Page 10 of Shopping for a CEO's Fiancee
Is the coffee next door better?
I hold out my palms in protest. “I’m not here for a treatment. We’re looking for Marie.”
“Marie?” Hu shudders. “That vile woman who is poor Mr. Declan McCormick’s mother-in-law? She is not here, but let us delight you with a surprise of self-care and compassion for your poor little pores!” Hu’s fingers flutter to my jaw. I stiffen, but let hu, wanting to gauge how far hu will go.
Studying people is a crucial part of being a CEO. In fact, it’s quality #1. You have to be able to map out people and understand their motivations and needs in any given situation so that you can exert authority.
“What did you do to them? They cry out in pain, my ears hearing them, the torture too much.” Hu’s voice goes falsetto. “Help us, Lüq! We are so dry and cramped, we need to be scratched smooth!”
He’s talking about my pores like they’re balls.
If he’s hearing my pores screaming in agony, then the entheogenic wine makes more sense. I look around for an empty bottle.
“Just go with it. Trust me. But don’t drink the hot spring water,” Amanda whispers in my ear, right before a tall, lithe woman wearing eye jewelry yanks me into another room.
“What?” I look through the threshold between the rooms.
Amanda gives me a little wave as Lüq undresses her.
Undresses.
“Hold on!” Definitely time to exert authority. Maybe I’ve underestimated hu. Lüq’s hands are on Amanda’s creamy, bare shoulders, and as her shirt slides down around her waist, she stands in the doorway wearing only a bra, the mist from what looks like a pool behind her curling around her, making her look like a Siren from Greek mythology.
I’ve got a siren going off in my own body all right. In my pants.
Which are being stripped off me by a woman who is wearing eye jewelry.
“Whoa, there! That’s my girlfriend’s job!” I choke out.
“Americans,” she mutters.
As I bat at her hands and try to maintain some sense of control and dignity, Amanda’s bra comes off. She’s half naked, twenty feet from me, and Lüq is helping her finish.
The same woman whose worst fear was being naked in public is undressing willingly in front of my spa manager.
Did we just have an entheogenic latte? Because this cannot be happening.
Pushing the Blade Runner chick’s hands aside, I march over to Amanda, my pants undone and belt clicking as it hits my fly. My hands are on her shoulders, brushing Lüq’s aside, as I turn my head and look at her.
She is enchanted by the pool before us, a hot spring designed to look like a rainforest.
And I am enchanted.
By her.
“Get out,” I say through gritted teeth. Lüq leaves instantly, abandoning Amanda to me.
As it should be.
“Marie’s not here, Amanda. Let’s go.” My mouth says let’s get out of here, but my hands say breasts.
Just...breasts.
Beautiful, slightly orange breasts that are bare in front of me, the hot spring mist wafting into the space between us, which I remove the second my hands find the soft, slight weight of her deliciously bare skin. They rest in my palms, a little larger than the span of my fingers, abundant and ripe.
Her sigh makes me glad my belt is undone, my zipper lowered, because I have room for the growing need that blooms when she sighs like that.
“Isn’t it beautiful here?” she asks, looking out at the lagoon-like pool. We’ve designed this part of Litraeon to be an oasis, a hothouse for orchids and stress relief, a place where women can hide from the cares of the world.
I stare at her chest, the rosy nipples tightening under my touch. “Yes.”
“I meant the hot spring.”
“I’ve got something hot that’s about to spring on you.”
“You make everything so porny.”
I frown. “Your point is...”
“This is bliss.”
I squeeze. “Sure is.”
“Not my breasts!”
“I beg to differ.”
“I mean....this. This place. It’s enchanted and magical. You can float and relax, crawl into a part of yourself where no one needs anything from you.”
“Like sex.”
“That’s how sex feels for you?”
“Yes.”
She frowns, eyes clouding with confusion as she looks up at me. Both of my hands are planted on her breasts like her nipples are magnets and I am the Iron Giant.
One part of me certainly is.
“But during sex, you do want and need something from the other person. Isn’t that the point of sex?”
“Not the same as being in the world. With sex, you give so much that eventually you get back what you need.”
“That’s really how you view sex?” She moves closer, my fingertips grazing up. Her skin is wet and yielding, the room’s heat making her glow.
“With you, I do.”
She sinks against me, our lips meeting, and I take a step back to catch my balance as she pushes against me, my hard-on pressing against her hip, her bare breasts crushed between my chest and my palms.
And then we tip.
That’s not a metaphor for a deep, layered kiss that transports us emotionally.
We literally tip over, falling into the water half clothed, the wrenching difference between being incredibly aroused by her words and breasts and the sudden onslaught of wet, buoyant water jarring.
A mouthful enters me and I find my footing, pushing up and spitting at the same time.
“Oh, no! You swallowed! How awful!”
Said no guy, ever.
“Andrew, do you know what’s in this water?”
I roll my tongue around in my mouth. “Salt water?”
“Semen!”
“I haven’t even come yet!”
“Not your semen!” she shouts, sputtering, wiping her face, displaying those gorgeous globes. “There is whale sperm in the water.”
Huh?
“Whale sperm?”
“It’s supposed to have anti-aging properties.”
“Says who?” I ask, eyes crawling over her face, taking her in. We’re in three feet of water, and her knees are bent, arms under water. Those breasts bob like two little tugboats waiting for a big boat to come along and get pulled into harbor.
She may have a point.
I am a little porny.
“Says Lüq. Just like the breast milk latte.”
At the word breast, I defer to my inner pervert, eyes back to her tits. “Breast milk?”
“Lüq says—”
“Lüq was indirectly responsible for getting us high as kites and for your cat wedding.”
“I did not marry Chuckles!”
“As far as we know.”
She splashes me.
I lunge.
Water is my second home. Swimming twice a week keeps me sane. Lap after lap, stroke after stroke, I disappear into the pool at Declan’s place, the one in my apartment building too warm for miles of swimming. You fade into nothing but the differentiated cells of the body when you turn into a machine that reaches, kicks, breathes—and repeats ad infinitum.
So I reach, I kick, I breathe—and I kiss her until I disappear into the water and Amanda, my own name fading as I become nothing but water and love, tongue and heat, fingertips and pulse. We kiss in the water, my arms steel bands that cage her, our bodies melting in the humid heat of a fake rainforest that contains too much real love.
Releasing her, I wriggle out of my wet pants, kick off my shoes, and swim away, letting the water take me, a simple crawl speeding me to the end of the meandering pool. Designed to look like a naturally-shaped pond, there is no true side, and I misjudge, whacking my hand on the green-painted cement edge.
I can’t do an underwater flip, so I pivot, returning to her, roaring up with a few butterfly strokes designed to cover her with a giant wave of foam.
She’s laughing when I surface, her hair covering her like wet ribbons, her mouth open with joy, eyes wide and amused. I hope her headache’s gone. I hope her hangover has dissolved. I hope we can capture this moment for a few more seconds and laugh together, because it’s the first time in my life that I’ve felt like infinite good exists in the world, and I’m only touching a tiny grain of sand in a vast ocean of it.
“You swim like Michael Phelps!” she gasps.
“Michael Phelps swims like me.”
A fit of giggles overcomes her and I watch, cocking my head to catch her at an odd angle, the tiny perspective change an order of magnitude in difference. Luminous and winsome, Amanda’s eyes catch mine, darting between them, as if she’s trying to look at me forever.
I grab her and the brush of her breasts against my bare, wet chest takes my breath away.
“You have the body of a swimmer,” she says, her voice rumbling, making me groan as she nips my earlobe.
“And you have the body of a goddess.” I reach for her and she pulls away, giggling.
“Not here!”
“Why not?”
“We can’t have sex in public!”
I look around. “No one else is here. I own the resort.” I bridge the gap between us and watch her react to my words. Lust and restraint fight for dominance in those lush brown eyes, warm and tempted, her pupils big and open.
“It’s not like we can just lock the door.”
I walk out of the zero-gravity pool and grab the corded phone by the door. Two sentences later, it’s done. A red light on a control panel pops on. Locked.
“Yes,” I say, turning to her with a grin. “We can.”
