“Yeah.” Her voice sounded rough. “I really do.”
They climbed out of the water and wrapped themselves in the plush towels Ryan had retrieved from the house before their swim. With their clothes gathered up in their arms, they went inside, where he made a fire in the big marble fireplace of the library. Clothed only in the towels, they sat together on a rug a few feet from the flames, watching the fire and letting it warm their wet skin.
When he reached for her and pulled her to him for a kiss, she thought, Yes. They let the towels fall and held each other, touched each other, their bodies bathed in the warm glow of the fire.
The kiss was deep and delicious and Gen savored the feel of it, the way it made her body hum. His warm hands explored her back and the tender hollows of her throat before coming to caress the sensuous curves of her breasts.
She couldn’t get enough of him. It was as though she were starved for him, desperate for something only he could give her. When his mouth lowered to cover her breast, she threw back her head and gasped in delight.
She wasn’t inexperienced when it came to sex. There had been men. But never like this. There had always been a self-consciousness, a calculation to the giving and receiving of pleasure. But this was pure instinct, a warm river of bliss running through the center of her, and she didn’t think, didn’t know, only felt.
He held her against him as one hand roamed lower, until he found her warm, wet core. He eased a finger into her and caressed her firm little button with his thumb. She let out an animal sound and pressed herself closer to him, closer to the magic he was performing on her. Her pleasure was climbing higher, higher, the pressure rising.
Too soon.
“Not yet,” she whispered. She didn’t want this euphoria to end.
He withdrew his hand and she breathed, bringing herself back to the center, before focusing on him. She wrapped her hand around him, and he let out a growl. She caressed him, stroked him, kissing the firm planes of his jaw.
She wanted to know all of him, wanted to taste him, so she lowered herself to take him into her mouth. His fingers plunged into the tangles of her wet hair and he gasped. “Oh God. … Gen …”
She tasted, explored, licked, bringing sounds from him that made her feel powerful, desirable, until finally he gently pulled her away from him.
“I need you now. Please,” he murmured.
“Yes. God, yes.”
He pulled her up toward him and turned her, leaning her over the low table that stood in front of the sofa. She heard him rustling around in the pile of clothing they’d discarded, heard him tearing open a condom wrapper.
“Hurry,” she said. “Now, Ryan. Oh …”
He moved behind her and brought his hands around to caress the weight of her breasts. Then he reached around between her legs to caress her there until she thought she’d scream with need.
When he pressed into her, when she felt the delicious sensation of him inside her, she lost all ability to think. She bucked back against him with his rhythm, driving her own pleasure, the pressure inside her building with each glorious thrust.
“I … Oh.” She grasped at the edges of the table for purchase as he sped his rhythm. Once more he reached around and caressed her nub with his fingers. Her body tightened, tightened—and then exploded. She cried out once, twice, as her body pulsed with satisfaction.
He moved his hands back to her breasts and sped his pace, increasing in intensity before he stilled and trembled with his own release.
Sated, he rubbed his hands over her back, her sides, her ass. Finally, he separated from her.
She lay limp against the table. She could hear him moving around, removing the condom, but she couldn’t move. She’d be perfectly happy never to move again.
She was pleased to still be alive, still breathing.
In a moment he came to her with a blanket he’d found tossed over the back of the sofa. He wrapped her in it and pulled her into his arms.
“Oh, holy … Wow,” she said. “I thought the barn sex was good, but this …”
He laughed his sexy, low laugh and pulled her closer to him, holding her in front of the fire. He kissed her earlobe gently, softly.
“Maybe sometime we’ll try doing this in a bed,” he said.
“What for? Why mess with success?”
“You’ve got a point.”
She wanted to stay there forever in his arms.
“This was Will’s idea, you know,” Ryan said. “Coming to the Cooper House. I probably would have taken you to The Sandpiper.”
“Was it? I’ll have to thank Will. And Jackson. Come to think of it, I’ve got a lot of people to thank.” She kissed him. “Especially you.”
“I think you already thanked me just a few minutes ago.”
She smacked his arm and giggled.
Later, when they’d relaxed in front of the fire for a while, they showered in the big master bathroom, got dressed, and then climbed up to the third floor to check out the observatory. Will had given Ryan some basic instructions on how to open the roof and how to use the telescope, so it only took him a little bit of fumbling around before a panel in the ceiling slid open, leaving them blinking and exposed beneath a blanket of stars.
“This is amazing,” Gen said. “I can’t believe he’s got this in his house.”
“Just … hang on a minute. Let me see if I can get this going.” He entered something into a screen, and the short, squat telescope moved a fraction up and to the left. Ryan peered into the eyepiece, and then stepped back so she could look. “There.”
She looked, and she gasped at a view of the moon that was so sharp, so crisp, that she could count the craters in its surface. “Oh, wow.”
She stepped back. He thought for a minute, entered something else into the display, and the telescope shifted its position again. He looked, and saw a group of stars like a pentagon with a long tail. “Try this.”
Gen peered into the eyepiece. “What is it?”
“Pisces. The fish.”
“Are you interested in astrology?” she asked.
“Nah. But it does happen to be my sign. March 17.”
“Oh.” She backed away from the telescope. “I just missed your birthday. It happened before we started seeing each other.”
“Ah, well. You’ll make it up to me next year.” The thought that she might be here next year, that they might still be together, pleased him and made him feel a gentle peace at the center of his soul.
“Maybe I will. Can you find Aquarius?”
“You?”
“Yeah. January 21.”
“Hmm. Let’s see.” He fiddled with the screen. “Yeah. Hey, look at that. They’re right next to each other.”
“Yeah.” She slid a look at him and gave him a slow smile. “Look at that.”
The thought of them together in that limitless sky seemed right to him somehow. When the world ended some day, however it would end—in a fiery explosion or in a slow, cold, final exhale—they’d still be up there, the two of them, side by side in the heavens.
Chapter Twenty-Three