Page 107 of Sucker For You

He flicked his eyelashes a second time.

Her ticklish, moaning laughter rippled through the bedroom. “But I h-haven’t showered yet.”

“Mmm?” He raised his head an inch. He captured her dark, open-mouthed gaze, caught her smile that trembled with eager anticipation despite her protest. Without breaking contact, he reached for her left ankle, tempting her leg over his shoulder, opening her to his tongue. “No. We will, though.After. Good?”

Her inhale stuttered. But then she nodded, her head falling back into the light. “Yes.G-good.”

Her gasp of pleasure as he circled over her, dipping two fingers inside her core to massage a little patch of roughness that made her hips buck against his diligent mouth and her breath break on his name, was better than good.

So much better.

“. . . you know,” he panted against her throat thirty minutes later, the fading edges of a release still juddering through his hips, groaning while he propped himself up on his elbows to bring them nose-to-nose, dropping another kiss on her mouth, “I could get used to waking up like this. Even aside from taxes and a payment on my hypotheticalNauti Lass, there are some significant benefits to marrying you, Buttercup.”

“But we’d be late to MORI every day.” A smile persisting, Isabel wiggled under him to squint at his watch. “Definitely today.”

“Worth it.”

“Yes.” Her heel flexed against his thigh. She returned his kiss quickly. Then she hitched her hips free before he could detain her with the beginnings of a delicious and naughty morning habit. “We need to shower now. It’s nearly nine. You promised—”

“I did.”

He kept his promises. Defying the bed’s gravity and Isabel’s own enticing warmth, he grabbed a fistful of their upholstered headboard and pushed upright. He carried her laughing to the bathroom and into a spray of hot water. Steam enveloped them, beading on their skin, slicking the tiles underfoot while they reached for shampoos and soaps. Who could blame him for the palm he braced over her stomach while he smoothed a frothy loofah across her forearms and ribs, gentle between her thighs? Who could fault him if he kissed her again as her fingers scrunched suds through his hair, his mouth moving with the droplets raining down her face, nibbling at her ear. . .

“I’ve decided what to do at the institute today,” she said into his shoulder. She wiped bubbles from her lips.

“Hmm?”

“Brianne plans to extract a juvenile two-spot octopus from Dr. Solomon’s tank. I’ll surprise her when she tries. I’ll confront her. And,” she continued before he could speak through the shampoo froth dribbling into his mouth, “I’ll get hard proof.”

He coughed out suds, skidded on wet tile when he reached to steady himself against a slippery, water-beaded wall. “No. . . wait, Isabel—”

“I’ll set my phone to record audio.” Her nails scraping lightly over his scalp turned him to her, demanding his focus on her words instead of on the sharp pinch of anxiety in his gut. “But I’ll need you to capture visuals of everything that happens, from down on the beach.”

“Outside?” The steam coiling around them was abruptly too hot, too intense. “If I’m on the beach, I won’t be in the lab. With the octopuses. With you. What if something goes wrong? What if—”

The shower head shut off with a shudder and a cold drizzle.

“I know,” she said into the quiet. She reached for their towels. “But, Wes, I’m going to do this myself.”

Under the firmness of her gaze and the softness of her mouth, the pressure of her hand leading him from the tub, handing over first his toothpaste by the sink, then his photography gear in the living room, before retrieving their discarded clothes and tempting Thalassa with shrimp. . . how could he protest? How could Wes argue against her plan, when their two-spot had come unmoored from her coral sometime during the night? When her suckers were limp, drifting aimlessly in the tank? When she was unresponsive to the crustacean and even to Isabel’s electrifying touch?

Isabel wanted—needed—him to accept her decision, though his stomach iced and his face burned at the thought of herdeliberately putting herself in harm’s way, alone. Doing so when he could stop her, protect her.

But he also understood: while she might actually want him now, sheneededthis.

He’d never make her choose.

He trusted her.

So he swiped through the Monaghan chatter filling his phone and interrupted Erin’s final Florida travel preparations with a call for assistance in reattaching Baby’s wires, then got his engine roaring again. Beneath David Attenborough’s narration about wildlife migration patterns, an expectant silence quivered over the dashboard as they curved north through pine-edged inland fields, across the Old Salinas River, and pulled into MORI’s parking lot.

He cut the ignition.

Still quiet.

Isabel unbuckled her seat belt and stepped down onto the pavement.

“I. . .” He couldn’t stop himself. The jangle of keys in his fist was too loud. He swallowed and said, “I won’t tell you to be careful.”