Page 21 of Honk if You Love Real Men (Tempting SEALs 1)

Estrella stood, brushed back her hair. She gave herself orders not to be so artless. He would know soon enough just how plain and simple she really was.

Outside, the air was balmy, faintly redolent of the jasmine that grew on a neighboring trellis. Below was the geometry of walkways and gardens, the aquamarine rectangle of the pool. Beyond, the dazzling city lights.

Jesse stood at the balcony railing, breathing deeply as he looked up. She followed his lead, hoping to see stars, but the night wasn’t clear. Only a few dulled lights showed through the clouds.

“It’s an impressive view,” he said. “I can almost hear the ocean.”

“It’s farther than it seems. But sometimes I think that too, hearing the waves.”

“You should live in a house on the beach. Close to the earth, even if you are a star.”

“I’d like that. The beach or the country, even the city if I had a cozy neighborhood, somewhere with room for a garden. Someday I will.”

She moved closer, pressing her arm against his, her hand splayed, their fingers touching. But she didn’t say anything more. Didn’t make eyes, or brush her breast against him, or let out any of the hundred other ways she’d imagined coaxing him to try again. Let him make up his mind.

The lights of moving vehicles streamed along the thoroughfare where she had first seen Jesse. When she closed her eyes to a slit, the lights blurred and melded into streaks of amber and red, looping like a pinwheel at the intersections.

“Estrella,” Jesse said, and she knew he’d decided even before he added, his night-dark eyes burning into hers, “My shining star.”

A shiver shook over her skin like powdered sugar through a sieve. She moved into his arms.

He held her away. “Wait. This shirt—I’m rank.”

“Then take it off.” She pulled the T-shirt from his waistband and slid her hands beneath it, following the pleated hem as he yanked it off overhead. She stretched on her toes to lock her fingers at the back of his neck, her body elongated against his length. She kissed him.

“You can have a shower if you want.” A teasing giggle. “If I get to watch. But it’s not necessary. I like the way you smell.” Luxuriating, she pressed a hot cheek to his chest and found that his skin was even hotter. Her mouth opened; her tongue unfurled. She laved his beautiful bronzed skin. “And I love the way you taste.”

She felt the thudding of his heart. Then the stirring beneath his zipper, which produced a similar heating and thickening in her. She was so filled with longing, it oozed out of her. Longing and happiness and nervousness and the deep demanding need that had refused to go away.

Jesse’s hands came up to grasp her waist, holding her still against him while his mouth tracked a leisurely kiss over her bare shoulder, into her neck. He nosed her chin up, nuzzled beneath it, his lips and tongue working on her throat. She melted, blood humming in her ears like honeybees. He reached her mouth and kissed her hungrily.

“Take me inside,” she whispered.

He peeled her hands off his neck, kissed each pinkened palm and clasped them together as he led her through the doorway, stepping backward so his eyes never left her. “Which way?”

She nodded toward the open archway to her right, where mirrored sconces lit a path like moonlight on the shining marble floor.

He let go of one of her hands to push open the double doors into the master bedroom. Even in the dark, the room shone with reflective surfaces and crisp cleanliness. The bed was immense and white, freshly made with lavender-scented linens that Estrella knew for a fact had a thread count higher than a perfect bowling score, two frames. Her conscience twinged. Eve would die if she knew . . . or she would see that Estrella did.

I don’t care. I’m bad, I’m wild, I’m a dirty, dirty girl. I want Jesse—

Abruptly, she stopped thinking and spoke instead.

“I want you spread-eagled in the middle of the bed.” Her lashes dipped, her insides fluttered, her lips curled. His face was deliciously dumbstruck. “Naked, of course.”

“You want—what?”

She pointed. “You, on the bed, naked.”

“It might be better if I wait until—”

She stripped off her tank top, dropped her jeans, then had to wrestle around to get them and her sandals off in one jumble. By the time she straightened, her breasts were falling out of her low cut bra, so she got rid of that too, leaving her in nothing but a thong.

Jesse, oddly, was slow on the draw. She was able to drop him onto the bed with one firm push at his chest. “Shoes first,” she said cheerfully, kneeling before him to tackle the laces of his work boots. The rawhide laces weren’t difficult to undo, except that he’d double-knotted them, and then she had to tug at the boots. She did it with a particular zest, knowing that he was watching her breasts bobble and sway. The room was air-conditioned, but by the time she was finished, her skin was giving off a moist heat and she still had his jeans to do. The oozing jelly was practically bubbling between her thighs.

She reached for his zip, sending him a smoldering look beneath her lashes. “I had expected you to be more of the take-charge type.”

He spread his hands, amused, then dropped them behind him and leaned back, turning his torso into a golden-bricked lane she very much wanted to follow. “This is your show.”

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