Lisa Kleypas - Smooth Talking Stranger

"No kidding." I rolled away from him with a gasp of laughter and hopped out of bed. "I need a shower."

Jack followed readily.

I stopped short as I flipped on the switch in his bathroom, an immaculate well-lit space with contemporary cabinetry and modern stone vessel sinks. But it was the shower that left me speechless, a room made of glass and slate and granite, with rows of dials and knobs and thermostats. "Why is there a car wash in your bathroom?"

Jack went past me, opened the glass door, and went inside. As he turned knobs and adjusted the temperature on digital screens, jets sprouted from every conceivable place, and steam collected in white drifts. Three rainfall streams came directly from the ceiling.

"Aren't you going to come in?" Jack's voice filtered through the sound of abundant falling water.

I went to the glass doorway and peeked inside. Jack was a magnificent sight, all bronzy and lean, a sheet of water glimmering over his skin. His stomach was drum-tight, his back gorgeous and sleekly muscled.

"I hate to be the one to tell you this," I said, "but you need to start exercising. A man your age shouldn't let himself go."

He grinned and gestured for me to come to him. I ventured into the maelstrom of competing sprays, battered with heat from all directions. "I'm drowning," I said, spluttering, and he pulled me out of the direct downpour of an overhead spray. "I wonder how much water we're wasting."

"You know, Ella, you're not the first woman who's ever been in this shower with me-"

"I'm shocked." I leaned against him as he soaped my back.

"-but you're for damn sure the first one who's ever worried about wasting water."

"How much, would you say?"

"Ten gallons per minute, give or take."

"Oh my God. Hurry. We can't stay in here long. We’ll throw the entire ecological system out of balance."

"This is Houston, Ella. The ecological system won't notice." Ignoring my protests, Jack washed me and shampooed my hair. It felt so good that I finally shut up and just stood there, letting his strong, slick hands run all over me while I breathed in the steam-laden air. And I washed him, dreamily sifting my fingers through his soapy chest hair, tracing the wonderful masculine textures of his body.

There was a feeling of unreality about all of it, the muted light and water sluicing over our skin, the frank sensuality that left no allowance for modesty. His mouth fastened on mine with wet, sucking kisses, and his hand slipped between my thighs, the long fingers gently playful. I pressed my cheek against his shoulder, gasping.

"The first time I saw you," Jack murmured against my sodden hair, "I thought everything about you was so cute, I could hardly stand it."

"Cute?"

"In a sexy way."

"I thought you were sexy in a jerky kind of way. You're-" I paused, my vision blurring as his fingers slid inside me, "-not at all my type."

I felt him smile against my scalp. "Really? Because right now my type seems to be working for you." He lifted one of my knees until my foot was propped on a cypress shower stool. I held on to him, weak with lust. His body pressed against mine, length to length, and the desire was a back-and-forth current between us. Careful and intent, he stroked me open, positioned himself, slid deep. His hands gripped my bottom and compressed it in his fingers. For a moment we stayed like that, my body motionless and filled and possessed.

I stared, blinking, into his dark wet face. There was no rush toward quick satisfaction, only this leisurely discovery. My flesh throbbed around him as he held me steady against a slow, rolling rhythm. I felt as if I were the only fixed point of the universe.

Each time he drove in, I shivered and held his shoulders, and he gathered me closer. The accumulating pleasure seemed to dissolve my bones. I felt his tongue licking the hot mist from my neck, my ear. I writhed, my body sliding in his grip, limbs slick and protean.

But without warning the rhythm broke, and he withdrew, leaving me trembling, bewildered. "No," I said, clinging to him. "Wait, I didn't… Jack…"

He was turning off the knobs, the waterfalls disappearing.

"I wasn't finished yet," I told him woefully as he came back to me.

Jack had the nerve to grin. Taking my shoulders in his hands, he guided me out of the shower. "I wasn't, either."

"Then why did you stop?" Privately I excused myself for whining. Any woman would have whined in such circumstances.

He reached for a fluffy white towel and began to dry me efficiently. "Because you're dangerous when it comes to standing-up sex. Your leg muscles give out."

"I was still standing!"

"Barely." He scrubbed my hair with the towel, and reached for another to dry himself. "Face it, Ella-you're at your best horizontal." Throwing the towel aside, he pulled me back to the bedroom. In a matter of seconds, he had tossed me onto the bed as if I weighed nothing.

I squeaked in surprise as I bounced on the mattress. "What are you doing?"

"I'm fast-tracking this. It's twenty to eleven."

I frowned and pushed a tangle of damp hair back from my face. "Let's wait until we have more time."

But I found myself covered with nearly two hundred pounds of playful, aroused male.

"I can't go downstairs like this," Jack said.

"Too bad," I told him sternly. "You can either wait or do it a cappella."

"Ella," he cajoled, "let's finish what we started in the shower."

"You should have finished it right then."

"I didn't want you to fall and get a head injury. The afterglow never lasts as long in the ER."

I chuckled, and Jack pressed his cheek against the soft bounce of my breast. His hot breath rushed against the distended tip. Slowly his mouth opened over the rosy flesh, his tongue circling. Sliding my arms around his neck, I kissed the thick, damp locks of his hair. He lifted his mouth and took the nipple between his fingers, clamping softly while he moved to kiss the other breast, and my hips pressed upward into his weight. In a matter of seconds I was steaming. He browsed over me as if I were some lavish buffet, nibbling and licking and kissing, lifting and turning me to make certain there was nothing he had missed. I lay on my stomach, gripping fistfuls of amber quilt as he took my hips and hoisted them upward.

"This okay?" I heard him whisper.

"Yes," I panted. "God, yes."

His electrifying weight lowered over me from behind, and he nudged my stiff limbs apart. I groaned at the heavy penetration as he glided easily into the wetness. His hand slid beneath me, fingers going to the exact place I needed them.

Caught deliciously between his body and his hand, I pushed upward invitingly, and he went as deep as I could take him. His mouth went to my back, kissing the top of my spine. He waited until I pushed up again before he thrust. I realized he was letting me set the rhythm, his every motion a counterpoint to mine. I arched and gasped as I took him, worked him, feeling him shove deeper while those gentle fingers tantalized and teased. Sensations flowed together until I could no longer recognize their separate sources. I gripped his thick muscled wrists, one braced near my head, the other down between my thighs, and I held him there as I went over the edge. The climax was lush and brimming, and each time I thought it had died down, it gave another voluptuous kick. I felt Jack shudder, the heat of him flooding me in violent pulses.

When he finally caught his breath, he muttered a few curses. I had to bury a shaky laugh in the covers, because I understood. It felt as if, somehow, a thing that was entirely ordinary had been reinvented, and the two of us along with it.

We dressed clumsily and went down to my apart-ment, and Jack overpaid the babysitter, who pretended not to notice how disheveled we were. After checking on Luke, who was down for the count, I told Jack that he was welcome to spend the night with me, except the baby would probably wake him up.