Page 90 of Sucker For You

She smiled. Not for a camera. Not for an interviewer. Just for him. She pressed her mouth to his.

“Isa. . .”

His startled breath parted her lips. She nodded, their noses skimming, glittering moisture trembling between them.Yes.So he didn’t draw back. But neither did he draw her nearer. Instead. . . instead, he answered her pressure with equal quiet force, unhurried as the sea. She asked for more. He gave. Her fingers twisted through the hair at his nape. When her mouth opened, so did his. She explored the warmth of him, sighing soft with pleasure, taut with longing. His tongue soothed the bitten curves of her lips. Tenderly tracing her desires, he followed her into and through this moment—minutes. . . time flowing with the waves.

Always following.

Was he afraid of scaring her away?

As if anything Wes did could scare her.

She was only in danger from herself. . .

It might have been an hour later that their heels brushed sand, that the sea washed them to shore. Wes carried Isabel to the dark bungalow. He dried her hair, wiped salt from her skin. He retrieved the sheets she’d kicked off the mattress and tucked her into them, her soaked silk slip discarded, her body boneless in a threadbare cotton shirt taken from a duffel bag.

His.

“Sleep,” he murmured.

“Stay,” she said.

For now.

He didn’t argue. As he settled on the far side of the mattress, his fingers stroked once through her hair drying on the pillow between them. He repeated, “Sleep.”

“Yes.”

She did.

Sunlight pierced the fog and the beach house’s stained-glass windows to jab his eyelids. Grimacing, Wes attempted to roll away from that sharp glint, to burrow into the couch cushions and his afghan, back into sleep—only to find himself immobilized where he lay, anchored in place.

“Uh?”

He squinted down his nose at the weight splayed across his chest and hips. Had Thalassa escaped her tank? Divers had drowned when wild octopuses latched onto their snorkel masks and accidentally suffocated the humans with their curiosity.Maybe she’s bored with shrimp, and that’s why she’s not eating much?He blinked, trying to focus.

The pressure shifted. “Mmm. . .”

He wasn’t on the couch. This wasn’t an octopus on his chest, either.

Isabel.

Plastered over him like an exhausted, unconscious sea star, she dug her elbow into his ribs when she extracted her squashed nose from his neck, huffing to breathe more easily through a snarl of hair caught in her relaxed, half-open mouth. Her cheek came to rest on his shoulder. Wes exhaled a silent grunt of pain and surprise. But he willed himself to remain motionless beneath her.Cold, cold, think about cold things like Greenland sharks—penguins—icebergs. Very cold things.At least he was wearing his boxers, and she was asleep. Drooling, which tickled.

But:don’t move.

Except his watch would inevitably buzz soon. Isabel would wake up. They’d get out of bed, separating. They had to. Their octopus would be restless, and Monterey Bay’s creatures in both the water and the lab waited for no one. He couldn’t stop it. His watch, or Isabel, or the octopus. But just for this minute, though, and then the next one. . . he still didn’t shift under her body. He breathed with her and thought of polar plunges to stifle the burn in his groin, breathed through this moment of trust after so many days of her prickly reserve, of not understanding where he’d gone wrong. She’d probably retreat back into her protective, cerebral shell as soon as she woke, her heavy softness coiled away, defensive and fascinating and untouchable again. But maybe, just maybe—not after last night?

Stay. . .

Maybe.

He couldn’t know, so he waited for Isabel to show him, continued to exhale with the weight of her sleep and her calm. And that sweet agony of anticipation didn’t last nearly long enough. A few minutes later, her sleep-stuck eyelids flickered. She spat out her hair. She moaned and raised a hand to her neck. When she massaged a crick there, she drove her other elbow into his stomach for balance. He tried not to grunt. But she’d caught him in the middle of an inhale.

“—ooof.”

Instantly she tensed. She blinked. Her chin shot off his salivadamp shoulder. She blinked a second time, unfocused. Then:

“I. . . I’m sorry, that’s—” Wincing, flushing, Isabel dabbed at the wet patch on his skin.