“It’s too much of everything. You’re too much of everything. It’s the first thing I noticed about you. I stood there in the train station and thought … I can’t have you here distracting me away from trying to be a good father. Trying to be a good man.” His joking tone had slipped, and his hands gripped, and his mouth took mine savagely.

He swayed in the water and I gripped his body tighter.

“God, I want you inside of me,” I said breathlessly as he gave up my mouth for a second. I gazed into his unblinking eyes, his lashes sparkling with sea water. “But I don’t want this to be over,” I said. “This. Right here. This ache and need I have for you is the most delicious and painful thing I’ve ever experienced,” I admitted. It was excruciating and overwhelming and almost otherworldly. In that moment, I understood how desire could make people do stupid, thoughtless, insane things. Murder, break up families, or take countries to war.

He brought a hand up to my face, cradling it, everything slowing and gentling. His thumb ran over my lips and then dipped inside. I sucked the tip of his thumb into my mouth, watching as his nostrils flared and his pupils dilated. He swallowed heavily.

“Let’s go to the beach,” I whispered.

We found a tiny strip of sand hidden from the boat by a boulder. Above us was nothing but cliffs and blue sky. Even the sun was blocked here. With a hand to his chest, I pressed Xavier down to the sand and worked his turquoise swim shorts down. And there he was. Huge, and hard.

“Joséphine,” he started to say and then the rest of his words disappeared into a groaning, breathless, flurry of French as I took his length into my mouth.

I wondered if he knew all the different ways he said my name. Like it was not just my name, but a prayer. “Joséphine.”

Every lick and suck pulled more words from him.

His hand tangled in my hair, firm and pleading. His hips strained up.

My hand gripped him hard, mimicking my mouth, touching where my mouth couldn’t reach, and the sounds he made sang in my blood, spurring me on, flooding me with hot and wet heat. I couldn’t help that my other hand slipped between my own legs, edging my bikini bottoms aside and slipping against my swollen, slick skin.

I sucked him deeper, harder, faster, moaning with the sheer thrill of feeling his pleasure, his vulnerability, and his loss of control. For a few moments, he tried to stop me—muttered things in French I could barely understand like he couldn’t, or I couldn’t, or God knew what.