His gaze slid over me and I shivered. Lips pressed together, he started across the room, footfalls soundless, like a predator after small, easily spooked prey, but he slowed when I reached behind my neck to loosen the ties of my sundress. I pressed the bodice against my sternum, too chicken to let the dress drop to the floor, even with my fuchsia bikini underneath.

“Your shirt,” I said, my voice raspy in the silent room. I’d meant to play music, light candles. But that was last night. Now my white linen drapes were pulled wide to reveal a blindingly blue June morning, all cloudless sky and gently rolling waves that shimmered as if millions of tiny mirrors floated faceup in the cerulean water.

Obediently, he reached behind his head and yanked his shirt off, tossing it onto the floor in his wake as he moved across the room, and my breath went shallow.

I’d seen Boyce Wynn shirtless hundreds of times. I’d watched him grow from a boy to a man. But filling my bedroom, a dangerous fantasy come to life, he was unknown—from the fully developed muscles other boys his age would willingly drug themselves with lethal steroids to get to the freckles darkening the smooth skin of his shoulders, trailing down his arms like smudges on a population map—densely inhabited deltoids moving to sparsely occupied forearms dusted with coppery hair.

Toe to toe, he stood a foot taller than me, one finger hooked in my loosened neckline. His lashes were dark except for the very ends, where they shone red in the daylight. “Let go,” he said. His drawled command was soft, like a suggestion. “I wanna see you so bad.”

I never imagined Boyce Wynn could speak so softly. I relaxed my grip on the dress, and it pooled at my feet.

His perusal of my bikini-clad body was slow and thorough. The tiny hairs all over my body rose, as if straining toward the touch he withheld. His eyes came back to mine and he arched a brow—dark, dark red, like his short hair. “Looks like I’ve got me some unpackaging to do.” His voice had gone gruff.

I swayed at his words, assailed by too many sensations at once. His hands were at my waist, anchoring me, and my palms seared onto his chest. His skin was soft and hot. I inhaled the scent of him—subtle but spicy, piney, like the forest his eyes evoked. A boy who grew up on an island of sand and palms and scrubby dune vegetation shouldn’t have a forest in his eyes.

His hands slid down over my hips and he pressed me close. Through his jeans, I felt the hard evidence of what he wanted pressed into my bare belly. If it feels that big still covered up… My breathing hitched at the thought.

One hand inched up my back and he untied the bottom string of my bikini top before sliding around front to stroke one breast, fingers teasing the nipple under the pink fabric. The mattress hit the back of my thighs as he pulled the upper string and the top came away. He stared while setting me on the edge of the bed, kneeling in front of me and pushing into the space between my legs. I watched, spellbound, as he lifted his chin and sucked a nipple right into his mouth, his hands beneath both breasts, cupping them as though weighing them.

My fingers forked through his hair. Soft and thick, it prickled against my palms. He stood then, lifting me, guiding my legs up and around his waist while his lips shifted to my neck, kissing and sucking gently. I grew dizzier with each lave of his warm tongue. One knee on the bed, he laid me back in the center and stood. I whimpered and he chuckled.

“I’m comin’ back, sweetheart. No worries.” He unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans. Shoved them down his thighs and off. “You first, or me?” he asked, hands at the strings of the board shorts he’d worn underneath the jeans. Through which a humongous erection was so, so visible.

“You,” I whispered.

He untied the shorts, loosened them, and they dropped to the floor. And oh, I was right. Given the size of the rest of him, I shouldn’t have been surprised. How would that fit? But his hands went to my hips, fingers hooking into the slivers of fabric on the sides of the pink bottoms, pulling them away, and there was no time to weigh the consequences of the disparity between us.

“You’re a dream come true,” he breathed, echoing my earlier thought about him, his fingertips stroking over my bare skin.

My eyes brimmed with tears at the wonder on his face—hadn’t this boy seen a hundred naked girls by now? I was horrified he might notice, but he was riveted in his examination. His gaze followed that tantalizing, dragging caress, every inch of my skin flaring up in response. As pleasure engulfed me, the breath in my lungs caught and released, and I closed my eyes, fists white-knuckle tight on my bedding. My hips twisted and my shoulders rolled against the mattress. I couldn’t lie still.

He moaned in response, his voice a growl of frustration. “My God, Pearl. You’re going to kill me.”

“How?” I asked, confused. If anyone would be rent in two at the end of this, it would be me. He moved between my legs and I stiffened, thinking, Condom?

He rose above me, turning my face with his fingertips. “You’re too smart a girl to have unprotected sex—and I know that. I’ll take care of you.”

There were multiple promises in those words. I was naked on my bed with Boyce Wynn—but he was going slow and promising to be responsible and hadn’t even kissed me yet. All my fantasies were being flipped on their heads.

“Kiss me?” I whispered.

He angled closer until his chest rested lightly on mine and then dragged himself higher, brushing my breasts with an incendiary friction that zipped straight to my core and forced a gasp from me. His mouth hovered inches over mine, his breaths deep while mine were shallow, erratic. I vaguely registered the feel of him as other—his body hard and heavy though he balanced his weight away from me.

Elbows on either side of my face, he stared into my eyes for a long moment before lowering his mouth to mine. Careful and measured, his kiss was everything I remembered. And then the first stroke of his tongue blazed through me, exploring the seam of my lips. I gasped again, drawing him in, my tongue swirling around his. Withdrawing, he teased my lips until they craved the spear of his tongue sliding between them.

I arched against him, wanting more, and he pushed back, his eager kisses plundering my willing mouth until I could scarcely breathe.

“God, Pearl,” he panted, “you’re gonna make me blow without being inside you—and that would be a goddamned shame.”

“Night table drawer.”

He didn’t have to be told twice. He was back in less than a minute, sheathed and ready, kissing me until I sank my nails into his back, and then he positioned himself and drove into me.