Page 141 of A Shore Thing

They hadn’t seen The Pirates of Penzance on the stage. Or gone ice-skating. Or boating on a river.

The thoughts kept coming, sparkle after sparkle, and things to do here became things to do in general, became a desire that a few additional days in St. Ives couldn’t slake. Pointless to pursue. Besides, Kit hadn’t asked her to stay.

Final day turned to final night.

The train departed in eleven hours, and she was breathing in gasps, sprawled naked on her back in his bed, the moonlight silvering the window.

He turned his head, and she felt his hair tickle her inner thigh, and then the heat of his lips, the swipe of tongue. And then he was filling her, and she was stretching around a warm, smooth hardness so big she knew she would break. She would break if he pushed any deeper. If she felt it press against the aching center of her being. He pushed. It pressed. She broke. Liquid burst from inside her.

She cried out, helplessly, in pleasure, and then she fisted the sheets in shame. Damp was spreading beneath her trembling thighs.

“God, that was glorious.” He sounded reverent as he withdrew.

She pressed her hand over her eyes. “Your bed, it’s ruined.”

“Baptized.” He stretched out alongside her. “I’m pleased as the pope.”

“This isn’t the moment to talk about the pope.” She gave a weak laugh. “I can’t believe I did…whatever that was.”

“You like my stone cock.” He kissed the side of her face, hand massaging her pubic bone. “It happens sometimes, at climax.”

“People evacuate entire pitchers of liquid?” She wished she could sink through the wrinkled, wet sheets, like they were ocean waves. “It’s obscene.”

“Mm.” His hand massaged lower. “Obscenely lovely.”

Esmé’s face hovered above her in the dark, lips thinned with revulsion at the very idea of her arousal. She blinked it away. Kit was the one looking down at her, at her flushed, bare body. Her breasts were swollen, and moisture glistened on her thighs, and lovely, he’d said, obscenely lovely, and his glowing eyes, his touch, made it true.

He was in his nightshirt, his own obscene loveliness shrouded from view, and she contented herself with fumbling her hand through his hair, stroking his brow and his nose, and his lips, until he sucked her finger into his mouth. She sighed, and he rolled on top of her.

“I’m going to miss you,” he murmured.

Her lungs crumpled.

I’m going to miss you. How different that was from another five-word statement, the one she could imagine him saying instead.

I can’t let you go.

She whispered against his mouth, the words nearly lost in his kiss. “I’m going to miss you too.”

She slept and woke. The moon had moved to the corner of the window. She could feel that Kit was awake, on the other side of the bed, tense and restless.

She swallowed. “Would you like me to…” She didn’t know what to offer, but she wouldn’t let that stop her.

“I want to do anything you want,” she whispered.

Kit lifted his head. His hair was tousled, and his eyes were heavy-lidded.

“Is that so?” The corner of his mouth tilted up as he regarded her. “In that case, perhaps you’d frig me with those lovely fingers.”

Her excitement bloomed, a new variety. She reached out, pulled him back to her, hand working up beneath his nightshirt. She stroked his hard thighs, hesitated, and stroked higher. With a shuddering sigh, she put her palm on him, and then her fingers, reveling in his heat. He growled encouragement as her fingers moved, faster and faster. He backed off, straddled her legs and knelt, yanking the nightshirt over his head. His smile was wolfish now, sharp-edged in the moonlight. With another growl, this one pure exultancy, he fell upon her. She cried out at the gorgeous shock of skin on skin. He was hot and hard and smooth and rough and soft, and he rubbed himself against her, rocking his hips in a rhythm that had her writhing. She held his shoulders as they ground together. White-hot heat obliterated her sense of her body’s boundaries. He threaded their thighs, their limbs an aching knot they pulled tighter and tighter together. Their motions slowed, but the pressure built and kept building. She sent her moans into his throat, and then the blaze went everywhere, sensation uncontained. He jerked, teeth on her neck, his own cry of release hoarse and so obscenely lovely she wanted to lap at it like cream.

At some point, they unthreaded, and he flopped onto his stomach, head turned toward her on the pillow. She lay on her side, running her fingers down his back, over his muscled rear, which summoned her attention more fully than could the rarest plant to ever give leaf. His beauty cramped her heart.

Her hand meandered, as they drifted in and out of speech, as the moon continued to inch away behind the window glass. It felt so good to lie with him naked in this moment, every part of each of them offered and received and honored.

“Thank you,” he said in a low voice, after a long lull.

“For what?”