Page 71 of Lady and the Hitman
“No,” he said. “But you’re not exactly being watched by your liberal friends and your readers who’d cancel you if they knew the kind of man you let between your thighs.”
I froze.
And then I laughed, low and breathless, because he wasn’t wrong.
Still, it made something inside me ache.
“Maybe I don’t let men between my thighs,” I said, stepping forward until we were chest to chest.
His brow lifted. “Is that right?”
“Maybe,” I whispered, wrapping my arms around his neck and lifting my legs to curl around his waist. “Maybe I want them to earn it.”
He caught me easily, hands gripping the backs of my thighs, eyes dark and dangerous.
“Like this?”
My breath hitched. His cock was hard—impossibly hard—pressed between us beneath the surface, barely separated by our swimsuits. And I felt bold. Drunk on sun and salt and the way his body made mine burn.
I reached behind me and tugged at the knot of my bikini top.
It fell away, floating between us in the water.
His eyes flared.
“Zara—”
Before he could finish, I let the bottoms go, too. They drifted out behind me like a green flag in surrender.
“I’m tired of waiting,” I whispered. “Do something.”
His gaze held mine for a long beat. Then another.
And then he moved.
Finally.
He carried me out of the water, through the shallows, to a tucked-away strip of beach shaded by palms and mostly hidden by the rise of dunes. The sounds of South Beach dulled behind us. It felt like we’d slipped out of reality and into some forbidden dream.
He carried me like I weighed nothing, like I was precious and his to worship. My legs wrapped around his waist, arms clinging to his neck as the warm ocean breeze tangled in my hair. His chest pressed against mine—hard, hot, unyielding—and every step he took ignited something deeper.
When we reached the spot he’d chosen, he knelt with me still in his arms, then lowered me slowly, reverently, onto a towel he’d grabbed on the way past our cabana. My back met the soft cotton and the sun poured over my bare skin like molten gold.
The heat of him hovered just above me, his body a wall of restraint and promise. A shadow fell across my chest as he stared down, drinking me in. I couldn’t breathe. Didn’t want to.
The breeze caught my nipples, already pebbled from want, and I watched his eyes darken as they flicked to the rise of my chest. His gaze alone felt like a touch.
And then he moved.
His mouth came down—not where I expected, not where I was begging for—but lower. Slower.
He trailed kisses down my stomach, each one softer than the last, until the tension in my core was a live wire stretched tight.
When he reached the curve of my inner thigh, he paused—just long enough for my breath to hitch. Then he licked me.
Once. Deep. Possessive.
I gasped, my hips lifting off the towel, instinct chasing pleasure.
