Page 100 of Give & Take

The sound and sight of this beautiful man so affected by me makes heat flare between my legs. “Raph,” I respond. That scared part of me wants to drop back down in the water. But this other, freer me wants to show him everything.

“You’re so beautiful,” he says. “I don’t think you even know how much.”

He trails his fingers over my shoulders, making a feeling of want settle heavy in the space between my hips.

There’s a war inside of me, between these two versions of myself.

“I’m forty, Raph. Forty-one in a couple of weeks. I’m not… nubile.”

“Nubile?” Raph laughs.

“Yes, nubile.” That stubborn part is daring him to say no. I’m getting out every last argument—the lawyer drilling the witness. “My breasts…they’re not perky. I have stretch marks. Thick thighs. I have…skin under my neck that?—”

“Lana,” Raph says. “I’ve already seen. More than once.” His look is sheepish—he’s talking about the window.

My cheeks heat. I open my mouth to tell him I saw more that time he was naked. I did more, the time after.

But he locks me in his gaze before I can say anything. “But guess what? You don’t get to tell me what I like or what I want. What I want is my choice, and what I wantis you, Sunshine. This woman, this body”—he brings his hand up to my head, cupping my temple—“this brain that discards a thousand thoughts a second to make sure it lands on the perfect one to cut a man in half. This is what I want.”

He bends toward me, lowering his arms into the water, gripping my ribs with his broad hands. His fingers fit perfectly in the notches of each one. Like they were made to hold me up.

“I’m the lucky one, Sunshine.”

He pulls me toward him, and when his lips meet mine, I know it’s the end of resistance. He’s dismantled the last of the bricks in that barrier with his words, and now, with his kiss, I finally let myself fall.

Raph’s mouth is hot, soft, and laced with the rich wine he sipped. His tongue dances across my teeth, flicking at my tongue in a way that has me arching against him, pressing my wet breasts against his chest.

But I know I can’t keep going, not without telling him.

“Raph,” I say, breaking the kiss. “It wasn’t just you who looked at me.”

His hand kneads the back of my scalp, need etched on his features. “What do you mean?”

“A few days ago,” I say, “I saw you. You were…I didn’t mean to, but you were?—

“Naked,” he fills in.

“You knew.”

“I suspected.” He kisses me again. Then pulls away and says, “I saw the curtains move.”

At my surprise he says, “But I shouldn’t have been prancing around naked.”

I release a soft laugh. “You weren’t prancing. And it’s your home.” Heat swirls down low as he tugs at my hair, tilting my face back. As he trails kisses down my throat.

“That wasn’t the only time,” I say.

He pauses, pulling back. “I was naked in the window after that? I was making a conscious effort to?—”

“No. I was.”

He looks confused. “You mean when I saw you getting changed? You were in your bra, I?—”

“Not then. Before. I was thinking of you. I’d dreamed of you, actually. And it was…” I take a breath. “You were fucking me Raphael.”

Might as well say it plainly. Unfortunately the sound he makes doesn’t help me confess in a reasonable way.

It’s a low, barely restrained kind of sound.

---