The steady beat of drums and flutes filled the room, the sensual music matching her desire. A build, a tease, a long, kama-sutric piece of music that suited the way Jack loved her body.

“Turn over,” he told her.

“Already?”

She’d been expecting a little more foreplay, to be honest.

He laughed as he unbuttoned his shirt. “I’m going to massage you,” he said with a smile, and turned her on her stomach, flat on the bed.

She closed her eyes, and with that sense turned off for the moment, her ears trained on the music, and the sound of him pouring massage oil into his palms. His hands came down on her shoulders, and he began kneading. She moaned appreciatively. She hadn’t even realized she was sore.

“I’m going to make every single second feel good for you,” he whispered, as his thumbs worked the muscles of her shoulders.

“Everything you do to me feels good,” she said, and he traveled down her back, the vanilla scent of the massage oil adding to the headiness of the scene that was unfolding here in their Paris hotel room. He rubbed down her back, working his thumbs and fingers along her spine, then out to her sides, then down to her lower back.

“You are so beautiful,” he whispered, and his voice sounded different this time. Gone was the commanding, confident tone he usually saved for the bedroom. His voice was full of reverence and something else. Something deeper; something that felt lasting. She tried not to read too much into it. If she did, she’d be lost to him.

She directed her thoughts to her body and the way she felt as he touched her, his hands sending goose bumps across her flesh. His breath ghosted along her spine, as if he were leaving a trail of the faintest kisses down her back all the way to the top of her panties. Then she felt a flick from his tongue along the waistband, and he lowered them perhaps an inch, licking softly across the top of her cheeks.

She wriggled into him as sparks shot through her, straight to her core. “God, I love the way you respond to me,” he said, kissing her cheeks more as he continued to rub her back.

“Because you know what to do to me,” she said, her breathing growing heavier as his tongue dipped lower, teasing between her cheeks, but never quite dipping down to the jewel that was still safely inside her.

“It’s not that I know what to do to you. It’s that I love touching you. I love your skin, and your smell, and everything about you,” he said, as he dug his fingers into her hipbones. She tensed at the free and easy way he said love in relation to her body and her sexuality. But he hadn’t breathed it in relation to her.

Now was not the time to linger on the matters of the heart. That was child’s play. This was an adult moment. One she wanted to relish.