Page 140 of The Business of Love Box Set 1: Books 1 - 4

KATIE

P eter sat on the blanket with his lips slightly parted and his eyes glued to my ass. I couldn’t blame him. I’d worked hard for this booty and I was glad someone was enjoying it besides myself.

Even though I lived at a resort surrounded by ocean and filled with four different swimming pools, I hardly ever took a chance to dive in the water and live a little. I simply didn’t have the time. But this afternoon was different.

I had all afternoon and evening off, and this was the right foot to start it on. All the thinking I’d been doing about Peter since I left for New York had led to this divine moment, and I loved the way he was looking at me, like he’d never seen anything he wanted so badly.

“Are we going in or what?” I asked.

Peter gave his head a shake. His gaze flicked from my ass to my eyes and he let out a slightly nervous laugh. “Yes, definitely. You first.”

I shrugged and stepped toward the bank of the swimming hole. I stopped when the cold water touched my toes to look back at him.

He pulled his shirt off over his head. Hello, muscles.

I’d known since the moment I met him that Peter had a body under his clothes.

He was firm and swollen in all the right places and now I was finally getting to see the gun show for myself.

His arms were toned and defined, his muscles full and taut, the inside of his forearms rippling with veins and tendons that made my breath hitch in my throat.

He had a lean stomach with ab definition and, much to my delight, V-cut hip bones that pointed down toward his boxers once he stripped his linen pants off.

I almost started drooling.

A dark swirl of hair went around his navel and trailed down, down, down, until it disappeared beneath the waistband of his black boxers.

“I didn’t bring swimming trunks,” he said.

That won’t be a problem. “What’s the difference between swimming trunks and boxers anyway?” I asked as I waded out into the water and let it engulf my knees.

Peter came in behind me. The sun beat down on his shoulders and reflected off the water all around him. He looked like a god or an angel or someone so out of my reach it seemed hard to believe that it was just the two of us in this little paradise.

How was a man like him single?

Were there demons in his past I didn’t know about? Was he not the kind, patient, handsome, funny man I knew him to be? Was I only seeing the best parts of him and he was keeping his lesser qualities buried?

I’d met men who’d done that very thing and pulled it off for months upon months before I realized I needed to get the hell away from them.

No, I thought. Peter isn’t like the rest of them.

He stopped and stood beside me in the water. “How deep does it get?”

“Deep.”

He chuckled. “That’s what she said.”

I laughed and shoved him playfully. Peter stumbled and tried to regain his footing, but he failed.

He teetered to the side and reached out for me for support, but I leaned away and let him fall.

His eyes widened the moment he realized he was going down, and wild laughter bubbled out of me as he pitched sideways and broke through the surface of the water with an incredible splash.

With no intention of letting him come back up and have the chance to push me over, I hurried out into deeper water and dove beneath the surface with my hands pointed above my head.

The cold water filled my ears. Everything muted except for the sound of my own heartbeat, the rushing sound of the waterfall, and Peter’s splashing as he got back to his feet. I smiled to myself under water as I came back up and broke the surface to take a deep breath of fresh, warm air.

I opened my eyes as I slicked my hair back. Peter was watching me and shaking water out of his ears.

“Rude,” he chastised.

“Don’t be a sore sport.”

Peter arched an eyebrow. A trickle of water ran down his nose and dripped down to the water to leave little rings on the surface. “A sore sport? Me? Never.”

Before I knew it, he dove in after me. I watched him come under the water toward me.

He was surprisingly graceful for a man with such little control over his limbs out of the water.

I tried to paddle away as he reached for my legs underwater.

A cry of delighted surprise took me when he grabbed my ankle and then jerked me under the surface.

Water rushed in my ears again.

Peter pulled me to him. His arms wrapped around my waist. I grabbed hold of his shoulders.

He took the back of my neck, pulled me in close, and kissed me underwater.

I smiled against his lips as we held our breath.

Little bubbles rose above our heads toward the surface that was bright from the sun.

His hand tightened on the nape of my neck before he bent at the knees and pushed upward from the ground.

We broke the surface together, lips still pressed firmly against one another’s, eyes closed, lungs full of air.

We parted to catch our breath but I didn’t let him go. We treaded water together and caught our breath only so we could kiss again.

This time, I pressed my tongue against his teeth. He yielded to me and let me explore his mouth. The kiss deepened and I was filled with a primal need that I hadn’t felt in a long time. We moved together toward shallower water so we could put our feet down.

“You’re a good kisser,” Peter breathed.

“I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“Oh?”

I pushed playfully at his chest. “I’m joking.”

“I don’t mind if you have, you know. How else would you have known how to do that thing with your tongue?”

“That thing?”

“Yeah,” he said, turning pink. “That little swirl and the—”

“Oh,” I nodded knowingly. A little giggle left me. I’d always kissed like that. “ That. ”

He nodded. “ That. ”

I wrapped my legs around his waist and he held me up as I ran my hands over his shoulders and biceps.

He was rippling muscles upon rippling muscles.

Now it made sense when he told me he used to work construction.

None of this power felt like it had been made in a gym.

It felt more like it had been made out of purposeful labor, like construction.

He was lean and powerful, but his hands were soft as they ran up my thighs, courtesy of his work as a programmer.

I liked the contrast.

My fingers grazed a ridge in his collarbone. I frowned and slowed my touch, circling back to trail my fingers over it the break Peter had told me about.

I cocked my head to the side. “Does is still hurt sometimes?”

He closed his hand over mine, gently massaging the collarbone with the bump. “I still get some phantom pains that are apparently normal. The doctors said it might continue to happen for another twelve or so months as the bone fully heals.”

“Are you finally going to tell me how it happened?”

He chuckled. “Guess.”

I smiled coyly. “Were you showing off for a girl?”

He laughed. “No, I’m too clumsy to show off for a girl and past experience has made me refrain from making an ass of myself.”

“What did it then?”

“I was moving my father’s sofa with my little brother and I fell down his front porch steps. Six of them. Landed pretty hard on my shoulder on the concrete path, heard a snap, yelped like a baby, and didn’t dare move because the pain was so bad.”

I hated to think of Peter hurting. “It was a clean break?”

“Yep, right in half. Like a broken twig.”

“Ouch.”

“You can say that again. Had to have two surgeries so it healed properly, but even after that, it’s still never going to be as strong as it was. Every now and then I tweak it. I’m not supposed to lift heavy stuff or push or pull where I can avoid it.”

Guilt crawled around in my belly. “So you probably, most definitely should not have carried me out of the bar last week?”

“There is always an exception to a rule, Katie. Carrying a pretty girl out of a bar is one of them.”

I eyed him suspiciously. “Who made that rule?”

“I did, the minute Roman asked for my help.”

I giggled. “Is that so?”

“Yes. There was no way I was going to leave you sitting on the bathroom floor when I was perfectly capable of helping. Of course, there was a little voice in my head screaming at me not to drop you because if I had I would have been so horrified that I’d have booked a flight back to LA the following morning. ”

“Well, I’m glad that didn’t happen because I want to see more of you, Peter. A lot more.”

Peter waggled his dark eyebrows at me as I ran my fingers through his long, wet, dark hair. “How much more?”

All of it.

I considered playing it cool and leading him on a little bit more, but his bare skin up against mine was making it impossible to control myself.

My nipples were hard and the fabric of my bikini teased them mercilessly.

All I wanted was to know what it would feel like to take things further with Peter.

What kind of lover was he?Was he rough? Gentle? Did he take his time? Or would he break at the first sight of my naked body?

I pressed a kiss to his lips. “I want to see everything .”