Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 56201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 281(@200wpm)___ 225(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 281(@200wpm)___ 225(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. As far as distractions go, it’s a shitty one.
Too late now. I pull on a blue coverup that matches the suit, slip my feet into a pair of white flip-flops, take a deep breath, and step out of the cabin.
Alexei is waiting for me under the overhang, where someone has brought two lounge chairs and a little side table with fruity-looking drinks—presumably so we can relax and hydrate in the shade after the swim. To my relief, Alexei’s brother is nowhere in sight, but I do see a big bottle of sunblock in Alexei’s hands as he rises from his lounge chair.
My breakfast ordeal is about to be repeated.
Sure enough, as soon as I’m in the shade, Alexei orders me to take off my coverup. “You’re not stepping out into that sun unprotected,” he says, uncapping the bottle as I stop a few feet away, eyeing him warily.
He’s changed into a pair of black swimming trunks, and for the moment at least, he’s wearing a black T-shirt. It’s an outfit that suits him, highlighting as it does the powerful muscles of his legs and the tattooed magnificence of his arms. I swallow hard, remembering what it felt like to be encased in those arms, our naked bodies pressed together as he surged into me, over and over—
“Let me do that,” I blurt, feeling my face turn scarlet at the graphic recollection. I already know how this is going to go, but I have to try.
It’s bad enough we’re about to be wet and mostly naked together. To also have him rub the sunblock all over me may prove too much for my equilibrium—what little of it I can maintain around him, anyway.
“Take off your coverup,” he repeats, his expression implacable as he starts toward me. “You won’t be able to get your back on your own anyway.”
I want to argue that I can at the very least put sunblock on the rest of my body, but he won’t be swayed, I can tell. Gritting my teeth, I turn, presenting him with my back, and yank the coverup off over my head. I can feel his scorching gaze tracing over my legs, my ass, the indent of my waist. My swimsuit is far from sexy, but it still reveals far more than it conceals, and though he has already touched me all over, I can’t help feeling like a rabbit being presented on a platter to a tiger.
“Alinyonok…” His voice is low and husky as he stops directly behind me, so close I can feel the heat of his powerful body as he places his sunblock-covered hands on my shoulders. “You’re so fucking gorgeous.”
My skin ignites all over. I know he wants me. I know he finds me physically attractive, and still, his words make me feel like a teenager after her first kiss. Or maybe it’s his touch that has this effect as he begins to work the sunblock under the straps of my swimsuit, his fingers deliciously strong and rough. Then again, maybe I feel this way because he gave me my first kiss when I was a teenager—or rather, took it from me.
Whatever the reason, this is infinitely worse than when he covered me with sunblock earlier this morning. At the very least, I was seated that time. Now, as his hands travel over me, smoothing the cream into my skin, it takes all of my strength to remain upright. My bones seem to have melted, and so has the rest of my body. I’m all trembling breath and heated need, my nipples hard and my core soft and liquid.
If he touches me between my legs, he’ll know it. He’ll feel how wet I am.
This shouldn’t be sexual. All he’s doing is making sure I don’t burn in the sun. Except everything between us is sexual, and it’s his touch that makes me burn. My body decided long ago that this man—this dangerous, violent man—is what it wants, and nothing that’s happened since has changed that.
Done with my shoulders, neck, upper chest, arms, and back, he turns me to face him and crouches in front of me, like the last time. My pulse speeds up further. His palms, warm and callused, smooth over the tops of my feet, my ankles, my calves, my knees… I hold my breath as he reaches my thighs and begins rubbing the sunblock into my quads and hamstrings, his touch deceptively platonic. It’s only when he looks up at me, his eyes meeting mine, that I see the hunger that simmers in those dark depths—the same hunger that claws at me, making a mockery of my resistance.
Holding my gaze, he moves his hands higher still, rubbing the sunblock into the sides of my hips, the bottoms of my butt cheeks, the exposed area in the front that’s only inches away from the part of me that aches and pulses for him. As he reaches the edges of my swimsuit, he smiles, his lips forming a wicked, dangerously seductive curve, and I shudder with the intensity of my desire, with the desperate urge to angle my hips so his fingers press against the narrow strip of neon-blue fabric shielding my sex. So they touch the bundle of nerves that—