Page 92 of Whiskey Splash

“No one isevertaking a picture of you like this, including me,” he says, and I see his phone abandoned behind him on the stand. “I’m just going to have to burn each one of these moments into my memory.” His eyes rake up and down me like that’s his plan. Our eyes connect and I know he means what he’s just said. He’ll never let me feel that way again. Private always means private.

He kisses me, wildly, with lust and love and the last dregs of sunset. His hands slide down my back all the way to my ass as he picks me up and turns me around, lying me back on the padding of the lounge chair.

“You realize that we are going to have to invest in a ridiculous amount of sun block now,” he quips, unzipping his pants and pulling out a condom as he crawls between my open legs. “Because I’m going to want you naked in the sunshine all the damn time!”

“Of course you are,” I laugh at his joke, but then he growls, sheathing himself before he slides deep inside me, making me gasp. He’s still clothed, his pants only pushed down far enough for him to enter me. The feel of his belt buckle against my thighs is cold and naughty, making me reach around his back to clutch his jean-covered ass. Something about my nakedness, my vulnerability under him as he’s fully clothed, has me rocking against him wildly. It’s the fact that we look like we’re fucking, and that we’re moving hotly like we’re fucking—insatiable, greedy—but every stroke of his cock comes with a confession.

Because in my ear he’s whispering my name as he says:

I love you, Esme. To me, you’re perfect.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The bed in the Grand Penthouse is sinful. I’m tangled between three-hundred-thousand-thread-count sheets, four-dozen pillows, and the softest bed any princess-and-the-pea could hope for.

I think Desmond should move in here forever, and then I can wake up in this bed all the time. I moan at the decadence that surrounds my body, part of that decadence being Desmond’s arms cradling me as we spoon. He nips at my ear and I stretch, pressing back against him as I wring out my muscles. He uses the opportunity to run those hot hands up and down my whole front, and yup, I’m moaning for completely new reasons.

“Do you want breakfast and room service?” Desmond asks in my ear. “Or just to be serviced?” He scoops a hand between my thighs and pulls me back against him and it’s at least another hour before he gets up and showers, needing to wash off that gorgeous sweaty body.

He leaves me to languish in his bed of sin and I must fall asleep again, because the next time I see him he’s dressed in a vintage pullover and jeans with the smell of crisp soap wafting off him like a fresh basket of laundry. He kisses me on the temple, bending over me, next to the bed, and I threaten to pull him back in and rub all that fresh shower smell over me instead. “That’s how one gets clean, right?” I quip.

“Don’t tempt me,” he growls, running a hand over my exposed breast, causing me to toss all of the covers off, showing him the rest of my naked self, sunlight spilling in from the half-drawn shades.

“So, you’re telling me I have to walk into that cold empty shower all alone,” I ask mock-innocently. “To smell half as good as you do right now?”

He runs his hand all the way down my body, grabbing my ankle and yanking me down to the end of the bed. I yelp as I slide so far down the sheets, my ass teeters precariously at the edge. I sit up on my elbows as he makes a show of swinging each of my knees over his forearms and opening my legs in front of him. I immediately erupt into gooseflesh, it’s so overtly sexy, my skin becoming covered in splotchy red patches of excitement. The tiny crook of a smile plays over Desmond’s lips as he looks entranced, unable to take his eyes off the wet jewel between my thighs.

“You wouldn’t dare,” I toss at him haughtily, like I’m some pampered princess he’s about to scandalize. All he does is smile, his shoulders shrugging as if to say he can take another shower, and I almost gasp at how hot that gets me.

A bell rings from the other room, the door I think, and both of us turn to look at who might be there. Desmond turns back to me with a pouty frown as he slowly inches my legs back together. “You wouldn’t dare!” I hiss at him, something feral in my throat coming out in a growl. He’s totally going to leave me wet and unsatiated.

“Breakfast is here,” he says, lowering my legs and I glare at him so hot I’m ready to tackle him to the ground and ride his face with room service ringing the bell in the background. “If you need to take a cold shower,” Desmond says, like he knows exactly what’s running through my smut of a mind. “Go for it, but you’ll have to come out to the other room for the hot sausage.”

“Oh, you’re so amused with yourself with that one, aren’t you?” I glower at him and he laughs.

“We can’t just lie around in this room and fuck all day,” he throws back at me.

“Actually, we could!”

“Hey, one of us has to be on set in three hours,” he says, backing up into the other room with his hands in the air like he’s a criminal. The crime being not using those hands to make me howl like an animal.

“That sounds like plenty of time to lick my plate clean,” I toss back, and he points at me smiling.

“Oh, I see what you did there!” Desmond says, impressed. “Breakfast puns, egg-cellent!”

I throw a pillow at him, which he deflects as I drag myself up out of the sheets. “There better be the queen’s trove of breakfast pastries in the next room when I get out of the shower,” I grumble.

“Oh, you know there will be,” Desmond quips, pointing to the other room. “That’s where you’re going to find me, sitting in a mountain of sweet-puffs, licking out the cream.” His wicked smile gets so wide, he can’t contain his own amusement.

“Oh no, I see what’s happening here. Loud and clear.” I stalk toward the bathroom. “Just you wait. We’ll see how you like it when my little cream-puff shop is closed down.” I make an X shape with my arms over my nether regions. “Out of business. No entry. No taste testing for happy little Desmond.”

Desmond’s eyebrows get higher and higher with each of my ridiculous comments, erupting into a final bellow that fills the whole room. I stalk into the bathroom and slam the door, turning the shower up to vagina-freezing-cold. His laughter is still echoing as I slip under the icy spray and yelp as my whole body is doused in arctic water. I should have just stayed in that gorgeous bed and finished the job all by myself.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, I come out into the living room in my robe, thoroughly soap-happy and vagina-frozenly clean. The room service cart sits next to a dining table in a window nook with the silver domes sparkling and covering our breakfast. Mimosas bubble in champagne flutes bathed in wispy morning light and I almost have to pinch myself at how picturesque it is.

Only this whole gorgeous image is missing the most important part—

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