“Gave it up?”

“Gave it away. And it means nothing more than that. You did me a favor.”

He gritted his teeth so that the muscles in his jaw bulged.

I continued. “I enjoyed myself. You said you enjoyed yourself. What is there to regret or feel guilty over?”

“What comes next,” he stated flatly. “It’s the way I think. I’m a programmer before I’m anything else. Everything in programming is cause and effect. What are the possibilities that spring from each and every line of code? What will spring from this?”

“Stop thinking fifty steps ahead of this one. Just think about the one thing that comes next. What do you think that is?”

His eyes roamed my face. “If I had my way? It would be me fucking you again.” His eyes lowered to my lips.

I stopped breathing, heart rushing with excitement. We stared at each other in silence for a long moment before I spoke. “I think that sounds like a pretty good step.”

He hooked his arm around my waist, jerked me flush against him. My body came alive with the feel of his hardness. We held each other for long moments. Then he slowly, sensuously began to kiss my neck.

“Damn it, Emilia,” he breathed. “How did you strip me bare so quickly?”

I reached up, holding his rough face in my hands and we kissed

He kissed me long, tenderly. Our tongues slowly played against each other. Desire arced through me like lightning across a mountain sky. The touch was jagged, searing. His hands were on my back, untying my bikini top, sliding to my breasts.

“How is it possible that I want you more now than I did this afternoon?” he growled against my neck.

I pulled myself up, hooking my legs around his waist and we continued to kiss. The tightly packed muscles in his back roiled under my hands.

“We were both very eager.”

He pulled back to look at me. “I’m not sure how eager you were,” he breathed, a smile quivering on his lips. “I got the sense that you were lying back and thinking of medical school.”

I laughed. “Hardly.”

“I had to fight with myself not to start again the minute it finished. I wanted you so much that I knew once wouldn’t be enough.”

His words stole the air right out of my lungs. My body was responding with scorching fire, tightening tension.

“I’m going to do it again, Emilia. And again.”

His hands were on my hips and I freed my legs so he could yank down my swimsuit bottoms. Would we even bother to leave the pool? His fingers rubbed my sex as he sucked my nipples. I fell slack in his arms, focused on the searing pleasure commanding all my senses. The taste of his wet skin, the feel of his taut muscles, the smell of him. He continued to rub and I began the inevitable climb toward orgasm. My hands clamped on his shoulders and I threw my head back, calling his name.

He stopped. I suppressed a yelp of frustration. He said, “Turn around and put your hands on the edge.”

I stepped back and looked into his face. An animal hunger—something I hadn’t seen in his eyes before—glowed there.

“Do it.”

The thrill of anticipation jacked up several notches with his command. I turned and placed my hands on the edge of the pool, feeling very exposed. I was naked, looking out over emptiness. No one could see us. We were in total privacy. Adam bent and kissed the nape of my neck, my ears, my back, his hands coming up to cup my breasts and knead them gently, rolling the nipples over in his hands. I gasped and arched against him, reaching behind me to hook my arms around his neck.

“Back on the edge, Emilia. Keep them there.”

Slowly. Very slowly. I obeyed. He grabbed my hips and pulled them against him. He was naked, now, and his erection pressed against me. I gasped.

But when I thought he would enter me, he didn’t. He slid his shaft along the seam of my sex, reaching around my front with one hand to press down on my swollen flesh, now fully aroused. And he began to rub against me both from the front and from behind.

The feeling was exquisite and soon the quick build of tension between my legs increased, bunching in my belly, heating my insides. I was about to come—the orgasm just beyond my reach.

He stopped again. “Adam!” I cried.

“What?” he whispered hoarsely in my ear.

“Stop playing around, for fuck’s sake,” I growled.

“Tell me what you want. Exactly what you want.” He punctuated the command by pressing down on my clitoris again, as if I needed reminding that it was there. I stiffened against him.

“I want your cock. I want it inside of me.”