Free A Brighter Spark (Xcite Romance) by Mary Borsellino

cheered as loudly as anyone, beaming at Daniel beside her and feeling as if she’d never stop.
    In the hotel room they ate strawberries, and kissed, and drank tall glasses of cold, good wine, and kissed again. The spa bath proved such an attraction that their fingertips and toes were wrinkled to pale little prunes by the time they were done with it.
    ‘Let me wash your hair for you,’ said Daniel. Even coming as it did from her lover, there was an intimacy to the offer that made Suzy blush. Nevertheless, she nodded, sinking lower into the bubbled waters of the tub so that he could more easily reach the top of her head.
    As with everything else he undertook, Daniel was measured and deliberate and gentle, massaging the small bottle’s worth of hotel shampoo into an even and fragrant lather over her scalp.
    He rubbed her shoulders too, his thumbs kneading into the tense knots of her muscles, somehow finding a way to slip between her defences and make tensions that she’d carried for years and years begin to ease.
    ‘Stop thinking so much,’ Daniel teased her in his calm, playful voice. Keeping her mind on the world and its millions of distractions proved harder and harder as Daniel managed to seek out and cure every kink in Suzy’s upper back. His hands were so warm and strong that it was impossible for her to entirely fight off the feeling that she could let go of the tight grip she held on her life, to trust him to catch her before she’d fall.
    She shaved him, when they were shampooed and scrubbed and wrapped in lush white bathrobes. Daniel’s five o’clock shadow was soft from the heat of the spa already, so Suzy didn’t have to worry about a hot towel or anything like that before she stirred the brush in shaving cream and lathered it carefully into his face. He stayed completely still as she did so, his eyes closed and a small, trusting smile on his lips.
    It was an almost breathtaking sensation, to have him bare his throat to her as she held a blade. Suzy had never considered herself to be somebody who cared about power or dominance or anything like that, but looking down at Daniel … The amount of faith he must have in her, to give her access to the soft and vulnerable parts of himself like that. It was a responsibility second only to motherhood, in terms of how daunting Suzy found the whole thing.
    ‘I love you,’ she blurted suddenly, then shut her eyes and winced. Her heart’s sense of timing for its greatest revelations left something to be desired.
    The light touch of his hand atop hers made Suzy open her eyes again.
    ‘I love you too,’ Daniel told her, as if it was the simplest, most obvious thing in the world. ‘And I’d kiss you right now, but you’d wind up covered in shaving cream.’
    That made her laugh, and she put the straight razor down on the edge of the sink and climbed onto his lap and kissed him, not caring about the shaving cream getting all over their faces and into their hair, not caring about anything in the world except how happy and complete she felt.
    They made it to the bed, eventually, but not before Daniel had found the light-blocking eye masks provided for them along with their bathrobes and chocolate mints.
    He slipped the satin mask down over her forehead, onto her eyes. Suzy’s vision was completely blotted out; she couldn’t even see the shift of light and shadow that would have been possible if her eyes were simply closed instead of covered.
    She gave a nervous, self-conscious laugh. ‘This is silly.’
    ‘Shh,’ he hushed her, kissing a light line down her throat and collarbones, his breath ghosting hotly over her nipples without his lips touching them.
    Daniel guided her steps back to the edge of the bed, then laid her out atop the silky cotton sheets. He used his fingers, lips, teeth, tongue, nose; nuzzling up and down Suzy’s inner lips as they plumped with heat and parted, moist and slick. He teased her clit with the very tips of his fingers, light enough