by Jill Shalvis
were an added bonus,” she said.
For a guy who guarded his privacy, this admittedly threw him. “You’ve had the camera for days,” he said. “Where else have you set it up?”
She stared at him, looking surprised at the question.
“The shower?” he asked.
“No,” she said, looking horrified that he’d think so. “I swear.” But then her curiosity apparently got the better of her. “Why?” she asked. “What do you do in the shower?”
“Well, this morning I jacked off to the memory of you crying out my name.”
She swallowed hard and looked like she might be having trouble breathing. “You . . . really?”
“Really.”
Abruptly setting down her mug, she walked out of the kitchen.
What the hell? Not nearly finished with this conversation, not even close, he followed her out, through the living room, and up the stairs to the bathroom he’d been using. It was still a little foggy from all the hot water he’d used.
She stood in the middle of the room and stared through the glass.
“Zoe?”
“Shh. I’m picturing it,” she whispered, like it was too naughty a conversation for a normal speaking voice.
Behind her back, he found a smile. “Seems only fair since I picture you all the time. You have a handheld in there. Do you ever use it when you think of me?”
She gasped. “I don’t . . . I don’t use it like that—and I don’t even use this shower.”
He turned her to face him and found her blushing and biting her lower lip. “But you do think of me in your shower, where you also have a handheld.” Leaning past her, he flicked on the water.
“What are you doing?” she asked, sounding more than a little panicked.
Smart woman.
“I want to see you do it,” he said. “I want to see you doing yourself while you think of me.”
“I’m not going to—I have things to do, I have a flight later this afternoon—”
“Plenty of time, then.” He smiled and tugged off her blazer. “And besides, all you need is twenty minutes, remember?” He started to unbutton her blouse and leaned in to kiss her. “Which we both know I can cut down to seven if I’m on my game,” he whispered against her lips. “And I’m feeling very on my game at the moment, Zoe.”
She stared at him for a beat through the steam filling the bathroom and then kicked off her shoes. “All right, fine,” she said with gracious defeat, “but only because you got me all hot and bothered and I have to be able to concentrate today.”
“Duly noted,” he said, his mouth watering as she shimmied out of the rest of her clothes.
“Less staring and more stripping,” she said, nodding her chin toward his clothes. “We’re on the clock here.”
He was laughing as he did her bidding and stripped, completely forgetting his injuries.
She gasped at the gash on his forehead and then her attention drifted southbound, right past his favorite body part, and locked in on the gauze he’d wrapped around the wound on his thigh.
She dropped to her knees and set her hands on either side of his leg. “What happened?”
“You got on your knees in front of me,” he said, voice unintentionally gravelly.
She stared up at his erection and choked out a laugh.
“It’s not polite to laugh at a naked man, Zoe.”
“I didn’t mean—” She closed her eyes for a beat and then opened them. “Tell me why you have a cut on your head and you’re bleeding through a bandage.”
“Later,” he said, and scooped her up and stepped into the shower with her.
She turned to face him, letting her heated, appreciative gaze run down his body again, slower this time, and not in alarm but arousal. She smiled. “You like me.”
“Hard for a man to hide it,” he agreed, smiling back.
She bit her lower lip again. “Show me?”
He arched a brow. “You mean—”
“Yes,” she said. “Show me what I missed this morning. If you’re . . . up for it.”
He snorted and reached for the soap, running it down his body while she watched avidly. When he was good and soaped up, he wrapped his hand around himself and stroked.
All laughter gone, Zoe’s eyes glazed over. She might have drooled, it was hard to tell, but her expression was gratifying to say the least. It had been a long time since he’d had this kind of intimacy with a woman. He’d not even realized how much he’d missed it.
Damn, he had it bad. He’d never meant to put himself at risk with her, but he had. He’d put his heart on the line and he hadn’t even realized it.
So much for being aware of his surroundings.
He let her watch for a minute and then, tired of playing solitaire, reached for her. “Your turn.”
She was breathless. “But you’re not done.”
“Ladies first.” To ease her sudden anxiety, he pulled her in and spent a few minutes nuzzling and touching and kissing her, and when she was kissing him back, breathless and frantic, he turned her away from him so that the warm water cascaded down her front.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Helping.” He soaped up his hands again and slowly massaged her shoulders and arms until she sighed and let him support her weight, leaning her head back so that it rested on his collarbone.
With his height advantage, this gave him a great view of her slicked, soapy body, and he watched her nipples tighten even more as he nuzzled into the crook of her neck. When she was as loose as he could get her, he took her hands in his, guiding them over her own curves and then to those gorgeous breasts. He used both their fingers to lightly tug and tease her now-straining, wet nipples until she was moving of her own accord, rocking her sweet ass against his erection.
Damn. She undid him, completely, and he had no idea how the fuck he was supposed to walk away from her when this was all over.
Don’t go there. Not now. Don’t borrow the heartache sooner than you have to.
“Parker . . .”
The need in her voice fueled him on. Kissing the column of her neck, her shoulder, distracting her with his mouth, he turned her toward the corner of the shower, placing her left hand flat on the wall, her right still caught in his. Pushing a thigh between hers from behind, he bent his leg and lifted one of hers until her foot rested on the edge of the tub.
Perfect.
Now he slid their still-joined hands down her beautiful breasts, her quivering stomach, and lower—right between her thighs. Their fingers traced her every fold and then circled back and started again.
And then again.
Neither of them spoke; the only sounds were the thunder of the water and their equally harsh breathing. Leaning over her shoulder, Parker took in the sight of them both driving her up. “Watch,” he murmured, and nipped her shoulder until she dipped her head. She sucked in a breath and her entire body began to tremble.
With his leg beneath her bent one, his foot on the ledge next to hers, he could feel her body pressed against him like they’d been hot-glued together, the softness of her skin tempting him as he held her in place, still watching while their fingers swirled and dipped and teased. He was harder than he could remember ever being, his erection nestled between her ass cheeks, straining like a homing beacon, trying to work its way inside her however it could.
She tensed and he turned his head to whisper in her ear. “Relax, that’s not where I’m headed.”
She let out a half laugh, half moan and tilted her head back for a kiss. He gave it to her. Hell, he wanted to give her everything and anything she wanted, always, and to distract that thought from creeping in, he took the handheld massager out of the wall cradle and put it into her hand.
She squirmed. “You do it,” she whispered, closing her eyes.
Laughing softly, he kissed the sweet spot just beneath her ear. “After all we’ve done to each other, Zoe, you can’t possibly be embarrassed.”
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nbsp; She didn’t answer, so he covered her hand with his and guided her. She moaned and started to relax again now that he was in charge.
“Am I doing it the way you do?” he asked.
Still no verbal response, though her body was telling him everything he needed to know. Stubborn to the end, he thought with a surge of lust and affection and hunger. But in a clash of wills, he never lost. When he misdirected the spray of water by about an inch, she whimpered in distress and tried to guide his hand back to where she wanted it, but he held firm.
“If you want it some other way,” he murmured in her ear, taking the lobe between his teeth, “you’ll have to hold it yourself.”
She tried to arch her hips to force his hand but he couldn’t be budged. Finally, with a huff of great frustration, she yanked the handheld from him and shifted it right where she wanted it. It took her another thirty seconds to find her groove, but he knew when she melted against him again, her hips rocking, her breath coming in sexy little pants, that she’d lost herself in the game.
And God, she was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.
When she started to tremble, a punch of lust went straight to his gut. Again he slid his hand between her thighs and while she aimed the pulsing water, he stroked with his fingers.
She came with a cry and a racking shudder. He held her through it until with a soft sigh, she leaned her head back against him and closed her eyes, making him want to crush his mouth to hers, fit his lips to hers, suck her tongue, suck every part of her.
Then she turned to face him. “Your turn,” she said, holding the handheld like Annie Oakley with a gun.
“It doesn’t work that way on me,” he said with a smirk.
“Well, I know that.” She put the massager back in its cradle so that the water once again rained down on them from above. With a naughty smile she dropped to her knees and wrapped her hand around his erection. “Luckily for you,” she said, looking up at him, “I know what does work.”
And then she sucked him into her mouth.
A groan shuddered through him as she teased him, and he slid his hands into her hair because he needed an anchor on his spinning world.
That was when she got down to serious business.
Parker let her dictate the pace as long as he could, but then she did something magical with her tongue that took him nearly to the point of no return. He tried to pull back, tightening his hands in her hair, but she wasn’t having any of that. She took him all the way and he came hard, his groan echoing between the shower walls. Unable to stand, he sank to his knees in front of her and dropped his head to her shoulder while he tried to drag air into his lungs.
Twenty-three
Wrapping her arms around Parker, Zoe held on while the shower kept them warm as they both struggled to come down. When the water turned cold, he stirred. Reaching past her to flick it off, he wrapped her in a towel and then himself.
“Holy crap,” she said, feeling dazed. “That just gets more intense and more intense. Can you imagine what it’d be like a month from now? We’ll be dead. Death by orgasm.”
“I won’t be here in a month,” he said quietly. “Maybe not even next week.”
He was right, of course. Horrifyingly right. They didn’t have a future, and damn.
She’d almost forgotten.
Wishful thinking, she knew. Just as she knew something else. She met his gaze and found him watching her, following her train of thought, and God, her chest hurt. Afraid to make this too serious, she forced herself to go with a light tone, the lightest she could get as she gestured to the space between them. “Maybe we should keep some distance until you go. A foot seems about right.”
He rubbed the scruff on his jaw, clearly working up a smile, trying to match her tone. “You think a foot of space is enough?”
She smiled. “I think anything over about nine inches should do it.”
Parker laughed and she laughed, too, but it faded quickly.
The air between them crackled with tension.
“It’s all my fault,” she said as she searched out her clothes. “I started this.”
“It’s not your fault at all. I’m pretty irresistible when I want to be.”
Knowing he was trying to keep the light-and-easy thing going for her, she let out another laugh and shook her head. “And even when you don’t want to be,” she said. “The truth is I’m out of control when it comes to you.”
“Giving information to the enemy, babe.”
She clutched her towel to her chest and heard the truth escape her. “It’d help if you stopped.”
“Stopped what?”
She’d let her smile fade. “Looking at me,” she whispered. “Touching me, smelling so good . . . and breathing.” She offered a half smile, acknowledging the ridiculousness of the suggestion. “That would be really great.”
The corners of his mouth quirked slightly. “I’ll work on that.” He handed over her panties.
She shoved her feet into them and wriggled them on. Then she attempted to put on her bra, but it took two tries because it was tangled in her blouse. Frustrated, she tugged and tugged until Parker took them both from her fingers, righted everything, and handed them back to her.
Dammit. He was standing there quiet and utterly at ease in his own skin, and why shouldn’t he be. He was smart and sharp and funny and . . . perfect.
And he was leaving.
He was really leaving.
She kept telling herself that worked for her. She always had carried a bit of a trust issue, and she certainly hadn’t been looking for anything with him. But somewhere along the way, she wasn’t sure when, maybe when he’d hugged her silly dog for the first time, she’d started to trust him.
And now, as a direct result, she was falling for him. Only he had this expiration date, one that was flashing big, bright red warning signs at her with every breath.
Knees weak, she sank to the edge of the tub, unable to keep up any sort of pretense of having her shit together. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I thought I could do this, I really did. But I can’t.”
His smile vanished and his eyes went serious as he crouched in front of her, his hands on her knees. “I know,” he said just as softly.
“I mean, it’s good between us.” She gathered his hands in hers and let out a small, watery laugh. “Actually, it’s great. Which is what keeps tripping me up. I get all confused because my body’s emotionally invested and so my brain thinks it should be, too. It’s how I work, you know? But not you, which means you’re not The One. I wanted you to be, but you’re not, and I should’ve known from the very beginning because you weren’t the things on my list that The One was supposed to have. You’re all these other things like sexy and—”
He put a finger on her lips. “I know,” he said again.
She just stared at him and realized he wasn’t going to say anything else. He wasn’t going to dangle a carrot, or try to talk her into setting aside her needs for his.
Or tell her he couldn’t live without her.
Damn. She’d really sort of hoped for that, ridiculous as it seemed. Rising, she dropped his hands and dressed in silence, her throat getting tighter and tighter with each breath.
When she’d finished, he pulled her around to face him, waiting until she met his warm eyes.
“I wanted to be okay with this,” she said quietly before he could speak, and damn, her eyes threatened to fill.
Parker held her gaze. “I’m sorry, Zoe. You deserve better; you deserve someone who can give you what you want for the long haul.”
And that someone wasn’t going to be him. Unable to hold eye contact with him without dissolving into a sniffling mess, she dropped her head to his chest. She wanted to be mad, but he’d been open and up front and honest about their future—or lack of one—from the beginning.
And anyway, he was right. She needed to move on. She needed to