“You need to learn something,” I tell her, pleased when her eyes widen. “When it comes to this … whether I’m fucking you with my cock or my fingers or my mouth, I’m always in control.”

Her lips part as if she’s going to protest and I cut her off with my mouth, thrusting my tongue deep at the exact time I push my fingers back inside her. Her inner walls clamp hard, her entire body shakes, and then she’s crying out against my lips, her body consumed with shudders as her orgasm slams into her.

Damn it, I didn’t get to watch her face, see that exact moment when I push her to the edge and she hangs there for an agonizing moment before she falls. I wanted that, needed it so damn bad, and even though she’s trembling in my arms, my name falling hoarsely from her lips, I feel strangely disappointed.

Meaning, I need to do that to her again. And the next time—which is gonna happen in hours, if not minutes, if I have anything to say about it—I’ll study her face so close I’ll see every nuance. Every flicker in her gaze, every tremor beneath her skin, see the flush rush up her cheeks, her lips quivering, her eyelashes trembling …

It’ll be fucking amazing.

And it’ll happen all because of me.

Chapter fourteen

Max

“TELL ME SOMETHING ABOUT YOU. something you’ve never admitted to anyone else.”

Lily’s softly whispered request makes my entire body stiffen and I will myself to loosen the hell up. She’s stroking my chest with her fingernails, her naked body half draped over mine as we sit on the sandy shore, our legs still submerged in the water. Not ten minutes ago I’d been inside her, pounding away, making her beg and plead and cry out incoherently, and now she’s trying to find her way inside me. Inside my thoughts, my past, my secrets.

No way can I let her in. I say one wrong thing and my cover is blown. Bad enough how much I’ve put myself at risk. Fucking around with my subject when I should be following her, plotting my next move so I can get what my client wants.

Instead, I’m plotting ways to get inside Lily Fowler’s body again. Talk about messed up.

“There’s nothing to tell,” I say, keeping my voice deceptively casual. More like there’s nothing I want to tell.

“Oh, come on.” She lifts her head, her gaze meeting mine, steady and true. She’s so pretty like this, her skin still flushed from our lovemaking, her hair in disarray, her lips swollen from my kisses. “You can’t give me a little something? Just a hint? I feel like I hardly know you.”

“Isn’t that the point of a vacation fling?” I swear I see hurt flicker in the depths of her eyes just before she looks away and I immediately feel like an asshole. “You know what I mean,” I say, my voice softening.

“Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.” She rolls away from me and stands just as I sit up, her ass practically in my face. She walks over to where we hastily tore off our clothes and slips on her shorts—sans panties, since they’re probably still floating in the water somewhere—then jerks on her tank, messing up her already wild, damp hair. “I just thought …” Her voice drifts and she shakes her head, a small laugh falling from her lips though she doesn’t sound happy. “Never mind.”

“You thought what?” I stand as well and go to her, grabbing my clothes from the ground and casually putting them on. Her back is to me, her shoulders stiff, as she steps into her flip-flops. “That we’ve had sex a few times and now we should play true confessions?”

Lily whirls on me, indignation flaring in her eyes. “Yes, okay? You’re right. Is that a crime? I thought—I don’t know what I thought. All I know is I like you.” Her expression doesn’t change when she says that, though I can feel mine changing, I’m so shocked by her admission. “I wanted to maybe, I don’t know, find out a few more things about you besides that you’re from Texas and you’re an expert kisser. Oh, and an expert rescuer. That’s all I have. All I know about you.”

Expert kisser? I figure Lily Fowler’s kissed a bunch of guys—and no, the thought of her kissing a bunch of guys doesn’t make me jealous at all.

Not really.

Keep convincing yourself.

Nice to know that I rate highly at least. “Isn’t that enough?” I ask her softly. I don’t want her to know anything else. I thought she preferred the casual fling, the anonymity of a revolving door of lovers. That’s how they make her look in the press.

Maybe they’re wrong.

“Not really, but I guess it’ll have to do.” She rests her hands on her hips, drawing my gaze to her shapely body, the way her tits look beneath the tank top without a bra. High and firm, I can just make out the outline of her hard nipples poking against the thin fabric and just like that, my cock twitches back to life.

Unbelievable.

“Why do you care?” I ask with a shrug, trying to figure out her motives. Does she have suspicions? Is she faking me out with the I like you speech because she has a hunch that I’m up to no good?

Because her hunch would be correct.

“Do I really have to explain myself again?” She crosses her arms in front of her chest, plumping up her breasts so they curve above the neckline of her tank top. “Didn’t you hear me the first time? I like you, Max. I’m trying to get to know you beyond the—sex stuff.”

“Did you just stumble over the word sex, baby girl?” I tilt my head. “After I just made you come all over my cock a few minutes ago?”