Connected (Connections, #1)(45)

With a sharp intake of breath, he pulls me forward, my behind barely resting on the counter. My hands fall from his hardness and he exhales deeply as he rocks his hips into mine, his hands travel down my spine, pushing me even closer. Crying out, I scratch my nails down his back before arching so I can grind my hips further into his.

As his hands travel around my waist and rest on my lower back, he takes a step back. He stares at me with desire clear in his eyes, the same eyes I used to be afraid I would jump into and never get out of, but now so happy that I did take the leap.

“You want me to sing something for you?”

Nodding my head, I feel his hands travel right to my sex. He slides them between my legs and trails his fingers up and down my inner thighs, teasing me, almost torturing me. “Let me turn the music on,” he breathes out. But he doesn’t leave the room, he doesn’t leave me, instead he glides his hands around my hips and lifts me off the counter, carrying me to the shower, pushing me up against the wall. He turns the water on before setting me down and I get the feeling the water is our music.

He grins and asks, “What do you want me to sing?”

“Anything by Maroon 5 of course.”

Showering with River is intimate, very sexy, —almost carnal. As he lathers the soap all over my body, he sings She Will Be Loved. And even though he frowned when I answered Maroon 5 to his question, he sings it anyway. I reward him generously when he sings, “It’s not always rainbows and butterflies it’s comprise that moves us along.” My favorite line in the song.

When he finishes, he whispers seductively into my ear paraphrasing the same words he spoke last night but also divulging his sexual desires. He tells me how much he wants to taste me everywhere, describing what he wants to do to me with his body. Feeling unabashed and very comfortable, completely connected in this man’s arms, I detail what I want to do to him, with him, freely, with no walls and no barriers between us.

My brain feels as if it’s in overdrive, but my body is invigorated as he steers me down the road I so desperately want to be on. With every shift of gear, my body quickens over and over again. I feel like a car accelerating too fast, and my body is driving into oblivion. God this man is . . . is . . . I can’t even think as he slowly moves his hands up and down my sides, reaching behind me, lifting me and backing me up against the shower wall.

When we finally emerge from the shower, both sated and satisfied, he wraps a towel around me, and then his waist. I run my fingers through his wet, messy hair. I shake my head and grin at how attractive, charming, and just adorable he is before I turn and head into the bedroom. I can feel his stare as I leave the room, so I shake my ass a little, giving him a show, and I hear his chuckle.

Heading to the living room, I grab my suitcase and bring it back to the bedroom. I set it on the bed just as River comes out of the bathroom buttoning his jeans with a towel around his shoulders. He looks overwhelmingly attractive.

He sweetly says, “Why didn’t you ask me to get that for you?” For some reason his gallant, chivalrous gestures do something to me. I’m falling for this guy, a guy I hardly know.

With an enchanted smile on my face, I conjure as strong of a southern accent as I can muster while pretending to fan myself and say, “Why kind sir, do you think I’m a helpless maiden?”

Laughing and smiling that huge dimpled smile again, he comes over and draws me into his arms; shaking his wet head of gorgeous light brown hair against the crook of my neck.

“No, I don’t think that,” he says, biting my shoulder, “I just wanted to help.”

River’s phone chimes from the dresser, but he ignores it. He slowly reaches over, grabs a lock of my hair, and tucks it behind my ear. Sending shivers down my spine. He circles his index finger around my ear and lightly tugs on my lobe, which sparks a heat in my body.

Grabbing his towel, I pull it off his shoulders and use it to dry his hair while massaging my fingers on his scalp. The rumbling of my stomach stops the emotion sticking in my throat from his pure sweetness. He braces his hands on my arms and leans back, his smooth chest glistening brightly in the sunlight, and asks, “Hungry?”

Pushing back comparisons to Ben or thoughts of how Ben may have lacked a good portion of the sweetness gene, I say in a trifling tone, “You know how to work up a girl’s appetite. I’m starving,” and I let his towel fall to the ground.

Pulling the fluffy-white towel off my body, River grins and swats my behind with it. “If you’d stop being so sexy and put some clothes on, we could get the hell out of here and get some food,” he says as he turns and heads back into the bathroom, leaving me gawking once again at his fine backside view. When he enters the bathroom he says, “I know you’re watching me,” and he also shakes his ass at me.

I laugh out loud, and I begin rummaging through my suitcase. I put my last clean pair of panties on. They are plain white ones with a little black bow on the back. Then I slip on the matching bra. This lingerie doesn’t exactly scream sexy.

He emerges from the bathroom and stands in the door. “I like your bow.”

Turning to look at him and meaning to answer sarcastically, I gasp. He’s wearing a black AC/DC Back in Black Tour concert t-shirt. My dad loved AC/DC so of course I do too.

“Well I like AC/DC, now get out and let me get dressed.”

Strutting, he crosses the room. He passes by me then stops and takes a step back as I continue pulling the messy heap of clothing from my suitcase. He places a kiss on each of my shoulders, and then tugs on the black bow on the front of my bra. “Thank you, Dahlia,” he says as he saunters to the bed, sits down, and puts his socks and black boots on before falling back against a pillow and kicking his feet up.