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I followed Ingram to a long low bar perched on a raised step overlooking a sunken living room that featured a wall of windows to the back, where a glittering blue swimming pool spanned the length of the yard. “Wow,” I said to Ingram. “What an incredible pool.” Steam was rising from the water, and the entire length of it glowed.
“Heated,” he said with a wink.
In the center of the stretch of granite-topped bar sat a bright blue bowl completely filled with rough-skinned avocados. I couldn’t help the smile that overtook my lips. “Thank you,” I said, sitting and reaching out to pick up an avocado.
Ingram smiled at me and disappeared. I heard the front door close after a minute, and assumed I was alone with Oliver, who still hadn’t shown himself.
After a few minutes of sitting, I grew impatient and decided to explore. I prowled through the rooms at the front of the house, investigating a space that was both elegant and livable. It was a showplace, filled with dazzling art, shining glass baubles and impressive furniture, but it also felt like a home. As my eyes fell on a family portrait—Oliver standing next to Adam Cody and a lovely woman who sat in a chair and smiled at the camera with a bright hopeful smile—I realized this was a family home. Without any confirmation but the photo, I understood that this was where Oliver had spent at least part of his youth. This was his parents’ home.
His voice rang down the hallway again, and I decided I’d been waiting long enough. My body still hummed from his touch after our meeting that afternoon, and an aching need had throbbed between my legs since then. I’d never wanted anyone the way I wanted him, right or wrong. I slipped off my flats next to the front door and padded softly down the hallway, my feet cold on the rubbed Spanish tiles. I moved slowly, looking around me as I went. There were pictures of him lining the hallway. Oliver, grinning out from too many school portraits to count; Oliver, standing atop a podium in swimming briefs, holding a gold medal; Oliver, next to his father with the soaring towers of Cody Tech in the background and a pair of ribbon-cutting scissors held between them. Standing there, I was struck with the realization that Oliver had had everything I’d always dreamed about. The parents who loved him, the family house…I didn’t feel the searing jealousy I’d felt as a kid when I’d walked down a hallway like this, strewn with evidence of everything I never had. Instead, I felt happy for him, glad to know he’d been cherished and prized. And I felt a surging grief on his behalf—to have had all this and lost it so suddenly…But one thing was clear to me as I examined a picture of his parents as young adults, beaming down at a chubby blond toddler on a tricycle—Oliver’s parents had chosen him. He had been treasured and loved. I would make sure he understood that because he needed to know. I didn’t know why his parents hadn’t told him he was adopted, but I didn’t believe it mattered at all. These pictures were proof. I tore my eyes from them and walked quietly forward.
Had Oliver moved back into his parents’ house after they were killed? I couldn’t imagine that he’d lived here all along.
I turned a corner, following his voice to an office sunken down two stairs and facing the backyard. Oliver didn’t turn to look at me. He was standing in front of the wall of windows, one hand wrapped around the back of his neck as the other held the phone to his ear.
“Burton,” he was saying. “I’ll have news for you soon. You just need to wait a little longer. Can you give me your commitment to wait a bit longer? The next board meeting should resolve all of these issues.” He sounded weary, and I felt distinctly as if I was interrupting. I backed away and walked softly back out to the living room. I wanted Oliver’s attention, but I had just thought of a better way to get it than interrupting an important work call. He’d already told me some of the investors were thinking of selling shares, and that it was critical to restore their confidence and that of our clients.
I slipped through the sunken living room to the tall glass doors facing the pool. Once out on the back patio, I turned back to survey the house, which was all glass from the back. I could see a soft glow coming from the other end of the house, directly across from where the pool’s diving board was positioned, and I knew that was where Oliver stood staring out. Without glancing at him, I walked to the deep end of the pool and stood next to the diving board, feeling emboldened by the knowledge that his eyes had to be on me, he couldn’t avoid seeing me here.
I threw one glance over my shoulder to let him know I was aware of his presence, and then I slipped my sundress off over my head and stretched my arms up, looking up at the sky through the trees that arched over Oliver’s yard. After a long languorous stretch, I reached back and unclasped my bra, dropping it with one hand to the pile my dress had made, and then I stepped from my panties, depositing them in the pile with a toe. Taking a deep breath, and working to look confident despite my complete lack of experience in stripping for a man, I walked to the diving board and stepped up, shivering slightly in the cool air. The water beneath me glittered a soft blue, lit from beneath, and the steam rising off its surface gave the yard a surreal feeling. It was incredible to be standing out here. This was nothing like the houses I’d grown up in, and I didn’t know many people with pools—especially heated pools—even now. I tried not to think about the miles-wide financial divide between Oliver and me. It shouldn’t really matter, anyway.
With three long strides I reached the end of the diving board and dove off, pushing hard with my legs and reaching my hands in front of me. I swam to the shallow end, letting my mind focus only on the sensation of my muscles pulling, the warm water on my skin. In the past week I felt like I’d become all sensation. My body had been more awake since meeting Hale, and every inch of my skin felt more responsive, more alive than ever.
I came to the surface, finding the bottom of the pool with my feet, and I turned, pushing off again and swimming a couple laps back and forth. The rushing sound of the water in my ears drowned out everything else, so I didn’t hear the door open and close, didn’t hear Oliver’s feet crossing the slate surround to stand above me at the edge of the pool. But I felt him as I churned through long strokes under the nearly black sky. I felt the air shift, as it always did around him, the cells of my body aligning to his, even over a distance. Oliver was like a magnet to me, and when he was close, I was drawn to him. I swam to the shallow end again and came up, my chest exposed to the cool night air as I reached up to push water from my hair and smile at Oliver.
He stood bare-chested and barefoot, still in his work trousers with his hair a tousled mess atop his head. That brutal jaw was clenched, the scruff of his beard glinting as the little bits of gold reflected the light flickering up from the pool. His eyes were black and his expression unreadable as he watched me, that jaw firm and solid. One of his hands was clenched into a fist at his side.
“Hi there,” I said. “You were busy, so I decided to swim.”
“I saw,” he said, confirming that he’d gotten the benefit of my little show.
“Coming in?” I asked.
He unfastened his pants and dropped them, with the briefs, to the ground, and dove long, swimming to the other end and back without a breath. He came up almost beneath me, his body skimming mine as he broke the surface of the water. His eyes caught mine and I had a fleeting sense of danger when I took in the flare of emotion within his dark orbs. Before I could ask if anything was wrong, his mouth was on mine, a continuation of the possessive kiss he’d stopped back at the office. His hands were as greedy as his tongue, sliding over my curves beneath the water, and the combination of heat from his mouth and his hands coupled with the feel of the water made me clench all my muscles in an effort to gain some sense of control over myself. My head fell back into Oliver’s hand, and my mouth opened to him. He slipped a hand beneath my ass and lifted me easily in the water, my legs going automatically around his waist.
I could feel his cock pressed against my inner thigh, thick and hard beneath the surface of the water. I wanted to see it, to touch it. It was odd, I’d never really had a thing for dick. I mean, functionally, sure. But I’d never wanted to explore one, to know one the way I wanted to know Oliver’s. He was a commanding guy, undoubtedly. He had been even when I’d known him as Hale, aka Mr. Big Dick. And something about that forcefulness of personality, that unquestioning attitude that he was in charge, that the world and everything in it were his, struck me as innately linked to his masculinity, and therefore his cock. Was it weird to think of his dick as so critical to his power?
As he ravaged my mouth with his, I lost the train of thought a bit, but I realized one other thing. As much as I liked his dick, I liked his heart more. Despite his tendency to try to rule the world, I’d seen so much more to this man. I’d seen him sad and vulnerable, laughing and silly. And I’d seen him losing his mind as that glorious dick pounded into me, a state I hoped to bring about again soon.
Oliver had me against the edge of the pool, his arm protecting my back from hitting the hard wall, and he was rubbing against me, pushing that huge hard dick against my most tender spot as his mouth pulled back and teased my lips gently. “God, Holland,” he said, his voice a razor’s edge of lust. “You drive me fucking crazy.”
I responded by biting his lip and was rewarded with a low groan.
His arm held me fast against him, his hard chest rippling against my skin. With one hand he reached down to tease me with his fingers, his arm curling beneath my leg and those long thick fingers stroking and pulsing in a rhythm that soon had me moaning into his demanding mouth. “God, I want you,” I said on a moan.
He stopped kissing me and pulled his head back, his eyes flickering. “Say it again.”
“I want you, Oliver.” I tried to retake his mouth but he pulled it back and a wicked smile played across his lips.
“Tell me how much.” His fingers were still moving, and now one penetrated me, making me gasp with shock and pleasure.
“Oh God, so fucking much,” I moaned, pressing myself against him, wrapping my legs tighter around his waist and ducking my head to inhale the warm masculine scent of him just beneath his ear. Another noise escaped my throat as he pressed another finger inside me, his hand still managing the right amount of pressure against my clit so that I was writhing in his embrace.
There might have been neighbors nearby, but I neither cared nor looked to find out. I was out of my mind with pleasure. Between the heat of Oliver’s body and the soothing water, the pulsing motion of his hand and his hard cock pressed against me, I could barely form thoughts or words. I didn’t have enough energy to worry about nosy neighbors—and the yard was grown over with tall draping trees that provided at least an illusion of privacy, if not the real thing.
Oliver didn’t cease the relentless teasing of his hand or his mouth on my neck, my ear, my own mouth, and within a few minutes I knew I was seconds away from coming. I pulled myself back and caught his wild eyes. “I want you.”
“You mentioned that, but I don’t mind hearing it again,” he growled, a smile on his face under those dark eyes. His muscles bulged as he held me to him, the dark blond hair covering his jaw reminding me of his purely masculine appeal.
