mostly sloshing over her mouth and nose.
He scooted back toward the shore, pulling her with him until they were both safe from all but the tallest waves. He settled her on the sand between his legs, wrapped both arms around her, and rested his chin on her shoulder.
Myrna couldn’t remember the last time she just sat and stared into nothingness until her mind went blank and she truly relaxed. Something about the repetitive sloshing of the waves sent her into a deep calm—a highly unusual state to find herself in when her virile husband was pressed against her.
“Something is nibbling on my toe,” Brian murmured after a long while. “But I’m too relaxed to care.”
“Where’s your shoe?”
“I lost it when I fell in. I’m sure a hermit crab is inside of it, designing a spacious new crib at this very moment.”
She laughed at the thought of a crab dragging around a size twelve skull-patterned Vans.
“We should head back to the room and change,” she said. “We have to be somewhere in about an hour.”
“You’re not going to make me get back on that horse again, are you?” he asked.
“We can walk back to the ranch,” she said.
She wiggled out of his grasp and struggled to find her footing in the ceaseless onslaught of waves. She offered Brian a hand and he stared up at her uncertainly.
“Does our next adventure involve large hooved mammals?”
She chuckled and shook her head.
“Large toothy fish?”
“I hope not,” she said.
He groaned at her lack of a guarantee.
“Well, if you don’t want to join me, I’ll just go by myself,” she said, turning to trudge up the beach, water pouring from her body, wet sand sucking at her tennis shoes.
She suppressed a triumphant smile when Brian came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist to stop her. He linked his hands with hers and pressed them into her belly.
“You know I want to spend every moment with you,” he said, “even at my own peril.”
She smiled and angled her head to look up into his eyes. Their gazes locked and the heat of their ceaseless desire for each other passed between them. He leaned in slowly and brushed his lips across hers.
A cool droplet of water dripped from his hair and struck the top of her breast, sliding along her suddenly overwarm flesh to disappear into her cleavage. A shiver of excitement raced along her nerve endings, converging between her thighs.
“Are you sure you don’t want to ride back?” she asked. “It would be faster than walking.”
“I’m sure.”
“And I really want to hurry back to the hotel to get you out of these wet clothes.”
Her hint of suggestion was all the convincing he needed to ride behind her on the larger of the two horses. The well-behaved animals had waited patiently for them beneath a copse of palm trees, as if they were used to being abandoned by love-struck couples.
Brian rubbed the undercurve of Myrna’s breast with his thumb as he held onto her during their ride back to the stable. She was more than ready to toss him into a nearby pile of hay and have her way with him, but he was too busy boisterously relating his first adventure on—and off—horseback to the laughing stable owner. Brian didn’t seem to recognize that she was in desperate need of attention. Or maybe he was driving her crazy on purpose.
Throughout the shuttle ride back to their hotel, Brian repeated his tale of misadventure to the driver. Perhaps their ride hadn’t been all that romantic, but apparently it had made an impression on him.
When they reached their room and Brian did nothing more than toss his single shoe and wet clothes in the bathtub before drying off and reaching for a clean outfit, Myrna began to suspect that something was wrong.
“What’s going on with you?” she asked, standing next to the bed entirely naked, which was usually his cue to get down and dirty.
He tugged a clean shirt over his towel-dried head. “What do you mean?”
She crossed her arms over
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