The Unhoneymooners(54)

“You okay there, Olivia?” he asks, sucking gently at my neck.

“Ask later. Nonverbal now.”

His growl tells me he’s happy with this answer; hungry fingers slide up over my stomach, my breasts, my shoulders.

I manage to pull myself together, too tempted by his collarbones and chest hair and abdomen to let a walloping orgasm keep me from exploring. With his lips parted and fingers loosely tangled in my hair, Ethan watches me move down his body, kissing him, tasting him until he stops me with tense, dark eyes.

Reaching down, he pulls me back up and rolls over onto me in an impressive display of agility. I feel the air sweetly pressed out of my lungs, the smooth slide of his body over mine.

“This okay?” he asks.

I’d argue with him about the word okay when things are very clearly sublime, but now is not the time to nitpick. “Yeah. Yes. Perfect.”

“You want to?” Ethan sucks at my shoulder, sliding his warm palm up and over my hip, to my waist, my ribs, and back down again.

“Yeah.” I gulp down an enormous breath of air. “Do you?”

He nods against me, and then laughs quietly, coming up for a kiss. “I really, really do.”

My body screams yes just as my mind screams birth control.

“Wait. Condoms,” I groan into his mouth.

“I’ve got some.” He jumps up, and I’m distracted enough by the view of him crossing the room that it takes me a second to realize what he’s said.

“Who were you planning on having sex with on this trip?” I ask him, fake scowling over from the bed. “And in which bed?”

He tears open the box and glances at me. “I don’t know. Better to be prepared, right?”

At this, I push up on an elbow. “Were you thinking you’d have sex with me?”

Ethan laughs, ripping the foil open with his teeth. “Definitely not you.”

“Rude.”

He makes his way back over to me, treating me to a very lovely view. “I think it would have been delusional for me to think I could ever get this lucky.”

Does he know he’s chosen the perfect words to complete this mad seduction? I can hardly argue; being with him right now represents the most astonishing luck I’ve ever had, too. And when he climbs over me, pressing his mouth to mine and running a hand down my thigh to cup my knee and pull it up over his hip, arguing is suddenly the last thing on my mind.





chapter twelve

Ethan looks at me, smiles, and then turns his head down and pokes at his lunch. It’s an ironically bashful expression for the hot, objectifying pervert who, barely a half hour ago, watched me with the intensity of a predator while I got dressed. When I asked him what he was doing, he said, “Just having a moment.”

“What kind of moment were you having?” I ask now, and Ethan looks back up.

“Moment—what?”

I realize I’m digging for a compliment. He was watching me get dressed with a thirst I didn’t see in his eyes even on mai tai night. But I guess I’m still in that weird fugue where I don’t actually believe that we’re getting along swimmingly, let alone having fun being naked together.

“In the room,” I say. “ ‘Having a moment.’ ”

“Oh,” he says, and winces. “Yeah. About that. Was just freaking out a little over having sex with you.”

I bark out a laugh. I think he’s joking. “Thank you for being so consistently on-brand.”

“No, but really,” he amends with a smile, “I was enjoying watching. I liked seeing you put your clothes back on.”

“One would think the undressing part would be the highlight.”

“It was. Believe me.” He takes a bite, chewing and swallowing while studying me, and something in his expression takes me back an hour, to when he kept whispering, It’s good, so good, in my ear before I fell to pieces beneath him. “But afterward, seeing you put yourself back together was . . .” He glances over my shoulder, searching for the right word, and I’m guessing it’s going to be a great one—sexy, or seductive, or perhaps life-altering—but then his expression turns sour.

I point my fork at him. “That is not a good face for this conversation.”

“Sophie,” he says, both in explanation and greeting as she steps up to the table, cocktail in one hand and Billy’s arm in the other.

Of course. I mean, of course she approaches us right now, wearing a bikini under a tiny, sheer cover-up, looking like she just walked off the set of a Sports Illustrated photo shoot. Meanwhile, my hair is twisted up in a haystack on my head, I have zero makeup on, and am sex-sweaty, wearing running shorts and a T-shirt featuring smiling ketchup and mustard bottles dancing together.

“Hey guys!” Her voice is so high-pitched it’s like having someone blow a whistle next to your head.

I study Ethan from across the table, eternally curious how that relationship worked once upon a time: Ethan with his deep, warm-honey voice; Sophie with her cartoon mouse voice. Ethan with his watchful gaze; Sophie with her eyes that bounce all over a room, searching for the next interesting thing. He’s also so much bigger than she is. For a second I imagine him carrying her around the Twin Cities in a BabyBj?rn, and have to swallow back a giant cackle.

We let out a flaccid “Hey,” in unison.