Brothers of Paradise Series

“You, mostly.”

“Really?”

He snorts. “Considering that nearly sixty percent of all my shots are of you, yes.”

“Show me.”

With his left hand, he grips the camera and starts flipping through images. They’re of me, standing underneath the waterfall in the swimming hole.

“It looks like something out of a travel magazine.”

His lips curve. “Good, since that’s what it’s for.”

“Too bad there’s an air-headed model ruining the picture.”

He puts the camera down. “You’re never going to let me live down that comment?”

“How could I?” I stroke my fingers over his cheek, over the faint stubble there. “Tell me what your dream photography trip would be like.”

He pushes me back on the couch, bracing himself with an arm on either side of me. A wet lock of hair falls over his tan forehead and I push it back.

“Documentaries,” he says.

“Documentaries?”

“Yes.” His head dips lower, our breaths mingling. “I’d need a team for that, one I could finance and direct. But that’s the dream project.”

I slide my hands up his arms, reveling in the strength there. “You haven’t shot one already?”

He shakes his head. “It takes time to build those types of connections.”

My fingers wander inside the sleeves of his T-shirt, smoothing up the skin. Something about his response is so right, and yet I wonder if he’s discussed that with many. If his nonchalance is a facade.

“What about your publishing company?”

“It can be expanded. Turned into a multi-media company.”

“You’re thinking big. I like it.”

He dips his head and kisses me, the touch gentle. Like he’s gauging where I’m at. So I tell him, wrapping my arms around his neck and pulling him closer.

He moves down my neck, my chest, to the very edge of the towel. “You’ve gotten tan lines,” he murmurs.

“Inevitable in the sun.” I slide my hand into the thickness of his hair.

Tugging at the towel, he inches it downwards, tracing the line across my breast with his lips. “It’s like a map,” he says. “Telling me where I need to go.”

“Because you couldn’t find your way otherwise,” I tease, and my reward is a sharp tug on the towel. It falls open to him, my breasts on full display.

Rhys grins crookedly. “You’re taunting me.”

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Shaking his head, he kisses down my body, stopping at each nipple to lavish them with attention. His other hand slides down my ribs, to the areas that are still covered by the towel.

And there’s no explaining what I do then, not in any rational way. The headiness of the moment is pounding through me, the feeling of being wanted and of finally wanting in return-of my body being an instrument of pleasure that I’m controlling.

His eyes on me are magic, and I want to preserve that gaze. So I push him back.

Rhys rises on his knees on the couch. “Ivy?”

I wrap the towel around me and hand him his camera. “Come on,” I tell him, heading to our private patio. The jungle is thick around the private pool, the lounge chairs. No one can see us but wayward monkeys in the trees.

Rhys stops a few feet away from me, camera in hand, eyes on me.

I let the towel fall.

He takes a long moment to speak. “Are you sure?”

And I love that I don’t have to explain this, that he gets it, that he’s here with me. I’ve been photographed in bikinis and lingerie before-what model hasn’t?-but never like this.

And this isn’t for a shoot. It’s not for anything else. It’s for me, and him. For us.

“I’m sure.”

His eyes burn, but the hands on his camera are steady as he pockets the lens. “Whatever you want.”

So I pose, normally at first, like I would if I were clothed. The humidity makes my skin hot, or perhaps it’s his gaze, burning even through the camera. I lean against the railing surrounding our patio. I hold a giant palm frond in front of me, and we both laugh at the silliness. “I’m Eve,” I tell him.

He shakes his head at me, but he lifts up his camera, still smiling.

And when he moves closer, when he asks me to sit down, to cross one leg over the other… I do it. I rest my head in my hands and close my eyes, surrendering to the experience.

Clothed in nothing but his gaze.

It’s an age later when he reaches out and grabs my hand. “Come,” he murmurs, pulling me inside. Stretching out on the bed, I lie down on my stomach and look at him. Because even though I’m looking at a lens, I know it’s him on the other end.

Twisting, pulling the cover half over me, I ask, “Will you be joining me on here soon?”

His finger goes still on the shutter. “I thought you’d never ask,” he says, and the voice he uses isn’t mocking or dry or amused. It’s hoarse with emotion.

I open my arms and he rises above me, tugging off his T-shirt. “So beautiful,” he whispers against my skin as he kisses his way down, as he worships me with his touch just as he’d just done with his camera. “Stunning.”

And just like the first time with him, the compliments warm me. They fill me up, expanding until I think I might burst from the heat. “Come here,” I tell him, pulling his face to mine. “I need you.”

He reaches down to circle that aching spot right at the apex of my thighs, and it feels so unbelievably good, but it’s not what I want right now.

“You,” I tell him, and Rhys doesn’t need to be told twice, because he curses into my neck. Pulls off his pants, the length of him free and resting against my stomach. My hands and mouth ache to explore that part of him further, to learn just how best to please him, but they’ll have to wait.