Page 25 of Stranded With the Grumpy Mermaid

Rafe

I've never kissed a woman the way I'm kissing Nerissa Marsh right now.

Her mouth is cold and soft under mine after a night spent in the ocean, and she opens readily for me. Her taste invades my senses, sweet and soft and feminine, with just a faint saltiness from the sea lingering on her tongue. I deepen the kiss, my palm sliding up her spine to cradle the nape of her neck, my fingers sinking into her glorious, wet hair. I’m famished for the taste of her, more so than I’ve ever been in my life. More than I’ve been on this island, even after all we’ve been through.

Her hands come up out of the blanket to my jaw, fingertips frigid against my stubble. The morning has gone quiet around us, just the sound of the waves and the fire ticking. Behind her the pink of dawn is coming up the sky.

Neri responds to my kiss with a hunger of her own, her lips demanding, pressing hard against mine as her tongue slides over mine, meeting me stroke for stroke. Then she makes a small sound of surrender at the back of her throat and I lose it.

Her hands leave my face and slide down my neck, over my shoulders, then flatten against my chest. Her touch burns through the thin fabric of my fleece despite her fingers being ice cold. I pull her closer, both hands slipping beneath the blanket and spreading over the bare, impossibly smooth skin of her back until there isn't an inch of space left between us. My erection presses hard into the softness of her stomach, and the contact pulls a groan out of me before I can swallow it.

Neri feels it. Her breath catches against my mouth, and one of her hands leaves my chest. She traces slowly down my stomach, fingertips dragging over the muscles there, then lower. My pulse kicks hard when her fingers reach the waistband of my jeans. Another inch and she'll have me in her hand.

I catch her wrist.

"Neri." My voice sounds like gravel, barely recognizable. "You've been awake all night. We don't have to do this now."

"Rafe." She pulls back an inch. Her eyes in the dawn light are a blue so vivid, they’re shining. “I’ve never been less tired." Her thumb drags across my lower lip. "I'm going to be very clear, because you have a documented history of being a gentleman. I want you. Now. Here."

Every last thread of restraint in me pulls tight.

“If we go any further, I won’t be able to stop.”

“Good. Now kiss me.”

That's all I need. She comes up on her toes and takes my mouth, and I stop being a gentleman, stop being an astronomy professor. I stop being anything but a man kissing the woman of my dreams.

I get the wool off her shoulders and shake it out on the sand by the fire. Then I get one arm around her back and the other under her thighs and lift, and she makes a sound into my mouth that shoots straight through me. I go down on one knee and lay her out on the wool. The sand gives under it. The heat off the flames hits the whole left side of me, the light of the flames playing with shadows over her beautiful face.

She's cold satin everywhere the sea touched her, her skin velvet smooth under my palm. She shivers as I run my hand up her waist and down the small of her back, and I don't know if it's from the cold or from my touch.

I want it to be from my touch.

"You're shivering," I whisper against her lips.

"Then do something about it," Neri whispers back, then takes my lower lip between her teeth. "Warm me up, Doctor Rafael Vasquez."

My cock goes painfully hard as she pushes her hips against mine provocatively.

It takes a second for me to toss my fleece to the sand and another to remove her sports bra, still wet from the sea.

The second her breasts are bare, I stop.

“God, Neri. You're beautiful.”

The words leave me before I even think about them, but they're inadequate anyway. Her breasts are full and soft, pale skin gleaming faintly in the firelight, her nipples already drawn into tight pink peaks from the morning cold. I cup one in my hand, feeling the weight of her fill my palm, and sweep my thumb over her nipple. It hardens even more beneath the touch. Her breath catches, and the shimmer under her skin brightens across her chest.

I bend and kiss the swell of one breast before forcing myself upright again. If I stay there, I'm not getting anything else off either of us.

Her eyes never leave me as I stand. There is nothing shy in the way she watches me. Her gaze follows my hands as I open my jeans and shove them down with my underwear, then drops lower.

Straight to my cock.

The hunger that moves across her face is so open, so unmistakable, that my entire body tightens under it. I have never wanted to be looked at the way she is looking at me now.

And then there's nothing left between me and her, and I sit back on my heels and look.

The firelight does something to her. All down the outside of her arms and across her shoulders and over the tops of her thighs, that faint pearl shimmer comes and goes, brighter where her pulse is, fading where it isn't. Her hair is drying in teal spirals. Her nipples are drawn tight from the cold, her stomach moves with her breathing, and the seams of her gills sit fine and closed along the sides of her throat.