Page 51 of Sucker For You

He knew it.

Screw that man.

Screw making her anxious.

Screw all of that.

Screw everything except her blush and her hidden looks over the aquarium, the sweep of her tongue over her lips. Screw everything except her radiant, silent joy with the octopus.

He slung the Nikon away again over his shoulder. “What if we try first without the camera?”

“Try what?”

This.

“Will you let me kiss you, Isabel?”

“. . .oh.”

Now would she refuse? He could live with that.

Probably?

But he didn’t have to. Because with another skittish glance at his mouth, she nodded.

Thank God.

“All right?”

For the interviewer.

He set down their market bags and stepped forward—just as she moved from the railing toward him. Their feet collided. He reached out to steady her with an arm around her waist, and met ribs and elbows. When he tilted up Isabel’s face, her jaw was sharp again in his palm. Her hands hesitated over his shoulders and the salt crystals dotting his rash guard.

“Uh—”

“Sorry—”

Before he could make things worse, he stifled his awkwardness against her lips. Lightly, though: hardly breathing while his mouth ghosted over the chapped coolness of hers. Her tang and sweetness were tantalizing. But barely tasted. Not when her hands were still hovering, her elbows still braced, her own breath still shallow. He kissed her as gently as he knew how, breathing with her, moving with aching slowness and restraint, and maybe this would have to be enough—itwouldbe enough, and he’d be grateful—until:

Splat.

Isabel’s half-lidded eyes flashed when a plume of gull guano soaked the railing beside them. Mute and startled amusement parted her lips. She didn’t pull back from him. And when Wes couldn’t help his own laughter?

The contours of their smiles deepened the kiss.

Though her lips remained cool, her mouth was warm. Open, soft and pliant, but with a hint of her teeth grazing his skin—and a bolt of desire as wide as the horizon struck through him, hot and sudden and true.Fuck. He answered her with a sweep of his tongue, a groan of satisfaction and yearning building in his chest, urging her closer, thoughtless with his own wanting.

“A-ah—” She came to him with a clench of her fingers at his nape. A rasp scratched her throat.

His body reacted with imperative impulse to that noise.

He was only human: with her gasp across his lips, his pulse rushed up to drum fiercely in his ears, pounding through his skull for an exhilarating, dizzying moment—drunk with sun and her breathless desire—before very rapidly pounding lower, too.Lower,harder. . . andfuck,fuck!So he wrenched himself away from the kiss and from her, from the fragile, teetering balance of his control, choking on his hunger, swallowing it back before—before.

“I. . .” Isabel’s eyes were wide now, unmasted, stormy and dark under the light. Her mouth was mottled red. Blushing, she shielded her lips and said, “I—I’m. . . sorry, I didn’t—mean to—”

“No, it was my—uh.”

Fault.