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As much as he wanted to probe for answers, he’d wait until tomorrow. “You cooked. I’ll clean up.”
“Thank you. Good night.” She headed for the stairs to the bedrooms like the ship was sinking and only one lifeboat remained.
Ryder cleaned up the rest of the food and loaded the dishwasher before setting the alarm and making sure all the cameras were functioning properly. He checked the video history that would have captured motion near the front door and the back deck. Other than Lucas Caldwell’s arrival, there was nothing of note.
In the guest room, he stripped to his briefs before settling onto the bed. His question from earlier still nagged at him.
Why had Nathalie stopped painting?
Painting had been her passion—a talent picked up from her mother. She’d drawn lots of sketches during their visits to the Oxford Botanic Garden—pieces she transformed with glorious strokes of watercolor. Her favorites had covered the walls of her tiny flat like wallpaper.
She’d gifted him one of her watercolors once—brilliant blue irises. Like his eyes, she’d said.
He remembered the day she painted it. He’d shown up at her flat to find her with blue smudges on her face, hands, neck, and his sweatshirt.
“Does this mean we aren’t going out?” They were supposed to meet classmates at a local pub. He just wanted to be with her.
The smile she gave him threatened to make his heart burst through his chest. “You aren’t getting out of being social that easily, mister. Just give me a few minutes to shower.”
Her socks came off. Then the sweatshirt. Each step toward the shower was a game of strip poker. Her jeans, her bra, her knickers. She stood on the threshold of the bathroom door and sent him a look over her bare shoulder, the gold in her brown eyes sparkling with invitation. He yanked his shirt over his head and toed off his shoes before shoving down his trousers and shorts and tugging them off.
Being the gentleman he was, he’d insisted on helping scrub away the blue paint beneath the spray of her showerhead. Then his mouth traced the path of every streak over her cheek, down the delicate column of her throat to her collarbone.
Her fingers burrowed in his hair. “Ryder.” Her breathy moan traveled straight to his cock.
He bent and wrapped his lips around one nipple, drawing her into his mouth, suckling hard. First one breast, then the other. Down the silky skin of her stomach, he tongued the belly ring winking in her navel. Water soaked his hair and ran in rivulets down his face, into his eyes and over his lips. He drank it in, along with the taste of her.
His knees hit the tile floor with a thud, but he was too far gone to care about the pain.
Inside her.
Part of her.
That’s where he needed to be. The only place where his life made sense.
But first…
His tongue traced a path lower, slipping between her folds.
“Ryder!” Sharp nails dug into his scalp, spurring him on.
He licked up her slit to the bundle of nerves at the top. His tongue circled, sucked, moved faster. Holding her hips captive, he refused to let her avoid the rising tide of delicious tension he could feel tightening her body.
“Oh, God!” Her hands released his head to slap the tiled walls as she came apart.
She pulsed beneath his lips, and he drank her in. Then he stood and, in one thrust, drove himself home.
Home.
Ryder hopped off the bed with a snarl. Maybe a cold shower would remind him of his responsibilities.
Nathalie was right. Touching her earlier had been a mistake—a needless temptation that only made him want more. The girl he’d known in college no longer existed.
He’d hung the blue irises in his flat. After she left England, he put the painting on the pavement outside, where a passer-by promptly snatched it.
He’d wanted nothing to remind him of her or his foolish dreams.
A quick turn beneath icy spray cured his erection, but not his scattered thoughts.