“Am I doing it the way you do?” he asked.

Still no verbal response, though her body was telling him everything he needed to know. Stubborn to the end, he thought with a surge of lust and affection and hunger. But in a clash of wills, he never lost. When he misdirected the spray of water by about an inch, she whimpered in distress and tried to guide his hand back to where she wanted it, but he held firm.

“If you want it some other way,” he murmured in her ear, taking the lobe between his teeth, “you’ll have to hold it yourself.”

She tried to arch her hips to force his hand but he couldn’t be budged. Finally, with a huff of great frustration, she yanked the handheld from him and shifted it right where she wanted it. It took her another thirty seconds to find her groove, but he knew when she melted against him again, her hips rocking, her breath coming in sexy little pants, that she’d lost herself in the game.

And God, she was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.

When she started to tremble, a punch of lust went straight to his gut. Again he slid his hand between her thighs and while she aimed the pulsing water, he stroked with his fingers.

She came with a cry and a racking shudder. He held her through it until with a soft sigh, she leaned her head back against him and closed her eyes, making him want to crush his mouth to hers, fit his lips to hers, suck her tongue, suck every part of her.

Then she turned to face him. “Your turn,” she said, holding the handheld like Annie Oakley with a gun.

“It doesn’t work that way on me,” he said with a smirk.

“Well, I know that.” She put the massager back in its cradle so that the water once again rained down on them from above. With a naughty smile she dropped to her knees and wrapped her hand around his erection. “Luckily for you,” she said, looking up at him, “I know what does work.”

And then she sucked him into her mouth.

A groan shuddered through him as she teased him, and he slid his hands into her hair because he needed an anchor on his spinning world.

That was when she got down to serious business.

Parker let her dictate the pace as long as he could, but then she did something magical with her tongue that took him nearly to the point of no return. He tried to pull back, tightening his hands in her hair, but she wasn’t having any of that. She took him all the way and he came hard, his groan echoing between the shower walls. Unable to stand, he sank to his knees in front of her and dropped his head to her shoulder while he tried to drag air into his lungs.

Twenty-three

Wrapping her arms around Parker, Zoe held on while the shower kept them warm as they both struggled to come down. When the water turned cold, he stirred. Reaching past her to flick it off, he wrapped her in a towel and then himself.

“Holy crap,” she said, feeling dazed. “That just gets more intense and more intense. Can you imagine what it’d be like a month from now? We’ll be dead. Death by orgasm.”

“I won’t be here in a month,” he said quietly. “Maybe not even next week.”

He was right, of course. Horrifyingly right. They didn’t have a future, and damn.

She’d almost forgotten.

Wishful thinking, she knew. Just as she knew something else. She met his gaze and found him watching her, following her train of thought, and God, her chest hurt. Afraid to make this too serious, she forced herself to go with a light tone, the lightest she could get as she gestured to the space between them. “Maybe we should keep some distance until you go. A foot seems about right.”

He rubbed the scruff on his jaw, clearly working up a smile, trying to match her tone. “You think a foot of space is enough?”

She smiled. “I think anything over about nine inches should do it.”

Parker laughed and she laughed, too, but it faded quickly.

The air between them crackled with tension.

“It’s all my fault,” she said as she searched out her clothes. “I started this.”

“It’s not your fault at all. I’m pretty irresistible when I want to be.”

Knowing he was trying to keep the light-and-easy thing going for her, she let out another laugh and shook her head. “And even when you don’t want to be,” she said. “The truth is I’m out of control when it comes to you.”

“Giving information to the enemy, babe.”

She clutched her towel to her chest and heard the truth escape her. “It’d help if you stopped.”

“Stopped what?”

She’d let her smile fade. “Looking at me,” she whispered. “Touching me, smelling so good . . . and breathing.” She offered a half smile, acknowledging the ridiculousness of the suggestion. “That would be really great.”

The corners of his mouth quirked slightly. “I’ll work on that.” He handed over her panties.

She shoved her feet into them and wriggled them on. Then she attempted to put on her bra, but it took two tries because it was tangled in her blouse. Frustrated, she tugged and tugged until Parker took them both from her fingers, righted everything, and handed them back to her.

Dammit. He was standing there quiet and utterly at ease in his own skin, and why shouldn’t he be. He was smart and sharp and funny and . . . perfect.

And he was leaving.

He was really leaving.

She kept telling herself that worked for her. She always had carried a bit of a trust issue, and she certainly hadn’t been looking for anything with him. But somewhere along the way, she wasn’t sure when, maybe when he’d hugged her silly dog for the first time, she’d started to trust him.

And now, as a direct result, she was falling for him. Only he had this expiration date, one that was flashing big, bright red warning signs at her with every breath.

Knees weak, she sank to the edge of the tub, unable to keep up any sort of pretense of having her shit together. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I thought I could do this, I really did. But I can’t.”

His smile vanished and his eyes went serious as he crouched in front of her, his hands on her knees. “I know,” he said just as softly.

“I mean, it’s good between us.” She gathered his hands in hers and let out a small, watery laugh. “Actually, it’s great. Which is what keeps tripping me up. I get all confused because my body’s emotionally invested and so my brain thinks it should be, too. It’s how I work, you know? But not you, which means you’re not The One. I wanted you to be, but you’re not, and I should’ve known from the very beginning because you weren’t the things on my list that The One was supposed to have. You’re all these other things like sexy and—”

He put a finger on her lips. “I know,” he said again.

She just stared at him and realized he wasn’t going to say anything else. He wasn’t going to dangle a carrot, or try to talk her into setting aside her needs for his.

Or tell her he couldn’t live without her.

Damn. She’d really sort of hoped for that, ridiculous as it seemed. Rising, she dropped his hands and dressed in silence, her throat getting tighter and tighter with each breath.

When she’d finished, he pulled her around to face him, waiting until she met his warm eyes.

“I wanted to be okay with this,” she said quietly before he could speak, and damn, her eyes threatened to fill.