Under a Vampire Moon (15 page)

“I have something of an allergy to the sun,” he excused himself.

“Should you be out here then?” she asked with concern.

“So long as we’re in the shade, I’m good.”

“Hmm. You aren’t going to be comfortable out here in jeans and a T-shirt, though. It’s too hot. Maybe we should—” Her voice died abruptly as he stood and quickly removed his T-shirt. Her eyes widened. She’d thought his tight T-shirts pretty much gave away what his chest would look like naked, but she’d been wrong. He looked good in the T-shirt, but he was a bloody Adonis without it.

When Christian undid his jeans and began to push them off his hips, she tried to tear her eyes away, but it was just impossible. She watched avidly as he stepped out of them to reveal a pair of loose, black swim trunks. His legs were as impressive as his torso. The man was built like an athlete, all rippling muscles and taut olive skin. He must be popular at gay bars, Carolyn thought, but frowned as she noted that his impromptu striptease had drawn every female eye for a hundred yards.

“Damn, Christian, you’re likely to cause a riot on the beach doing that,” she said with disgust.

“What?” he asked, glancing around with surprise.

“Never mind.” Carolyn glanced around again to notice that some of the women were now enviously looking her way. If they only knew. “You should have grabbed a lounge chair before stripping. Do you want me to get you one?”

Christian shook his head, and unfurled a large beach towel next to her chair. “I’m good.”

“Hmm.” She watched him stretch out. When he turned his head and smiled, she automatically smiled back and then returned her gaze to her book, thinking it was a shame she’d never dated anyone as attractive as him when she was younger. Every woman should get to enjoy such male beauty at least once in their life.

Her mouth quirked. She’d actually been asked out by such a man once during university. Well . . . the term “asked out” was a bit misleading, she supposed. He’d walked up and started talking to her on one of the rare occasions when it had just been the three girls out. Amazed that such a good-looking—translated: hot—guy was paying her such attention, she’d hung on his every word for the full three minutes it had taken before he’d said, “I’d love to have breakfast with you. Your place or mine?” Carolyn had shrunk from the offer like the virgin she’d been at the time, but now wondered how her life might have turned out had she accepted it.

It might have ended up different, or it might have wound up the same, Carolyn supposed. Really, regrets were a waste of time. You simply couldn’t change the past. The present and the future were all you had to work with.

“What are you reading?”

Carolyn glanced to Christian. He was lounging on his back, his hands under his head and smiling at her easily. She turned the cover for him to read. “It’s very popular at the moment, but I’m finding it a bit slow myself; too much about German politics, at least at the beginning. Hopefully the story picks up soon.”

“Let me know if it does. I’ve got that at home on my TBR pile,” he admitted.

“Really?” she asked, eyes wide.

He arched an eyebrow and asked, “Why so surprised? Did you think the only thing I could read was music?”

Carolyn chuckled. “Well, you
are
a rocker. I thought all you guys did was party and have sex.”

Christian snorted. “You’d be surprised. It’s been a long time for me, and I don’t even remember when Santo and Raffaele last had a lover.”

“And Zanipolo and Gia?” she asked.

“Gia hasn’t for a long time either. Zanipolo, on the other hand, is something of a slut,” he informed her.

Carolyn grinned. “He is, is he?”

“Yes,” Christian assured her, and chuckled. “And he was very upset to learn that he was the one you first thought must be the homosexual in the band when Gia was talking to you.”

Carolyn stilled. “I didn’t tell Gia that’s who I suspected was gay.”

Christian’s grin froze, and then he relaxed and shrugged. “Perhaps she was teasing him then.”

Carolyn frowned. It must be the case, of course, because she hadn’t spoken her thoughts aloud . . . still . . . Still what? It wasn’t like Gia could read her mind. She must have just been teasing Zanipolo. It was a coincidence, she thought, and then, realizing what Christian had said, asked, “So Zanipolo knows you’re gay?”

His gaze flickered. “Zanipolo knows my sexual preference.”

“Oh. Does anyone else?”

Rather than answer, he sat up abruptly and glanced around until his eyes found the small drinks shack in the middle of the crowded beach. “Do you want a drink? I’m thirsty.”

“I am kind of thirsty,” she admitted.

Christian immediately dug his wallet out of his jeans pocket and loped away across the sand. Out into the sun, she noted, worrying about his allergy. Fortunately, it was a slow moment at the booth and he was back quickly with two margaritas.

“It’s kind of early for alcohol, isn’t it?” Carolyn asked as he bent to give her one of the drinks. By her guess it wasn’t yet noon. Maybe 11 a.m.

“I didn’t know what else was good,” Christian said with a shrug as he settled on the sand next to her. “One shouldn’t hurt us.”

“Hurt us, no,” she agreed. “But I’ll probably fall asleep.”

“Considering neither of us got a full night’s sleep, that doesn’t seem a bad thing. A little nap in the shade sounds good to me.”

Shrugging, she sipped her drink. It really was good, cold, tangy, refreshing, the perfect drink for a hot, sunny day with a book.

“Do you think Beth will feel better by tonight?” Christian asked, sipping his own drink.

“Probably not. Why?”

“Julius wanted to know for the reservations,” he explained.

“The reservations?” Carolyn asked uncertainly.

“For dinner.” Seeing her blank expression, he reminded her, “Dinner and dancing tonight. Dinner before we play our set, dancing in town after?”

“Oh, right.” She’d forgotten that business from last night. But now supposed that meant she could expect kissing or nuzzling to take place tonight to convince his family they were witnessing a blossoming love affair. The thought made her raise her glass, but she remembered about brain freezes at the last moment and only sipped the drink.

“It’s just one night,” Christian said quietly. “I’ll book tours and dinners for the rest of the week to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Carolyn nodded at the reassurance and took another swallow of her drink.

“Do you have any tours you’re particularly interested in?” he asked.

Carolyn shook her head. “I don’t even know what’s available. I know we’re booked for a market shuttle and Bethany booked us for the day sail up the coast to see a drive-in volcano and a cocoa plantation. But other than that, I’m clueless when it comes to what’s available.”

Christian tossed back the last of his quickly melting margarita and stretched out next to her again. “I’ll grab a pamphlet when we go to lunch and we can check out what’s available while we eat.”

Carolyn nodded and drank the last of her own drink, then set the empty glass in the sand beside her seat and lay back to open her book again. But she was smiling now, she noted. It was a comfortable, relaxed smile. She wasn’t alone.

“C
ara?
”

“Hmmm?” she murmured sleepily, blinking her eyes open to find she’d turned onto her stomach on the lounger. The sun had moved in the sky and their shade had slipped away. She was now lying out in the open, the sun beating down on her. She was hot and sweaty, the skin of her back sizzling under the midday sun.

“You’ll burn. You need lotion.”

Christian’s voice from her other side made her lift her head and turn to peer at him. He sat, one hip perched on the edge of her lounge chair, and was still in only his swimming trunks, but now held a bottle of lotion in his hand. Opening the bottle, he squirted some into his palms and then let the bottle drop to the sand.

“Should I put some on for you?” he asked, rubbing his hands together to spread it over his fingers.

Carolyn opened her mouth to say no, she’d do it, but bit off the sound before it was even quite formed when he bent to run his hands over her back. The way he massaged the cream into her back and shoulders should have been soothing. She was pretty sure it would have been with anyone else, but it just wasn’t with him. Her skin tingled everywhere his hands moved and rather than relaxing, she found herself growing tenser under his touch. Biting her lip, she closed her eyes and tried to force herself to relax, but it was impossible. Gay or not, he was a handsome, sexy guy and he smelled damned good.

“You’re getting a tan line.” He’d leaned forward to speak, his naked chest pressing warm and hard against her equally naked back and his breath soft against her ear. “Shall I undo your bathing suit top?”

Carolyn blinked her eyes open with alarm at the suggestion, and then wondered with confusion when she’d removed her T-shirt and shorts to reveal the bathing suit she’d worn beneath. She’d been too self-conscious to do so when she’d first arrived, but now her clothes were gone, her bathing suit her only covering. A tug on the string at her back dragged her attention from this concern to another as her bathing suit top fell away to pool on the lounger on either side of her, leaving her back completely bare, and her sides exposed. It wasn’t indecent or anything, her breasts were still squished beneath her on the lounger and hidden, but it made her feel oddly vulnerable, and then Christian bent forward to whisper in her ear again.

“
Hai la pelle bella, cosi dolce
.” His voice was husky and soft, his hands running down her back, sliding toward her bathing suit bottom. “
Ritiene buon sotto le mie barrette
.”

“Hmm?” Carolyn mumbled with confusion, not understanding what she presumed was Italian.

“You have beautiful skin, so sweet,” he translated, his hands massaging and kneading her lower waist. “It feels good under my fingers.”

Carolyn stilled with surprise, but bit her lip as his hands slid from her back to her sides. His palms were against her sides, but the tips of his fingers curved under her waist just above her bathing suit bottom and glided upward. She gasped when they brushed the bottom of her breasts, then the sides of them as his hands continued upward dragging his fingers along. Carolyn didn’t breathe again until his hands slid back down.

She let out a small breath of relief as they moved to her waist again, but then Christian shifted and his hands skipped over her bathing suit bottom to find the flesh of her upper legs.

Surely he had to stop and get more lotion now, Carolyn thought, almost desperate for a moment without his hands on her. Her body was tingling everywhere he touched, but also in places he wasn’t touching as his fingers cruised down to her calves and ankles. He then shifted both hands to her left leg for the upward journey, one hand strong and firm on the inside of her ankle, the other outside, his thumbs sliding up the back as his hands made their way up her calf.

Carolyn felt herself tensing. She didn’t care if he was gay, there was just no way to lie still and unfeeling with his hands traveling over her body. She wanted to ask him to stop, but didn’t think she could speak to save her soul as his hands moved toward the apex of her thighs. She was tightening like a wind-up clock, and Carolyn bit her lip almost hard enough to draw blood as she fought not to squirm.

Much to her relief, Christian paused just short of the top of her leg, and then his hands shifted to her other leg to travel slowly down that one. This time, however, on their upward journey he allowed them to ride all the way up, and her breath left her on a gasp as the hand on her inner leg brushed lightly against her bathing suit bottom between her legs.

“Christian,” she choked out in protest as her body responded to the grazing touch, and then his hands were on her back again, sliding out from her spine to her sides. Carolyn let her breath out slowly, her head turning to search the beach, widening when she saw they were now alone, the beach littered with nothing but empty lounge chairs. The sight confused her. Where had everyone gone? It was close to lunchtime, but surely they hadn’t gotten up en masse to hit the restaurants?

“Such pale skin,” Christian murmured as his fingers slid along her sides, moving upward. “So beautiful.”

The words sounded by her ear, his breath hot on her already heated flesh, and she started to turn her head toward him and then froze as his tongue suddenly slid along the outer edge of her ear before he claimed the lobe with his lips.

“But you’re gay,” she choked out with confusion as he began to suck on the lobe, sending a new wave of tingles through her.

Hands pausing halfway up her sides, he released her lobe and growled, “No. I’m not,” and then while she struggled to accept that, his lips drifted to her neck, nibbling and kissing, sending shudders rushing through her body as his hands continued up her sides again.

“Give me your lips,” Christian whispered as his hands paused, the sides of them just grazing the undersides of her breasts.

“Christian, I don’t think this is a good—” Her words died on a gasp as his hands suddenly curved under her breasts. He squeezed gently, and then raised her away from the lounger so that he could reach and cover her mouth with his.