Page 54 of Love Without Demands

Cruz smirked into his glass before taking a drink. “He looks like the type.”

“And what’s your motto, Cruz?” Artie asked sweetly, and I noticed I wasn’t the only one whose eyes kept drifting to the man beside me.

Cruz chuckled. “My motto isgood girlsfinish first, and theright guyfinishes at least third.”

Well then…

Artie fanned himself dramatically. “Good lawd! Why did this hot tub just get a thousand degrees hotter?”

“Cruu-uuz!” Gianna whined. “Now I miss Auburn.” She stood in her white bikini and reached for a towel. “I think I’ll go call him.”

“Make good choices,” Cruz called as she wrapped the towel around her and slipped into her sandals. She flipped him off.

“I don’t get it. Why would you come third?” Nicolette asked in a quiet voice before widening her eyes. “Ohhhh, are you talking about being with two women at once?”

Artie and I locked eyes, sharing a smile. Nic may be a brilliant biochemist, but she could be a little ditzy where sex was concerned.

“Honey,” Artie said patiently, bumping her shoulder with his, “he means he makes his woman come twice before he… you know…”

“Oh.” She looks Cruz up and down. “You can really do that? I thought men like that were a romance book myth.”

“Cruz Estrada… the man, the myth, the legend,” Artie said in a movie announcer voice that made us all crack up.

“I’m really glad you invited us,” Nicolette told me, polishing off the rest of the wine in her glass. “I needed to get away.”

“Work still driving you crazy?” I asked sympathetically, sinking into the water a little and finding a jet that shot the most delicious stream of water against my lower back.

“Yep,” she said on an exhale and then yawned.

“Welp, time to go,” Artie proclaimed, standing and pulling her up by the hand. “I don’t have the upper body strength to carry you upstairs, Nic.”

Bet Cruz could, I thought, admiring the breadth of his chest and shoulders from the corner of my eye.

“Probably right,” she said, rubbing at one eye. “Wine always makes me sleepy.”

“I’ll be up in a little bit,” I told them, my voice sluggish. “I just found a jet of water I may date now that I’m a single woman.”

“Lehra! You’re cheating on the shower head?” Artie exclaimed, pressing a dramatic hand over his chest.

“Haha, asshole. It’s hitting my back, not…down there.”

“I’ll stay with her and make sure she gets back to the room okay,” Cruz told him before twisting his head toward me with a slight frown. “Unless you wanted to be alone for a while?”

Closing my eyes, I tilted my head back against the edge of the tub. “No, stay and become a prune with me.”

“Bye, kids,” Artie sang before leading a yawning Nicolette from the pool room.

I sensed Cruz shifting beside me, and then he let out a low groan. “Mmmm, I think I just found one of those jets you were talking about.”

“Nice, huh?”

“Hell yeah. Feels soooo fucking good.”

Those words and the deep timbre of his voice sent my imagination on a fast train to inappropriate thoughts.Is that what he sounds like when he’s fucking? Can he really make a woman come twice? How big is his dick?

Also, can I see it?

Then it was like the Earth paused its rotation for a brief second, causing everything to shift, and I became very aware of Cruz, of my shoulder pressed against a large bicep. I mean, I knew he was seated right beside me, but suddenly the moist, chlorine-filled air seemed to sizzle around us.

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