How to Love (26 page)

He kissed Jules and she hugged him tightly around the neck before climbing back into Carlos’s Honda CR-V.

“I have a feeling I’m going to die tomorrow,” she said. “My legs feel like rubber.”

“You might feel it a little.”

“I should work out more.”

“Hmm. We’ll work on that.”

She laughed. “Not
that
kind of workout.”

“Now remember what I said about rewards? Huh? Doesn’t it feel good? A sense of accomplishment? Power?”

“Yes, I do. You were so right, Carlos.”

“It’s an amazing feeling. When you’ve conquered a fear like that, you feel like you can do anything.”

“Well. I don’t know about that.” She grinned. “But I do feel good about it. The rock climbing…”

“You can do it. Right?”

She nibbled her bottom lip. “Okay. Right.”

After a fun lunch at a little place on the pier, with a lot of teasing and laughter, she made him take her home to get her own vehicle, even though he said he or Mike would pick her up later. When he let her out, he headed back to the office to get ready for the next day’s tours.

Wow. She’d trusted him enough to do that and that was huge. It made his heart ache. Trusting someone made a person vulnerable and she didn’t like that. But trusting him to help her climb a wall, or even a rock face, despite the fact that hell yeah, there were risks, was really insignificant compared to trusting them with her heart. But it was a step. Definitely a step.

Giving that to her had been as much of a rush as climbing was, or jumping off a cliff hanging from a glider. His feelings for her were getting deeper and deeper, and he knew Mike’s were too. Her easy acceptance of their relationship had charmed them, but even more than that, her excitement and pleasure at being with them had blown them away. She was amazing. They’d never met a woman like her and he was almost afraid to let himself hope.

The guy who wasn’t afraid of anything was afraid to hope.

Jules had her studio set up for the photo shoot that weekend. She wanted to do something different, since she had the both of them there. She’d struggled to come up with a different location but had ended up just going with the studio. She still wanted one or both of them nude on the rocky beach, but for now this would do. She’d considered using Mike’s bedroom but that would involve hauling a lot of equipment to their place. That could still be a possibility another time.

She’d use the brick wall and arched window in her studio for some of them, and the draped black fabric background for others, as she had for Mike. Excitement curled inside her, thinking of the images she would capture, how she wanted to do this.

She’d arrived earlier than them and when she heard their heavy steps on the stairs, she hurried over to the door to greet them.

“Hey!” she said with a smile, clasping her hands together. “You’re here.”

“We are.” Mike dropped a kiss onto her forehead and Carlos grabbed her and kissed her cheek. “Should we strip down?”

“No.”

He lifted an eyebrow.

“Seriously,” she said. “I…” She hesitated. “If this is okay with you, of course…I want you to undress each other while I take pictures.”

They exchanged a glance. “If it’s okay with us,” Carlos repeated in a low voice. “Aren’t you in charge of this, doll?”

She lifted her chin. “Yes. I am. But I know you both are hesitant about doing this.”

“Not me,” Carlos said, spreading his arms wide. “Do what you want with my body. I’m easy.”

She giggled. “Oh yeah, I forgot. Okay. Come over here by this window.”

“Wait. What? A window? I’m easy, but not that much of an exhibitionist.”

“No one can see in the window,” she said. “And I don’t want you directly in front of it. Just like this.” She positioned them slightly to one side, then peered through her camera set up on the tripod. She took a quick picture. “Just a test,” she murmured, studying the preview screen. “Okay.”

She looked up at them. “I’ll probably get your faces in some of these, but don’t worry, I’ll crop them out or discard those ones. What I want you guys to do is just get into it…kiss each other, touch each other, make it natural. You two are beautiful together. Then start taking each other’s clothes off. I might stop you, ask you to change position, move your hand or something like that but I’ll try not to be too intrusive. I want to capture real emotion.” She hesitated again. “Um…hopefully.”

She caught Mike’s eye and the faint hint of apprehension there. She knew this wasn’t as easy for him as for Carlos. “Relax,” she said to him softly. “It’ll be good. Right?”

He nodded and turned to Carlos.

She watched as he framed Carlos’s face with his hands and brought their faces together for a kiss. Mike tilted his head, deepened the kiss and Carlos set his hands on Mike’s waist. They’d both dressed in jeans and plain T-shirts as she’d requested. Then Mike lifted his head and looked at her.

“Feels a little weird,” he said.

“I’m sorry.” It probably was weird. “Is there anything I can do to make it better for you?”

“Come and join us,” Carlos joked. Mike laughed.

She smiled. “Don’t think I don’t want to.”

They turned back to each other and kissed again, this time Carlos sliding his hands up under Mike’s shirt. She let out a soft sigh as the kiss went on. Then once again they pulled apart to look at her. “You gonna take pictures, doll?”

“Oh!” God, she’d forgotten what she was supposed to be doing, that warm melting feeling down low inside her completely distracting her. With a quick smile she returned to her camera and started shooting.

It was hard to keep herself distant from it, from the scene unfolding in front of her, so tender and sexy and beautiful. So very hot. They kissed for a long time, Mike tipping Carlos’s head up so he could kiss his jaw, his neck. They rubbed their noses together. Their tongues met, licked, stroked over bottom lips before mouths joined again. Her heart lurched a little when Mike gave Carlos a push backward, up against the wall right beside the window. She flicked the lever on her tripod’s quick release and grabbed her camera off it so she could move with them.

Carlos’s palms went flat against the bricks as Mike crowded him against the wall and kissed him harder, and Jules shifted to the side and moved in closer, capturing Carlos’s hand, Mike’s bent arms holding him there, their mouths, Mike’s shorter golden scruff of whiskers pressed against Carlos’s longer, darker beard as they kissed deeply. Then she moved back and continued photographing as Mike slid his hands up under Carlos’s shirt, pushing it up. He bent his head to kiss Carlos’s chest, flicking his tongue over a nipple.

“Hold that,” she requested in a throaty voice. “Just stay like that…” She clicked off several more images. “Okay.”

Shirts came off, jeans were unfastened and sank low on lean hips, pelvis pressed to pelvis. Beautiful. Mike’s hands slid up to the sides of Carlos’s neck, his thumbs on his jaw, his head back so Carlos kissed his jaw, and Carlos’s hands slid into the back of Mike’s jeans. Once again, heat flashed beneath Jules’s skin and her heart picked up pace as the jeans were pushed lower…and lower…revealing the top curves of Mike’s firmly muscled ass.

She paused to swipe some sweat off her forehead and drag air into her lungs. This was harder than she’d thought. Usually she could step outside and look at the scene as if it were simply a landscape, but this was too personal, too moving.

She moved around them shooting, excitement building and pulsing inside her, not just sexual excitement, but creative excitement, that adrenaline rush she got when she was doing something really good. Amazing. It was amazing. Energy buzzed inside her.

When their jeans had dropped to the floor and they’d stepped out of them, she called a halt for a moment. They both looked at her with somewhat glazed eyes. Her gaze tracked down over bare chests to their surging erections. “Wow,” she breathed. “Okay, sorry to interrupt but now I’d like to move over there.” She indicated the draped mattress she had set up beneath another set of lights. “And…we need to do this.” She picked up the bottle of baby oil she’d last used with Mike.

Mike smiled at her and moved toward her, completely naked. “You gonna help us with this, baby?”

“Um…you can do each other,” she said.

One eyebrow rose again in that sweetly endearing way he had. She choked on a laugh. “Okay, not that way. Not in front of the camera anyway.”

He popped open the lid and even though it hadn’t been her intention to photograph them putting oil on each other, she fired off a few shots anyway, because their hands sliding over each other’s bodies like that was so very sensual. She focused in tight on specific body parts—a hand on a flank, a buttock, a chest.

Once done, they moved toward the bed. “What do you want us doing, Jules?” Mike asked, his voice raspy. “Lying down? Sitting?”

“Um…I was thinking you could get on the bed on your knees…both of you…one behind the other.”

They did as she asked, Mike behind Carlos, both of them on their knees, Carlos bent over with his hands planted on the bed, Mike leaning over him and kissing him. Mike’s hand slid around Carlos and down to his groin, his chest pressed against Carlos’s back, and he stroked Carlos’s cock. Then Carlos rose upright on his knees and grabbed his own cock, and Mike’s hands wandered up his chest, flicked his nipples. That position displayed Carlos’s body so perfectly, his lean waist and hips, his ripped abs and muscled chest all gleaming and defined. Carlos let out a long groan, his eyes closed, and Jules caught that in a shot, even though she wasn’t supposed to be shooting their faces. The look of ecstatic pleasure on his face was just so powerful, though.

Carlos leaned back as Mike’s arm came up to his face and pulled his head back and around so he could kiss him again, and their mouths ate at each other in hard, devouring kisses, more urgent than earlier. Carlos lifted his own arm up and curled it around behind Mike’s head, his biceps bulging. Mike’s hand on his face held him as he kissed him, and then Mike’s hand slid down Carlos’s belly, slowly, lower, until it rested just above his cock.
That
was beautiful. She closed in on that image, swallowing hard.

She got more shots of them laying down, wrapping arms and legs around each other, stroking each other’s bodies. Four masculine legs twined together. Four big hands touching each other. And then she ran out of steam, emotionally exhausted, physically tired and so turned on she could hardly stand it. She set down her camera and dropped to the mattress beside them, her head in her hands. “Okay,” she wheezed. “I’m done.”

“Oh, baby,” Mike said, rolling toward her. “You okay? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m fine. I’m just done. And…” She lifted her head and met his eyes. “I want you to fuck me. Really bad.”

Chapter Eighteen

Jules watched Carlos climbing the wall of rock and her insides tightened with a painful cramping. “Jesus,” she whispered. She covered her mouth with her hands.

She and Mike stood on the beach in the sun while Carlos went up first to get things set up. Mike held the belay rope for him. “He’s okay, Jules.”

“I know.” She tried to sound casual and unconcerned but holy crap, her heart was in her throat, making it difficult to swallow, difficult to even breathe.

“You’ve watched him climb before.”

“Yeah.”

She’d watched him a couple of times when they’d taken her along on tours so she could take pictures, and all she’d done was laugh at him, shake her head at his recklessness even while she admired his bravery. But now…now she was a mass of buzzing nerves, trembling inside and out. What if he fell? Jesus, that was
rock
! It would break bones, possibly split his skull open. Jesus.

“Those were harder climbs than this. This one’s an easy one. It’s not even straight up.”

“I know.”

She kept agreeing with him even though inside she was imagining horrific scenarios of pain, injury and death. Look how high he was!

“You’re going up there too,” Mike reminded her.

She nodded, her insides clenching even tighter. Dear God, what was wrong with her?

“We’ll be watching out for you.”

“I know.” He thought she was afraid for herself. Oh man.

She licked her lips and forced a smile.

“Off belay!” Carlos called down.

“Belay off!” Mike called back. He looked at Jules. “He’s up there and safe. Your turn.”

She nodded and Mike helped her into her gear and double-checked as Carlos had. “You two are a good climbing team,” she said to him.

“Yeah. We’ve done it lots.”

“Was it scary for you to learn?”

“Well. Yeah.” He kissed her mouth. “I’m not afraid of heights, but it was still a challenge. Carlos is good that way, though.”

“You’re good for each other.”

“Yeah.” He smiled at her. “Okay, up you go. I’ll wait here for you guys so I can lower you down.”

With her camera gear in a small pack on her back, she focused on the climb, remembering all the things both Carlos and Mike had taught her, remembering to use her legs. She didn’t look down, even knowing Mike was there, holding her safe with the rope, even though she wanted to see him, his warm eyes and reassuring smile. She focused on moving over the rock as they’d told her. Her muscles strained, her fingertips throbbed a little, and then she was face to face with a grinning Carlos, and he was pulling her up onto a flat surface of rock.