Part of me wanted to climb in, take the razor from her hand, and finish the job for her, kissing every smooth inch. Another part of me wanted to climb in and make good on the promise to take her from behind, slowly and carefully. But an even larger part of me relished playing the voyeur. She still didn’t know I was there, and seeing her like this—thinking she was alone, singing quietly, maybe even thinking about me?—was like a cold glass of water on a scorching day. I would never get tired of watching her in any setting. And nak*d, wet, and in the shower wasn’t too far from the top scenario on the list.

She rinsed her leg and stood, turning to clear the conditioner from her hair, and that’s when she saw me. A smile exploded across her face, her n**ples tightened, and in that moment I almost shattered the glass shower door to get to her.

“How long have you been standing there?”

I shrugged, looking down the length of her body.

“Such a creeper.”

“Still a creeper, you mean.” I moved a little closer, crossing my arms over my chest as I leaned against the wall. “When did you get here, you sneak?”

“About a half hour ago.”

“I thought you just caught a plane in the States? Did you go by portkey after all?”

She laughed, tilting her head back under the showerhead for one final rinse, before turning off the water. “I caught the first one I told you about. I thought it would be fun to mislead and surprise you.” Taking her long hair in both hands, she pulled it over her shoulder and squeezed the water from it, watching me with eyes that grew increasingly hungry. “I think I was hoping you’d come home to find me nak*d in the shower. May have been why I stepped into the shower.”

“I’ll admit it’s pretty f**king convenient because I’m ready to be nak*d myself.”

Chloe pushed open the door and came directly to me. “I wanted that pretty mouth on me as soon as I heard you were flirting with the flower girl.”

I scowled. “Oh please.” And then I paused. “How did you know about that?”

She smiled. “Dominique speaks very good English. Said she grew tired of your moping and sent you down there because you’re so cute when you’re annoyed. I agreed.”

“She—what?”

“I’m glad you didn’t decide to bring Mathilde back with you, though. That could have been awkward.”

“Or it could have been awesome,” I teased, pulling her against me and wrapping a towel from the rack around her shoulders. I felt the water from her br**sts soak into my clothes.

She’s here. She’s here. She’s here.

I bent, brushed my lips over hers. “Hey, sweetheart.”

“Hey,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around me. “Have you ever been with two women at once?” she asked, leaning back and running her hands up under my shirt as I worked to dry her off. “I can’t believe I haven’t ever asked you that.”

“I missed you.”

“I missed you, too. Answer my question.”

I shivered. “Yes.”

Her hands were cold and her nails felt sharp when she scratched down my torso. “More than two at a time?”

Shaking my head, I bent to run my nose along her jaw. She smelled like home, like my Chloe: her own mild citrus scent and the soft natural smell of her skin. “Weren’t you saying something about wanting my mouth on you?”

“Specifically between my legs,” she instructed.

“I assumed.” I bent, scooped her up, and carried her to the bed.

When I put her down on the edge, she sat up, leaning back on her hands behind her, pulling her feet up on the edge of the bed . . . and spread her legs. She looked up at me, and whispered, “Take your clothes off.”

Holy Christ this woman was going to kill me with views like that. I kicked my shoes across the room, yanked off my socks, and reached behind me to pull my shirt over my head. Giving her a few seconds to reacquaint herself with my bare chest, I scratched my stomach and gave her a smile. “See something you like?”

“Are we giving shows?” Her hand slipped over her thigh and between her legs. “I can do that.”

“Are you f**king kidding me,” I breathed, fumbling with my belt buckle and pulling the buttons of my jeans free in a single movement. I nearly fell over trying to get them off.

Her hand moved away, and then she reached both arms out for me. “On top,” she said quietly, apparently not wanting my mouth after all. “Over me, I want to feel your weight.”

It was perfect, like this, without pretense. We both wanted to make love before we did anything else: looking around, eating, catching up.

Her skin was cool, and mine still felt flushed from the sun, my uphill walk back to the villa, and the thrill of seeing her here so unexpectedly. The contrast was astounding. Beneath me she was nothing but smooth skin and tiny, quiet sounds. Her nails dug into my back, her teeth slid over my chin, my neck, my shoulder.

“I want you inside,” she whispered into a kiss.

“Not yet.”

Although she let out a little growl of frustration, for a while she let me simply kiss her. I loved the way her lips felt on my tongue, the way her tongue felt against my lips. I was acutely aware of every point of contact between us: her br**sts against my chest, her hands on my back, the tendons of her thighs pressing into my sides. When she wrapped her legs around mine, her calves felt like a band of heat around me. I reached down and wrapped my hand around the back of her knee, pulling it higher to my hip until I felt my c*ck slide against her slick skin.

Beneath me, she arched and rocked, getting as much friction as she could without me pushing inside. Kisses would start tentative, maybe playful, and then grow into deep, ravenous, arching hunger before returning to slow and tasting. She let me press her arms over her head, let me suck and bite her n**ples almost to the point of pain. She asked me what I wanted, what felt good, and whether I wanted her body or her mouth first. Her first instinct when we were nak*d was always to pleasure me.

This woman amazed me. I’d lost perspective on who she used to be outside of our relationship. With me, she could be anything. Brave and afraid weren’t opposite. She could be sharp and tender, devious and innocent. I wanted to be her everything in the same way.

“I love the way we kiss,” she whispered, the words coming out pressed against my lips.

“What do you mean?” I knew what she meant. I knew exactly what she meant; I simply wanted to hear her talk about how f**king perfect it all felt.

“I just love that we kiss the same, that you always seem to know exactly how I want it.”

“I want to be married,” I blurted. “I want you to marry me.”

Fuuuuuuuck.

And so my entire carefully constructed speech was thrown out the window. My grandmother’s antique ring was in a box in the dresser—nowhere near me—and my plan to kneel and do everything right just evaporated.

In the circle of my arms, Chloe grew very still. “What did you just say?”

I had completely botched the plan, but it was too late to turn back now.

“I know we have only been together for a little over a year,” I explained, quickly. “Maybe it’s too soon? I understand if it’s too soon. It’s just that how you feel about the way we kiss? I feel that way about everything we do together. I love it. I love to be inside you, I love working with you, I love watching you work, I love fighting with you, and I love just sitting on the couch and laughing with you. I’m lost when I’m not with you, Chloe. I can’t think of anything, or anyone, who is more important to me, every second. And so for me, that means we’re already sort of married in my head. I guess I wanted to make it official somehow. Maybe I sound like an idiot?” I looked over at her, feeling my heart try to jackhammer its way up my throat. “I never expected to feel this way about someone.”

She stared at me, eyes wide and lips parted as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. I stood and ran over to the dresser, pulling the box from the drawer and carrying it over to her. When I opened the box and let her see my grandmother’s antique diamond and sapphire ring, she clapped a hand over her mouth.

“I want to be married,” I said again. Her silence was unnerving, and fuck, I’d completely botched this with my rambling nonsense. “Married to you, I mean.”

Her eyes filled with tears and she held them, unblinking. “You. Are such. An ass.”

Well, that was unexpected. I knew it might be too soon, but an ass? Really? I narrowed my eyes. “A simple ‘It’s too soon’ would have sufficed, Chloe. Jesus. I lay my heart out on the—”

She pushed off the bed and ran over to one of her bags, rummaging through it and pulling out a small blue fabric bag. She carried it back to me with the ribbon hooked over her long index finger, and dangled the bag in my face.

I ask her to marry me and she brings me a souvenir from New York? What the f**k is that? “What the f**k is that?” I asked.

“You tell me, genius.”

“Don’t get smart with me, Mills. It’s a bag. For all I know you have a granola bar, or your tampons, in there.”

“It’s a ring, dummy. For you.”

My heart was pounding so hard and fast I half wondered if this was what a heart attack felt like. “A ring for me?”

She pulled a small box out of the bag and showed it to me. It was smooth platinum, with a line of coarse titanium running through the middle.

“You were going to propose to me?” I asked, still completely confused. “Do women even do that?”

She punched me, hard, in the arm. “Yes, you chauvinist. And you totally stole my thunder.”

“So, is that a yes?” I asked, my bewilderment deepening. “You’ll marry me?”

“You tell me!” she yelled, but she was smiling.

“Technically you haven’t asked yet.”

“Goddamnit, Bennett! You haven’t, either!”

“Will you marry me?” I asked, laughing.

“Will you marry me?”

With a growl, I took the box and dropped it on the floor, flipping her onto her back.

“Are you always going to be this impossible?”

She nodded, eyes wide, lip caught between her teeth. Fuck. We could settle this later.

“Take my cock.” I bent, pressed a kiss into her neck, and groaned when she reached between us to grip me. “Guide it into you.”

She shifted her h*ps beneath me until I could feel myself at her entrance. I slid into her slowly, even though every tendon and muscle in my body wanted it rough and frenzied. I groaned, shivered on top of her, feeling myself sink inside.

Shifting my h*ps back and then forward, I felt her arms wrap around my neck, her face press into my neck as she rose to meet my movements. It took only two more shifts of my h*ps before we grew louder and more frantic.

“Give it to me,” I whispered into her mouth, licking forward, asking. I lifted her leg, pressed it up to her side and slid in deeper. My eyes rolled closed for a beat and I felt like I was about to explode in her.

She pressed her head back into the pillow, parted her lips to gasp, and I took the opportunity to slide my tongue into her mouth, to suck a little on hers. “That okay?” I whispered, pressing into the skin of her hip with my fingertips. She loved the edge of pain and pleasure, that razor-sharp line we’d discovered early on together. She nodded and I moved faster, filling my head with the smell of her. I tasted her collarbones, her neck, bit a mark into her shoulder.

“Up here,” she breathed, pulling me back up to her face. “Kiss me.”

So I did. Over and over until she was panting and squirming beneath me, urging me to move faster. I felt her abdomen tense and then her legs squeezed hard around me, her cries sharp in my ear.

Clenching my jaw, I pushed my own release to the back of my mind, wanting more, and longer, and to feel her coming again before I would even let myself drift toward orgasm.

Her cries grew louder, and she screamed and then gasped and tried to pull away but I knew she could come again. I knew she was sensitive but she could take more.

“Don’t pull away. You’re not done yet. Not even f**king close. Give me another.”

Her h*ps relaxed in my hands; her grip tightened in my hair again.

“Oh.” It was just a breath of a sound. There was so much contained in that single, quiet gasp.

I pressed closer, holding her h*ps and tilting them with my movements. “That’s it.”

“Coming,” she breathed. “I can’t—I can’t—”

Her h*ps shook and I gripped her as hard as I dared. “Don’t you f**king stop.”

“Touch me . . . there,” she gasped and I knew what she wanted. I kissed her neck before licking my fingers and sliding them to her backside, touching, pressing.

With a sharp cry she came again, the coiled muscles beneath her skin tightening all around my length. Taking a deep breath, I let my orgasm unravel down my back and tear through me; light bursts exploded behind my closed eyes. I could barely hear her hoarse cries over the pounding of blood in my ears.

“Yes yes yes yes . . .” she chanted, delirious, before collapsing onto the pillow beneath her.

It felt like the walls rattled in the silence that followed. Everything in my head shook with need for her; it was disorienting.

“Yes,” she gasped one last time.

I held very, very still as awareness seeped back into my thoughts. “Yes?”

Then with her limbs still trembling all around me, and breaths coming out in sharp little pants, she gave me a radiant smile. “Yes . . . I want to be married, too.”

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the readers who also wanted more from these two. Your tweets, FB posts, emails, comments, and reviews make us feel like the luckiest chicks out there, and without you, there is no BEAUTIFUL anything.