Page 90 of Salt Kiss
We step back, and this time, it’s fucking on. I stop seeing her as a refined little doll and start seeing her as a real opponent. “I thought all this shit was about fitness,” I say as we circle each other. “But you’re really scary, you know that?”
That pleases her, I think.
“I’m sure you’re a better shot than I am,” she says, like she’s trying to soothe my ego.
“I don’t mind you being better than me,” I tell her with a grin. “I promise.”
“Do you think I’m better than Mark?” she asks.
I remember him that night in the club. Even subtracting the effects of the gin, I still think Isolde would smoke him. And I don’t think he’d mind either. “You’d win for sure.”
This pleases her too.
We begin again, and I’m dying, dying, dying, countless fake rubber deaths. Fighting Isolde is like fighting smoke, ephemeral and curling. Indifferent and impervious to my strength.
Because Iamstronger. I feel it every time we make contact; I feel my solidity, my size. But she’s faster—and cleverer. No matter how spontaneous my strikes, no matter how instinctual, she’s always three moves ahead. I’ll still be following through with a stab that I’msureis going to make contact this time, and then I’ll feel the gentle tap of a restrained kick to my head. A heel hook to my kidney. Her small fist popping into my ribs.
And goddamn if it doesn’t have me slowly stiffening in the compression shorts I stole from Mark’s drawer. Her nearness, her fearlessness. Her full mouth set in a line of deadly concentration.
And her scent—sweet, sweet, earthy. Like honey glazed over a fingertip to be licked off.
So it’s luck when I finally take her down to the mats.
Pure fucking luck.
We hit a wave right as she’s kicking me, and I’m making to tackle her, something she’s danced away from a hundred times this morning, but we both lose our balance as the yacht pitches hard to port and the world slants sideways. Down we go.
We land with me on top, and it’s a soldier’s instinct that has me grabbing her wrists while she’s stunned into pliancy, securing her weapons, so to speak. Except the effect is that the ship rights itself, and I’m sitting on top of her and pinning her wrists to the mat.
And then I’m suddenly, horribly aware of every single detail of Isolde Laurence.
Her sweat-slick throat and collarbone. The slightly crooked upper tooth.
Her breasts, heaving under her sports bra.
I remember again that I’m not wearing a cup. I need to get off her before she notices her resident bodyguard has an erection from being fake stabbed over and over again.
She’s trying to catch her breath—the fall knocked the wind out of her. I realize I’m squeezing her wrists too hard and ease up, preparing to climb off her and apologize, but then she shifts, quicker than I would have thought possible before this morning. She plants her feet and bucks her hips, and suddenly I’m the one on the bottom with my wrists pinned.
She’s straddling me, and I’m not wearing a cup.
I’m not wearing a cup, and she’s sitting on me with her thin bike shorts, and I can feel the heat of her cunt through our clothes. That pretty pink cunt that I saw for myself on the stairs, that’s been haunting my thoughts ever since, and it’s on me now. Against me. Four thin layers of fabric away.
Fuckfuck—
“You win,” I say desperately, before she can recognize that the bulge she’s sitting on is a cock. A swollen one that’s currently begging to be touched. “Let me up.”
She doesn’t move. She’s staring down at me with a dazed expression. The fall must have been harder than I thought.
“Isolde,” I say, my voice tight. “Honey, you need to move.”
The endearment slips out without me meaning for it to, but I’m too panicked to care. There’s a lot worse than an endearment currently wedged between us, and I’m just a bodyguard, and she’s engaged, and I’m in love with her fiancé.
I’m in love with her fiancé, and I’m hard underneath her.
I try to move from beneath her—it’s not a matter of strength but of finding a way that doesn’t make it very, very clear that I’m painfully turned on—but the minute I try to shift, to nudge her off, I end up driving my arousal harder against her core and she lets out a low, shuddering gasp.
We both freeze.
