The Look of Love (The Sullivans #1)(9)

No, damn it. When she'd left her now ex-husband, she’d vowed to take care of herself. At the time she’d believed that simply meant money and jobs and housing. Evidently, she thought with a slightly rueful shake of her head, it also seemed to mean that if she was feeling unaccountably horny, she was going to have to take care of that, too.

She shifted in the tub at the somewhat shocking thought and as the warm water floated over her curves, she tried to figure out how long it had been since she’d enjoyed sex. Since she’d been able to explore her body and give in to its natural needs. How long had she been ashamed of her sexual appetite?

If only the answers weren’t all so painful.

No. She wouldn’t go there tonight. Not after what she’d already been through.

Tomorrow would come soon enough. But tonight…well, maybe tonight was her chance to start taking some much needed strides to reclaim a part of herself that she’d been forced to deny for too long.

Closing her eyes, forcing herself to relax deeper into the warm tub, Chloe put her hands just above her br**sts and held them there, feeling the quickening beat of her heart. Slowly, she ran her hands down her chest, over her full br**sts, and she sucked in a breath at the surprisingly pleasurable sensations that shot through her.

She used to love having her br**sts played with, feeling a tongue lave them, a man’s lips suckling and tasting. When she’d been younger she could almost make herself come just from playing with her br**sts while fantasizing about a gorgeous man making love to her.

She hadn’t conjured up those fantasies in a long time, but tonight it was only her and her hands and a tub full of steaming water. No one was here to tell her she was a whore for liking what she liked.

Drawing on long-buried sensual memories, she let her mind drift to a scene where she was in a man’s arms and his head was bent down over her br**sts. And then he lifted his head and she gasped as a flush of arousal hit her right between her thighs.

Because the man looked just like Chase.

Chloe should have stopped touching herself right then. She knew she should have had the self-control to get up out of the tub, to go get the sleep she so desperately needed.

But she’d gone without for so long. Far too long. She was thirty years old and heading straight toward her sexual prime, wasn’t she? It was one more reason to be angry.

This was one more part of her life to reclaim.

She was safe here. Tonight she had a chance to feel normal again. And she was going to take it.

Even if the gorgeous face of a man she’d just met—and was impossibly tempted by even though every last brain cell she had knew better—was the very man who was about to have her crying out with ecstasy in a few minutes.

Keeping one hand on her br**sts, she let the other slide down over her rib cage, then her stomach, until she reached the thatch of soft curls between her thighs. It was instinct to let her legs fall open in the water, to probe the throbbing mass of nerves between her thighs with her fingertips.

Her breath quickened as she slid her fingers down lower. Even in the water she could feel how slick she was, how ready she’d been since practically the first moment Chase had touched her.

She didn’t have the first clue how she could have reacted like that to a complete stranger. Given what had just happened to her, the bruise still throbbing on her cheek, shouldn’t she have been flinching and hating the feel of his hands on her?

But she hadn’t been anywhere near hating Chase’s touch. Far from it, considering she’d been far more tempted to rub herself against him than shove him away.

As her fingers swirled against the hard nub, her mind flitted back to that moment when she’d looked down at the thick bulge in his pants. Sex had been good once, good enough that she could still imagine the kind of pleasure a man like Chase could give a woman.

Sinking so deep into the water that her nose and mouth and eyes were barely above the surface, her feet slid out further when she accidentally kicked something in the tub and the jets kicked into overdrive.

Chloe’s eyes flew open as the bubbling streams assaulted her sensitive skin. At first it was too much, too many sensations coming at her at once, but then, as she got more used to the water moving across her sore muscles, she found herself growing even more relaxed.

Quickly, she realized that if she lifted her legs up so that her knees were bent and her feet were flat on the bottom, two of the jets on either side of the tub shot straight between her legs.

Lifting her hips into the jet streams felt decadent. Sinful.

And just plain good.

Moving her hand from between her legs back to her br**sts, she cupped one in each hand as the water worked between her legs in the nicest possible way.

She rocked her hips up and down as she got closer and closer to the sweetest orgasm she’d had in a long, long time. Chase’s face appeared again and she didn’t even bother to stop herself from fantasizing about his kiss, about his large hands on her instead of her own.

A strange sound tried to work its way into her subconscious, but she was too far gone to pay it any attention. And then Chase’s name was on her lips as her entire body tightened down and then exploded in a thousand delicious pieces, her hips bucking closer to the wonderfully strong jets, her fingers tightening on her own br**sts. Oh God, she loved this feeling and suddenly couldn’t think why she’d gone so long without it.

She was about to relax deeper into the tub when her brain rewound back to that moment when she’d been coming. To the sounds she’d heard, but dismissed as her body flew over the edge.