The hotel room in Lisbon had a bathtub the size of a small boat. Cleo had been in it for forty minutes.
She finally stepped out, pink and steaming. Jonah was waiting with a warm towel. He wrapped it around her shoulders and kissed the back of her neck, once.
“Lie down,” he said. “Let me.”
The bed was cool and crisp. She lay on her stomach in a pair of thin white cotton underwear, with the towel draped across her hips for modesty. He warmed oil in his hands for a long minute before he touched her. Then his palms came down on her shoulders, broad and slow, and she moaned into the pillow.
He worked down her back with long strokes, then slow ones. Then he paused, his hands simply resting on her lower back. She felt the heat spread out beneath them.
He moved to her legs and kneaded the backs of her thighs. He worked slowly upward and then stopped, always, an inch short of where she most wanted him.
“Tell me when,” he said in a low voice.
“Not yet,” she gasped, and her hips pushed back against his hands.
He drew his fingers along the very inside of her thigh, a feather’s weight, up and then away. Again. Again.
She was dripping now, her whole body one humming wire. Her breath came in short, hungry pulls, and she could no longer think.
“Now,” she said. “Now, now, now.”
He turned her over, gently. He laid one hand low on her belly and the other between her thighs. She arched into him with a cry as he found her, soft and swollen and slick. He stroked her with the same unhurried patience he had given her back.
It built like weather, a long, rolling storm. It broke over them both, and he held her through every wave of it. She lay limp as warm water on the sheets.
Afterward, she said into the pillow, “That was the long way round.”
“Best way,” said Jonah, and he pulled the blanket over them both.