Page 51 of The Hacker
“You’re the world’s sexiest mermaid,” he said, letting his eyes rove over the tight buds of her nipples, the sweep of wet satin skin across her taut belly, and the beckoning triangle of dark hair between her thighs. He wanted to touch her everywhere, to suck at her breasts, to plunge his tongue into her mouth and then between her legs, to bury himself deep inside her.
“Okay, enough with the looking,” she said, squirming again. “You’re making me feel weird.”
“I can’t decide what to touch first.”
“Let me help you with that.” She flipped in his arms and wrapped her hand around his cock, sending a jolt of sensation through his body. At the same time, he realized that her shift in position put his hand under one of her breasts, so he found the nipple and squeezed lightly.
“Yes-s-s-s!” Dawn arched into his hand while she gave his cock a slow stroke, the water allowing her fingers to glide smoothly. “Decision made.”
His cock jerked as she hit the base, pleasure spreading upward to the tip.
A realization banged into his brain. His jeans were in the locker room. “I need to get a condom.”
Her lips curved into a seductive smile. “If you don’t have one, we can do other things to make each other happy.”
“I want to move with you in the water,” he said, dropping his voice to a purr. “It’s very ... erotic.”
“Well, I didn’t expect to see you this afternoon, so I didn’t bring one.” She released his cock and twisted away so she could flip herself upright. She locked her dark eyes with his. “I’m on the pill and I have a clean bill of health.”
His lungs stopped functioning for a moment as he absorbed her message. The generosity of it walloped him in the gut, but he never had unprotected sex. His mother had drummed that into him from before he’d even considered girls as something other than alien beings. Because his mother had gotten pregnant from just one bout of carelessness, born of infatuation—not love, she insisted—for a man who told her she could trust him.
She never called it a mistake, because it had given her Leland and he knew she loved him fiercely. But he also knew that his arrival had sent her life into a downward spiral, making her a single parent at age eighteen, repudiated by her own rigid parents and by Leland’s father and his family. Not that he would ever do that to a child he fathered, but wearing a condom seemed a small precaution to take to avoid such life-changing consequences. So he carried one with him always.
Still her breathtaking offer deserved an acknowledgment.
“I’m honored that you would trust me that way,” he said, pulling her back against him and brushing his lips against hers. “But I just have to get to my jeans in the locker room. Can you wait that long?”
She had lost her mind. She never had sex without a condom. It was a hard-and-fast rule for her for all kinds of reasons. But Leland, with his lean, muscled body and his brilliant perceptiveness, had destroyed her common sense.
It was the ticking clock of their relationship that drove her to desperation. She might never have another chance to make love with Leland in a private pool contained in a glass box perched high above the streets of Manhattan. Who turned down that opportunity for lack of a latex sheath?
So why didn’t she feel relieved when he told her he had a condom close by? Because it felt like her trust had been thrown back in her face. He didn’t reciprocate it.
“Sure,” she croaked. “I’ll be here.”
He searched her face before he said, “I’ll be back in two minutes flat.”
He leaped out of the pool as though gravity didn’t exist, rivulets of water glistening in the sun as they rolled down his muscles.
His beauty struck her like a dagger because she wanted him so badly. The hunger for him twisted in her gut.
She should be glad he had a condom. Glad that he wanted to protect her. That was what good, responsible men did.
Yet once she’d made the decision to trust him, she’d wanted him to be as irresponsible as she was. As though it would prove how much he desired her.
When he strode out of the locker room, she shoved away her irrational feelings and let the sight of his sculpted shoulders, ripped abs, long, powerful legs, and erect cock fan her arousal to full flame again.
He arced into the pool, swimming to her underwater. He wrapped his hands around her thighs and kissed her right at the juncture of her legs, the unexpected touch sending a sparkle of sensation fountaining up through her.
He surfaced, blowing a spout of water into the air. “I wish I had gills so I could do more than just kiss you there.”
“A merman? I like you better as a human.”
“Right now I feel human in the finest of ways, darlin’,” he said with a hot smile.
Then he locked her against his body so his skin warmed her front with the water around her back cool by contrast. Her nipples were so tight that the pressure against his chest sent arousal streaking down between her legs. His mouth was hot against hers as he gave her a devouring kiss, turning the ache between her legs into a raving need.
She slid her hand down between them to stroke the hard, smooth length of his cock, and he tore his mouth away from hers, his head falling back as he groaned, the sound loud enough to echo off the glass walls.
