silenced, Morgan takes a deep, resigned breath. “I’d prefer not to get into it right now. Not that I don’t appreciate your thoroughness.”
In other words, something deep-rooted and not easily forgotten is at the crux of this. I wonder if it involves a woman. “Fine if you’re not up to it right now, but I asked you for all the details. Don’t leave me in the dark.”
Beneath us, the dumb throb of eighties disco starts up again, the partygoers keen to move on. Morgan slips out of his broodiness and moves closer to me. “Let me take a look,” he says. With the lightest touch, he lifts my jaw, angling the right side of my face into the light.
I lift the cloth so he can see. “Is it bruised?”
“Mmm.” His hand brushes lightly against my cheek. “So far so good.” Instead of backing away, his thumb slips down to my jawline, running along it like he’s reading braille. He’s so close, I can see a tiny cluster of hair on his throat, where his razor missed. “You look beautiful tonight,” he says, breath warm and dark with whiskey. “Your skin is luminous.”
His body is a furnace, licks of heat dancing between us. The stupid, mad thrill of his nakedness this morning thrums in my brain. The wanting.
Embrace it.
“Well…” I swallow past the thickening in my throat. “You have seen all of it.”
A faint smile curls his mouth higher. “Almost all of it.”
My eyes shift to find his unblinking, all that molten amber swirling like a dangerous whirlpool. His thumb makes its way higher to slide back and forth along the scarlet gloss on my lower lip. For a breathless few seconds, we regard each other in a state of perfect understanding.
The facecloth falls out of my hand and splats onto the floor, my willpower joining it.
And it just … happens.
My lips part and the tip of his thumb slips inside.
Morgan inhales sharply, face alight with shock. Oh, god it’s so wrong, nibbling on him, tasting the faint metallic residue of his blood mixed with soap. But it feels so right as my teeth skate across the buff of his nail, the flesh of his thumb pressing into the inner wet parts of me.
Morgan finds his voice and my name quavers out from his lips, hushed and scandalous.
The thing is, there’s no turning back. It’s not like putting coffee creamer in someone else’s shopping cart by mistake. Where you smile and say, Oops.
A man’s thumb doesn’t end up in your mouth by mistake.
Your tongue doesn’t spiral around it by mistake.
You don’t inhale it, right down to the base, and suck on it like a dick.
Not by mistake.
His deep growl of surprise bleeds into a choked Fuck. He shoves me against the vanity, one knee jamming between my legs, forcing them apart. His free hand slides up the slit of my dress, the bare skin of my ass squeezed like clay between his fingers. I can feel adrenaline rocketing through him, smell the fight sweat on his skin as he devours my neck and shoulders with hot carnal kisses, feeds on me like a starved animal. I suck on him greedily and shift my hips to let him fall into the molten fire between my legs. He mutters something that sounds French and utterly foul before freeing his thumb with a squelching pop. His mouth crushes against mine and caution, restraint, decency—all of it gets trampled in a crazed stampede as he plunders the dark reaches of my soul, our tongues in an instant duel, frantic with need. Lit up and burning dangerously, blood rushes through my veins, funneling to join the heat throbbing between my legs.
Just as all the details start to fall away, a flutter of remorse dances across my heart. My passion for Derek stalled out long before he found Alistair. But it was like this between us in the beginning: a mad, uncontrollable thunder of desire. Morgan is hard as concrete, raging against me, a man who’s seen me almost naked and unable to do a thing about it until now.
I’ve missed this. Need this. Badly.
In a dizzying demand for more, my hands claw at the back of his shirt.
Then, dim and distant, the sound of a door opening.
“Oh my God, Frankie!” a female voice gasps. “Now this is a bedroom.”
Morgan’s mouth rips off mine and he staggers backward with a groan. Flushed and lightheaded, I smooth down the fabric of my dress. We share a panicky look. There is no place to hide.
“I don’t know if we should be snooping around, Dorothy,” a male Texan twang responds.
“Let’s take a quick peek.”
