It obviously shocked Billy as much as it shocked her, because he choked on a laugh, then instantly sobered, that muscle ticking in his jaw again. The look in his eyes was so hungry, so carnal, she shivered. "Don't mind if I do," he murmured then sucked her beaded nipple into his mouth, tonguing it slowly and languidly at first, then more quickly.

"Uhnnn," she moaned, digging her nails into his shoulders. "G.o.d, that feels good."

"Mmm," he hummed, doing some sort of simultaneous suck/flick thing that made her feel as if there was a string tying her nipple to her c.l.i.toris. Her s.e.x throbbed heavily with each pull of his lips, with each wickedly erotic flicker of his tongue.

Oh, she ached. And when he turned slightly, gently pressing himself against her hip, it was like she was plugged into an electrical outlet. Because his erection was rock hard, sizzling hot, and so beautifully alive. Pulsing forcefully against her thigh. Burning her even through the damp fabric of his swim trunks.

She wanted to touch him. Palm the whole hot, rigid, silky flesh-covered length of him. Her fingers literally twitched with the need. But with his mouth still working on her breast, and his free hand gently tweaking her opposite nipple, she was a thing of pure feeling. Pure pleasure. Pure l.u.s.t. And it was hard to get her mind to work, much less her muscles.

Somehow she managed, though. And her fingers fumbled with the tie at his waistband.

In just a second, she'd have him in her hands. In just a second, she'd once more know the feel of him, all throbbing and searing and undeniably male. In just a second, she'd- "Cheese and rice, Billy!" she grumped. "Did you tie these things in a triple knot, or what?"

He growled against her nipple, like a dog refusing to give up its most-treasured bone. "I'm serious," she pushed at his shoulder. "Help me get your shorts off."

Her nipple popped free of his mouth-oh, she immediately missed the sensation of his tongue-as he leaned up on one elbow, looking down at her with one brow winged up his forehead. "Since when did you get so pushy?" he asked, his plump lower lip quirking.

"Since I stopped trying to please everybody else and started trying to please myself," she told him in a huff, ducking her chin to glare at the offending Houdini-worthy tie at his waistband.

"And taking off my trunks will please you?" he asked, his voice all low and s.e.xy.

She remembered that voice. It was his Marvin-Gaye-Let's-Get-It-On voice. The difference now was that it wasn't just for show. Because they were going to get it on. She shivered in antic.i.p.ation. Yes, they were going to get it on...if he would just take off his flippin' swim trunks...

"Yes," she scowled up at him. "Unless you can think of another way for me to touch your...um..." Come on, Eve. You can do it. Be the s.e.xpot vixen you've always dreamed of being. "To touch your c.o.c.k," she finished triumphantly.

And, d.a.m.n her fair complexion! Her hot blush ruined the effect.

Obviously it still worked for Billy though, because his gaze sharpened and the skin across his cheekbones tightened. Then he growled, "You first."

Suddenly, he'd pushed up from the mattress. Standing at the end of the bed, he grabbed one of her ankles, pulling her leg up, and slowly, carefully removed her sock. He ducked his chin to kiss the arch of her foot-his beard stubble tickled and sent a zing of delight up her leg-then he positioned her ankle over his shoulder and reached for her opposite foot. The process repeated until both of her ankles were over his shoulders. Then he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of her bikini bottoms.

And the way he pulled them off her? So slowly, so incredibly, mind-bendingly slowly, as if he was savoring each new inch of skin that was revealed? It made goose b.u.mps erupt all over her body despite the warmth of the air inside the cabin.

Then her bikini bottoms were gone, tossed over his shoulder without a second thought. She settled her heels on the mattress, squeezing her legs together, but he stopped her with his hands on her knees, gently forcing her to spread her thighs wide.

"Let me look at you, Eve," he breathed, his eyes even darker than usual as his gaze settled on her naked s.e.x. "I never got the chance to just look at you that summer."

Yep. Because the thought of him standing there, eyeing her bare, wide-open genitals would've mortified eighteen-year-old Eve. Heck, even thirty-year-old Eve had to fight to keep a hot blush from searing her from head to toe.

But then he said reverently, his voice all rough like he'd swallowed a spiky sea anemone, "My G.o.d. You're beautiful. So soft and pink. So delicate," and she forgot all about being embarra.s.sed. It helped when he blew out a ragged breath, lifting one brow, adding, "and my regards to your bikini-waxer."

The ever-so-tiny, and impeccably sculpted landing-strip of inky-black hair covering her pubis had always baffled Eve. But her stylist had a.s.sured her, "It drives the men wild," and she hadn't had the heart to tell the woman, "Don't waste your time. You and I are the only ones who'll see it."

Now she was happy she'd held her tongue, seeing as how Billy's was nearly hanging out. Obviously, her stylist knew what she was talking about, and the woman was going to get a big tip-huge-the next time Eve had an appointment.

"Your turn," she insisted, her chest raising and falling rapidly, her hot blood racing through her body until her nerve-endings felt super-heated. "Take off your trunks."

Billy held her gaze, his eyes keeping her a prisoner. But her peripheral vision told her he reached for the tie at his waist.

"Your wish is my command," he said as his long, tan fingers slowly worked at the knot.

Then he pushed his trunks down his large, muscled thighs, and they hit the floorboards with a gentle spllff. She could no longer hold his gaze. Her eyes were drawn down the length of his body as if they were being pulled by anchors.

And talk about gulp.

She tilted her head, her stomach doing a series of quick backflips as a surge of blood gushed into her already engorged s.e.x. "Are you..." she shook her head, licked her lips. "Have you always been th-that big?"

Because she didn't remember...but, wow. He was long and thick, the mushroom-cap head of him angrily red and ma.s.sively swollen.

He chuckled, shaking his head. "No need to ma.s.sage the ego, sweetheart," he said while bending to grab her ankles again. With a quick tug, he dragged her to the edge of the bed. "I'm pretty confident in that arena already."

And boy, oh boy, did he ever have reason to be. He was...powerful, she guessed was the best way to describe him. Powerful and unabashedly male. And she wanted to touch him more than she wanted her next breath.

He obviously had something else in mind, though. Because he positioned her heels on the very edge of the mattress, beside her bottom, which caused her legs to spread wide. Then he knelt at the foot of the bed.

Oh, geez. Oh, geez. Oh, g- That's as far as she got. Because he used his thumbs to spread her plump, outer-l.a.b.i.a wide, and then his mouth was on her. His tongue was sliding up and down the wet channel. And he was growling.

The rumble undulated all through her, better than any vibrator ever built, and her toes curled over the edge of the bed.

"Oh, Billy," she sighed, reaching between her legs to sink her fingers into his damp hair. He rewarded her by capturing her c.l.i.toris between his lips, sucking gently and laving softly with his tongue. Too soon she was teetering on the edge.

"You keep d-doing that," she told him breathlessly, "and you're going to make me-"

She didn't finish because he inserted one, then another finger inside her, pumping gently, moving them carefully in a come-hither motion, touching her in...Just. The. Right. Spot. And- "Oohh, G.o.ddd!" Her body spasmed. No, not spasmed. Exploded. Her s.e.x clamped down on his fingers, pulsing so forcefully she couldn't tell if it was pleasure or pain. But whichever it was, she wanted it to go on forever. And Billy did his part as he continued to pump and suck, as the waves of her o.r.g.a.s.m rolled endlessly through her.

It was so good. Wait. Good? No, no. It was better than good. It was transcendent. Like, for that brief moment, she thought maybe she could see through s.p.a.ce and time. Scientists claimed all the elements on Earth, from the rocks to the atmosphere, from the smallest insect crawling through a log to the smartest man ever born, came from stardust. And that's what she felt like right now. Stardust. Elemental and at the same time so flippin' mystical and amazing.

But, all good things must come to an end. And, eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, her o.r.g.a.s.m did. Which is when she realized she'd fisted Billy's hair in her hands. Slowly, she uncurled her fingers, and he looked up at her then.

Okay, so was there anything s.e.xier than a man gazing up at a woman from between her legs after he'd just given her the most violently delicious o.r.g.a.s.m ever? Well, if there was, Eve'd never seen it.

"Wow," she caught her bottom lip between her teeth, shaking her head in awe. "Just...wow."

He grinned, and it was arrogant and lazy and altogether too s.e.xy. She didn't know how it was possible to want more after that Earth-shattering release. But she did. She wanted much more. She wanted Billy. She wanted to feel his hot, rigid flesh inside her. She wanted to slide her hands down his back, reveling in the power of his muscles as he thrust and thrust and thrust...

Her s.e.x pulsed again, and she dug in her heels, pushing herself up on the mattress. Then she beckoned him with one crooked finger.

He stood, a series of movements that caused his tan muscles to ripple over his body. And there was his impressive p.e.n.i.s again. Standing even higher than before...if that was possible. Looking even redder and more engorged.

"What now?" he asked, his grin going all lopsided and indolent. Because he knew the answer. He just wanted to hear it from her lips.

And she obliged him. "Now we..." Was that her voice? All low and breathy? "...f.u.c.k like bunnies." s.e.xpot vixen in the ha-yowse! And if it wouldn't have ruined the moment, she'd have slapped herself a high-five.

"Yeah?" he asked as he lifted one leg, kneeling on the edge of the bed, depressing the mattress with his weight.

"Yes," she nodded, hoping her smile was sultry and seductive. She should've practiced in the mirror.

He lowered his hands to the bed, crawling up to her, crawling over her. His knees between her legs. His hands on either side of her shoulders. His handsome face and beautifully dark eyes looming above her.

Then all the air in her lungs escaped a giant woosh when he asked, "Condoms?" Because she didn't have any. Not one. Considering how long it'd been since she'd had s.e.x-four years; that's right...four long years-that shouldn't have come as a surprise to her. But it did.

How the heck could she have purposefully set out to seduce him when she didn't have any flippin' condoms?

Eyes wide, mentally hitting herself in the forehead with an open palm while chanting stupid, stupid, stupid, she shook her head. But instead of frowning, Billy just smiled. His beard stubble looked particularly dark against his white teeth.

"Um," she scowled. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but not having condoms at this particular juncture is nothing to grin about."

"I'm grinning," he said, still hanging above her, the heat from his big body seeping into her bones, "because if you don't have condoms handy, it means you haven't had a use for them. And call me a caveman, but I like the idea that you haven't had a use for them...until now."

"Well, that's all fine and good," she harrumphed, waving her hand around. It slapped into his very hot, very hard erection, and she tilted her chin down to see him dangling incredibly close to her pubic bone. Okay, and that was the s.e.xiest thing she'd ever seen. Too bad it was all for naught. We have no condoms! "But that doesn't change the fact that now we can't...uh...f.u.c.k like bunnies."

Using the F-word made her blush. She couldn't help it.

"That's where you're wrong," Billy said, pushing up and away from her. Crawling to the edge of the bed, he stood and padded back toward the galley. She pressed up on one elbow to see him scrounging through the duffel bag he'd brought on board. He smiled at her triumphantly when he pulled out a length of condoms that unraveled accordion-style.

Well, obviously he'd had a use for them. She wasn't naive enough to think he'd brought them along with him on the off chance he got to sleep with her. And as she watched him prowl back toward her, ripping into one foil packet with his teeth, she tried to feel some sort of animosity about that, about the fact that since they'd been reintroduced, it was no big secret that Billy was a total man-wh.o.r.e. But the sight of him stalking toward her, his erection bouncing between his bulky thighs, his six-pack abs flexing, made it difficult to feel anything other than explosive, volcanic l.u.s.t.

And then, when he crawled up on the bed beside her, handing her the condom and presenting himself to her, saying, "Will you do the honors?" any hostility she felt toward his most recent bed partners vanished. She couldn't think about them when she was too busy thinking about herself. About the pleasure and satisfaction he was poised to give her.

Just as soon as she rolled on the condom, that is.

But, first...

She leaned forward on her elbow, swallowing the searing, weeping head of him without warning.

"Ughnnn," he made an inarticulate sound at the back of his throat, his hand tangling in her hair. She didn't know if he was begging her to take more of him-he tasted like man and s.e.x and all things delicious and naughty-or if he was asking her to stop. And since she didn't know, she went with her own instincts, laving his plump head with her tongue, reveling in the way it caused his hips to thrust forward ever so slightly.

Suddenly, his hand was between her legs, his fingers gently delving between her slippery folds, searching for and finding her opening and pressing softly inside.

Ecstasy...

It was the only way to describe what they were doing to each other, giving and receiving pleasure in equal measures. And it ratcheted everything up another notch when he released her hair so he could find her aching, so-very-sensitive nipple. He tweaked it lightly, and she would swear she felt the sensation between her legs.

And speaking of...

The rough pad of his thumb landed on her c.l.i.toris, circling, circling, circling, and her whole body wound tight as a spring.

She ripped her mouth away from him so she could pant, "I don't want to...to come yet. I want to come with you inside me."

He obliged her by taking the condom from her fingers and deftly rolling it down his violent arousal. She watched the whole process with heavy-lidded, hungry eyes. Then he was between her legs, supporting himself on his arms. And as she looked up into his dear, beloved face, she knew two things without a doubt. First of all, she'd waited her whole life for this moment. And second, it wasn't going to be enough...

She'd been fooling herself, lying to herself, when she thought it would be. Because a lifetime in Billy's arms, in Billy's bed, wouldn't be enough.

But she couldn't think of that now. If she thought of that now, she'd start bawling her head off, and wouldn't that be just the thing to enhance the mood?

Um, no. Definitely not. There was nothing un-s.e.xier than a woman blowing a giant snot bubble.

Oh, suck it up, Eve, she admonished herself, before you ruin it all. Take this one night. Take it for what it is, and then hold it in your heart forever. It's better than nothing.

And that was good advice. Sage advice. So why did it make the need to cry even more overwhelming?

"Eve?" Billy must've seen something in her expression, because he was frowning down at her. And that wouldn't do. That wouldn't do at all.

If they only had this one night, she was bound and determined to make it perfect. To make the memory of it perfect.

"Kiss me, Billy," she breathed against his lips. "Kiss me and then take me."

Chapter Twenty-two.

Kiss me and then take me...

Were those the six s.e.xiest words ever uttered from between soft, peachy lips, or what?

And Bill had always been good at taking orders. So he lowered his mouth to hers, and for one long, seemingly infinite moment, he kissed her. His tongue sliding into her mouth, tangling with hers as he let the taste of her, the amazing softness of her, melt into him, seep into his very bones.

Yeah, kiss her and then take her.

That was the plan. To take her higher, take her farther, take her deeper than she'd ever been taken before...

Breaking off the kiss, she moaned her disapproval, but he wanted to see. He wanted to watch himself slide into her. He wanted to witness his hard length pressing up and into her soft, pink body. He pushed up, sitting back on his heels as he grabbed her hips. Eve had slender hips, equipped with those soft divots on the inside of her pelvic bones that made perfect handholds whether grabbing her from the front or...friggin'-A...from behind.

Just the thought of slipping his fingers into those divots as he pumped into her from behind, her soft, pale a.s.s slamming against his lower belly, had his c.o.c.k jumping between his thighs. But that would come later. The dirty part of the slow, hot, dirty s.e.x he figured Eve liked would come later. For now, he just wanted slow and hot.

The gentle glow of the overhead light danced over her black tresses, sparkled in her half-lidded eyes. And the smile she offered him was as warm and soft as the air inside the cabin.

"Are you ready?" he managed to ask through a throat that'd nearly swollen shut around a giant lump of l.u.s.t.

"I-I've been ready for twelve years, Billy," she told him, her usually sweet-sounding voice all low and husky, and so d.a.m.ned s.e.xy. He barely resisted the urge to plunge into her. No finesse. No skill. Just straight-up rutting.

But resist he did. Just enough to nod and drop his heated gaze so he could watch as he grabbed his d.i.c.k and guided it toward her slick opening. He circled once, spreading her wetness onto himself, and then he gently, softly, oh-so-slowly pressed himself inside. Just the tip. The very tip of himself. And then he held still, his breaths shuddering from him, his chest working like bellows.

"More," she moaned, wiggling slightly, and he felt like the top of his head would blow off. Then he couldn't stand it any longer, he pressed into her. One long, wet, heated slide of hard flesh invading soft. And the sight of himself disappearing into her, the sight of her body swallowing him whole, was, hands down, the most erotic thing he'd ever seen. Because she was so tight, and so pink, and so plump, and so- "Oh, G.o.d, yes," she moaned, tossing her head back on the pillow. She grabbed his shoulders to pull him down over the top of her and eagerly sought his mouth. He obliged, giving her a penetrating kiss.

And then he began to thrust. Slowly. Again and again. Long, slick slides out until only the head of him remained inside her, and then slow, forceful plunges that seated him to the hilt, that pressed his throbbing b.a.l.l.s tight against her a.s.s. And all the while she was kissing him like her life depended on it, like she drew breath only from him. Her tongue was halfway down his throat, her hands were skating over his shoulders and down his back to clutch his a.s.s as her knees drew up higher on his hips. And every time he buried himself in her, she made that little purring sound at the back of her throat. Jesus! He swore he could feel that gentle vibration deep in his gut.

It was amazing.

Better than amazing. Because for this moment, the woman he'd been dreaming about for years was his to hold, his to touch and kiss and caress. The hot female flesh between her legs was his to quicken to pulsing, wet release. Unremitting l.u.s.t fueled his thrusts, driving them faster until they were primal and persistent. And the friction produced by her sultry walls? It drove him to the brink.

And then he felt it. He felt her s.e.x clamp down on him. Hard. She wrenched her mouth from his to scream, "Oohh, Billy! Oohh, G.o.ddd!"