Page 32 of All Summer Long

‘And you know I don’t want a relationship,’ she whispered, her eyes all over his body. ‘I’ve never seen a man who looks like this in real life.’

‘You’re even more incredible than I imagined, Alice,’ he murmured, and then pulled her ass right against his crotch with both hands so that her breasts brushed against his chest.

‘You’ve thought about this?’ She lifted one eyebrow, stroking her hands all the way down from his shoulders to his stomach, making his muscles jump and pay attention.

‘I’m having trouble sleeping, baby,’ he offered by way of explanation for his fantasies, and then she stroked his face, her eyes telling him that she understood. He turned his face into her palm and kissed it.

‘This is the best I’ve felt in as long as I can remember,’ she said as he skimmed his hands up the length of her spine and lowered his face into the swell of her breasts. Christ, she was smooth, and she smelled amazing, of outdoors and an underlying hint of flowers, just as a beautiful fairy at the bottom of the garden should.

‘My sweet, sweet, fucking Goldilocks,’ he whispered, on fire for her, filling his hands with fistfuls of her hair and kissing the flushed slopes of her breasts, then her neck when she tipped her head back and offered it to him. Robinson had known from their first kiss in the kitchen that Alice would be hot when she was turned on. He just hadn’t counted on her beingthishot, the kind of hot that could start infernos and stop his heart. She was moving on him, rocking herself against him and he couldn’t think straight with needing more.

Reaching behind her, he felt for the clasp of her bra and found only a slim, smooth band of slippery silk. Alice laughed softly when he ran his fingers back and forth along it a second time, feeling more like a horny teenager than a thirty-seven-year-old man who knew what he was doing.

‘It’s at the front.’

She pulled back a little and reached for the clip between her breasts with both hands, and when she looked up at him through her lashes, all peaches and cream and swells and slopes, she reminded him of those billboards that had guys swerving into trouble on the highways back home. She had a confidence about her that was far more intoxicating than the wine they’d shared or the rum she’d offered him; her eyes said look at me and her body said touch me. He was as drunk on her as a man could be and he was happy to stay that blissful way for as long as she’d let him. It sure beat the hell out of every other emotion he’d felt lately.

And then she opened her bra and he realised that there was still so much more to feel, and for a second it was all he could do to look at her and feel like the luckiest guy ever, because she was more lovely than he had words for. He’d known she would be, his hands had told him so in the kitchen the other night, but to see her bared and bold for him like this took his breath.

‘Gonna keep me waiting, cowboy? You haven’t even kissed me yet,’ she murmured, shooting him a look that almost dared him to make the next move with her ten per cent amused, ninety per cent turned-on eyes.

He shook his head and laughed softly. ‘Come here, pretty girl.’

Alice had never in her whole life felt so liberated or powerful. Robinson had a way of looking at her that openly said how much he appreciated what he saw, that he was turned on, that he couldn’t take his eyes or his hands off her.

He was so very, ridiculously amazing with his shirt off, skin the colour of warm beach bodies and shoulders that said I’ve got you, you can cling to me. She’d known he’d be in good shape; his job in the public eye pretty much demanded it of him. But he wasn’t gym fit in that too perfect, plastic way; he was raw, and real, the kind of work-outdoors-powerful that said I can protect you from everything. She saw all of that in him and loved the way that he was holding back despite all of that, for not rushing the pace faster than she wanted to go. It was like being given the keys to a Ferrari and free rein to put her foot to the floor. Alice was the kind of girl who’d instinctively go a little slower at first to make sure she could handle the power, and right now she was finding out that yes, she could, and yes, she wanted to go full throttle.

She wanted his mouth so she leaned in and took it, her arms wound around his neck so she could bury her hands deep in his hair. Oh … that’s how his skin felt against hers, warm as Mediterranean sunshine, and oh … that’s how his kiss tasted, of wine and longing, and ohGod, his tongue was so sexy in her mouth and his hands were firm and gentle at the same time all over her breasts. The low growl in his chest thrilled her, and the way he teased her nipples made her moan, and oh Jesus, please do that some more.

They were past words, past any thoughts of stopping, past any thoughts of anyone else.

‘Come to bed,’ she whispered, reaching for the top button on his jeans.

‘Yes,’ he murmured into her lips, breathing hard, half dragging her along the banquette and standing up with her still against him. She gasped when he paused halfway to the bed and pushed her back against the cold mirrored closet door, his entire body pressed against hers as he kissed her deep and hard.

‘Alice.’ He spoke her name against her ear, then into her mouth when he kissed her again, and she wrapped her legs around him to pull him in. If she could have climbed him she would have, the need to have him closer and over her and inside her was just so damn overwhelming and urgent that she could have cried with it.

‘Get me naked, Robinson,’ she said, pressing her mouth into the golden warmth at the curve of his neck.

He smiled against her shoulder. ‘It’s funny. You said pretty much that exact same thing in my head last night,’ he said, sliding his mouth down and over her breasts, licking, nipping, and kissing her better again. His hands were on the snap of her jeans and she was barely breathing, and then he dropped down onto his knees, pulled her jeans down and she stopped breathing altogether.

‘Filthy buggers!’

Alice’s eyes flew wide open and Robinson froze, his thumbs still on her hips hooked under the sides of her silk knickers.

‘What the actual fuck?’ he muttered as the cry outside rang out again, ‘filthy buggers!’ this time accompanied by a squawk and a loud clatter on the roof of the Airstream. ‘Who ever that is better be a fast runner,’ he growled, jumping up and fastening his jeans before throwing her shirt towards her and flinging the door of the caravan open.

Alice dragged her jeans back up her legs and pulled her shirt on, getting a hold on her breathing as she watched Robinson’s back. She knew that the culprit could fly faster than he could run, and at that moment she could have happily wrung Rambo’s scrawny, feathery neck.

‘It’s a goddamn bird,’ she heard him say, frustration clear in his voice as he stepped outside and looked up at the roof of the Airstream.

‘Yeah, I guessed as much,’ Alice said, joining him. ‘It’s Rambo. He must have escaped again.’

‘Hazel’s bird?’

‘Filthy buggers,’ the bird said again, flying awkwardly down onto one of the deckchairs.

‘Is he always this rude?’ Robinson asked, folding his arms across his still-bare chest. ‘I don’t like him.’

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