"Well?" he said.
She knew what he was asking, but she hadn't quite reached a decision. The virile sensuality that clung to him like a fragrance was quickly tipping the scales against anything remotely clinical.
"As much as I'd like to know whatever information you could tell me," she began with a nervous catch in her voice, "I don't believe I can accept your … your kind offer."
He shifted forward, bringing the recliner to a fully upright position and his bare feet solidly to the floor. Resting his muscled forearms across his thighs, he leaned closer to her, his gaze disconcertingly direct. "Why not?"
Warmth flooded her face. His nearness made it harder to put her reticence into words. "I'd be too embarrassed."
He didn't reply. He simply maintained a steady watch on her eyes, her lips, her expression, as if waiting for a revealing glimpse of the reasons she withheld from him.
"I know you're a doctor, and I'm sure you're a good one," she babbled, looking everywhere but at him, "and you've probably performed examinations on millions of women…"
"Maybe not millions."
"Whatever. I feel our relationship is too personal. And an exam would be too clinical."
"The exam would involve little more than a glance, Sarah."
"A glance?" She swallowed hard and risked a peek at him. "A glance at what?"
"Various areas of the body. First I'd check for obvious signs, like a scar from a cesarean section, or—"
"There's nothing like that. Or stretch marks, or anything. I've looked."
"Then the next place I'd check is the perineum."
She wasn't sure exactly what he meant, but, of course, she had a vague idea of the general vicinity.
Gently he explained, "Where babies make their entrance into the world."
Her embarrassment intensified, but she whispered, "And you would know if one had?"
"Pretty definitely."
She stared at him in agonizing indecision. "No," she finally proclaimed. "I can't go through with it. I'm sure you don't understand, but—"
"Actually, I do. You feel uneasy because we'd be skipping ahead in the natural progression that develops between a man and a woman." A familiar gruffness softened his voice. "That's what we are to one another, Sarah. Man and woman, not doctor and patient. And you know what else?" He leaned in closer, as if to tell her a secret. "That's the way I want it."
The sheer sensual force of his gaze kept her mesmerized, and breathless, and helplessly responsive.
"When I look at you," he said, "I don't see a specimen of human anatomy and all its parts. I see you, the woman I want. There's nothing clinical about it. It's personal," he whispered. "Very, very personal." His gaze settled on her mouth, and he swept his thumb lightly across it, sending tiny shock-waves through her. "When I look at you, Sarah, or touch you, I get turned on. I won't pretend otherwise."
Her eyelids dipped at the rush of sensuality that pooled warm and low within her. How could she think when he distracted her so with his stirring whispers and touches?
"Are you agreeing with me, then," she asked in a haze of disarming warmth, "that we shouldn't go through with the exam?"
He slid his hands along the outside of her thighs to her hips and pulled her forward in the chair, until her knees were imprisoned by his. "I'm saying," he whispered, his mouth very near hers, "that we should keep it personal. Come to bed with me, Sarah. Let me hold you, and touch you, and do whatever comes naturally. And somewhere along the way, in the natural progression of things, you won't be embarrassed at anything we do … or at any way I look at you."
Her pulse leaped, and she wanted badly to do what he was suggesting. But it hadn't been easy to stop him when they'd been kissing, and she didn't want to lead him on again. "Doesn't that 'natural progression' lead to lovemaking?"
"It doesn't have to."
"Until I know I'm not married, it can't."
She felt his muscles clench, although his gaze and his voice remained steady. "What makes you think you're married? There's not one shred of evidence that points to it."
"There's not one shred of evidence that points to anything about my past."
"Do you feel married? Do you feel you belong to someone else?"
"No. The very idea of marriage seems alien to me. So does lovemaking. What we were doing down there on the floor—" her whisper wavered "—the way you were kissing me, touching me, and how it made me feel…" She paused, searching for words. "I don't believe I've ever felt that kind of heat before."
His hands tightened at her hips and his chest expanded beneath his open shirt, as if he'd had to drag in a breath. "What are you afraid of, Sarah?" he implored.
"I'm afraid of falling in love with you."
Something deep and hot darkened in his eyes. "I run the same risk." The statement hovered intimately between them. "If you think we can save ourselves from that by not making love," he whispered, "then we won't make love."
The muscles of her throat constricted as she swallowed and forced herself to nod. If only things were different.
"We'll just … explore," he said.
"Explore?"
"We'll take our time. Get comfortable with each other. And along the way, we'll find out all we can about you."
Her heart tripped into double time.
He held out his hand to help her up.
The silence of the house roared in her ears as he led her to his bedroom, where she barely noticed the spaciousness, or the fireplace in the far corner or the masculine accents in warm autumn colors. The most dominant feature, at least to Sarah's eyes, was the neatly made, king-size bed.
He stopped beside it and turned down the Indian-print spread.
Slowly, then, he approached her. "You won't need this." She didn't contradict him as he untied the fastenings and pushed the robe off her shoulders. The silky peach fabric wafted to the floor. "And I won't need my shirt." He shrugged out of it, letting it fall beside the robe. "Or my jeans." He unsnapped them, but paused. His gaze pointedly met hers. "Will I?"
"I … I suppose not."
He unzipped the faded jeans and pushed them down his powerful legs, leaving his lean, muscular body clothed in only a pair of briefs. A wide, long swell of hardness strained against the white cotton.
"Are you sure this won't be unfair to you?" she managed to whisper, trying not to stare as heat prickled beneath her skin. "I mean … when we stop."
He approached her with a wry lift of his mouth. "If you're talking about my, uh, reaction—" he glanced downward, then slowly back up to her with hypnotic hazel eyes "—it's been a chronic problem since I met you. Don't give it another thought."
She sat down at the very edge of the bed, her knees shaky and her heartbeats erratic. She couldn't quite "not give it another thought." She found herself wanting to touch him; to feel the hardness with her hand and fingers…
"You're scared," he murmured, drawing closer.
"No. A little nervous, maybe."
He sat down on the bed beside her, the hair on his thighs and muscled arms glinting gingery in the lamplight. His natural scent, male and dangerously provocative, heightened a primal awareness within her. "Nervous at what we might find?" he queried. "Or what we might do?"
"Both." She felt her nipples hardening beneath the silk of her nightgown just from the slow, hot pull of his gaze.
"No need to be nervous, Sarah." The sound of her name in his low, rich, languorous voice touched her like an intimate caress. "The whole idea is to get comfortable with each other."
Comfortable. That didn't seem to fit her mood, or his.
"In the natural progression of things between a man and a woman," he continued in a throaty whisper, "first we'd gaze into each other's eyes." He turned her face toward his, and they stared deeply, silently. A hint of humor glistened through the sensuous warmth. "We do that quite nicely, wouldn't you say?"
An answering smile touched her mouth. "I'd say so."
"And we would talk, which we
've done pretty often. You can't deny that."
"We do talk."
"And then we'd touch," he informed her softly, "in casual ways. Like … this." He took her hand and wove her fingers through his. His hand felt large, warm, protective. "Or, this." He slipped a strong arm around her shoulders and nestled her against him. Beneath his velvet-smooth flesh, she felt his muscled strength and sensed an awesome power barely held in check. Her blood hummed in helpless response. "This doesn't bother you, does it?"
She shook her head, thoroughly distracted by his strength, his scent, his intoxicating nearness. "Then when we're feeling a little more adventurous, I'd kiss your hand, if you'd let me. Would you?"
She would.
He brought her hand up to his mouth. He kissed the back of it once, then twice. "Your skin's so soft." He brushed his mouth across her knuckles in a lingering sweep. Tingles traveled up her arm. Turning her hand, he breathed into her palm, "I've dreamed of tasting you, Sarah."
The silky hot glide of his tongue against her palm stunned her.
Closing his eyes, he moved his mouth along each of her fingers, swirling his tongue around them, then sliding down to probe the valleys. Keen sensations coursed through her and forced her lips to part in a silent cry.
When he reached her little finger, he slid it all the way into his mouth and sucked. A languorous heat began deep in her belly.
He lifted his face from her hand, and his gaze simmered with barely repressed longing. "I get a little jumbled here on what should come next," he whispered hoarsely, "but I'd say your arm, since it's so conveniently attached."
She watched in silence, her heart thudding and prancing as he kissed his way across her wrist and up her arm to its sensitive crook, where he licked and lapped and lightly bit.
She caught her breath, closed her eyes and let a soft, purring sound roll from her throat. If she'd ever felt such provocative sensations, surely nothing would have made her forget them! She felt herself tipping back against fresh-scented pillows as he mouthed a tingling path to the top of her arm.
He surprised her by licking the tender curve between her arm and breast.
She cried out at the ticklish yet erotic pleasure and squeezed her arm reflexively against her side. He'd shifted, though, and now nipped at the round crest of her shoulder. She laughed breathlessly and squirmed as he rubbed his abrasive chin on her neck.
"Say it again," he whispered against her ear, breathing into its delicate shell and nipping at its lobe.
"W-what?"
He gazed heatedly at her mouth. "Say 'Ahhh.'"
He'd said it like a sensuous sigh, and when she did the same, he slid his tongue along the inside of her lips, around the inner rim of her mouth, his head moving in a slow, circular path. With every pass he made, her sensitivity grew, until she groaned, caught his face between her hands and coaxed him in deeper.
He tangled his tongue with hers. The kiss quickly caught fire, and its heat engulfed them.
Connor's hands surged around every curve, hungry for the feel of her. He savored all he could through the interfering silk, then pushed the straps from her shoulders and the gown from her breasts. He filled his hands with creamy softness, circling her nipples with his thumbs, strumming across them until they strained in ultimate hardness.
She whimpered into his mouth and arched beneath him on the bed.
Feverishly he broke from their kiss and bent to her breasts, laving them with his tongue, sucking their rigid points, pulling at them with his lips. She cried out in groans and whimpers, clutching his back and shoulders, digging her fingers into his muscles.
Desire ripped through him. He stripped the gown off her, consuming with his eyes the beauty he uncovered. He hadn't expected perfection; hadn't needed it. But she was perfection, straight from a wicked fantasy—sleek, lean and incredibly lush.
He ran his hands freely over her, the fire inside him leaping as she arched and undulated beneath his long, rough, coveting caresses. He trailed his hands with his mouth, sucking in succulent tastes at the swell of her breasts, the flare of her hips, the taut curve of her abdomen.
She'd closed her eyes, he noticed. Her lips were parted. Her breasts rose and fell with her labored breathing, their pointed crests glistening from his ministrations. He'd never seen a sexier sight in his life, or one that affected him more.
With hands that trembled, he peeled the lacy edge of her panties down from her moist, hot skin and drove his tongue along a salty path above dark curls.
She gasped and groaned and undulated.
He throbbed with the need to rip her panties off, capture those maddening hips and drive himself deeply into her. The very force of that need jarred him back into awareness of what he was doing.
He was losing control. He'd forgotten about "exploring," and about the object of their mission—about everything except his raging need to have her.
But he couldn't have her. He'd promised to stop.
Shutting his eyes in an excruciating effort to rein in his desire, he pressed his face against the silk of her panties, damp and fragrant with the tangy, womanly scent of her.
Aroused all the more, he fought the urge to thrust his fingers inside, to pump them into her honeyed warmth and follow through with hard, explosive sex.
Instead, he gripped her mobile hips and pinned them to the bed. His heart thundered. His fever raged. "Sarah." He felt the sweat beading on his face as he panted and fought for control. "We have to back up. I think I skipped a few steps in the, uh, natural progression."
Tremulous panting punctuated her whisper, too. "Feels natural enough to me." He felt her heart drumming as wildly as his own.
He gritted his teeth until they hurt. He could make love to her, he knew. If he hadn't already seduced her into wanting it, he couldn't be far away. She was too responsive to resist for long; too hot and aroused.
"Doesn't the natural progression lead to lovemaking?" she'd asked. "Until I know I'm not married, it can't."
He softly, vividly, cursed. He hadn't set out to seduce her. He'd intended to find the information she wanted—a relatively simple matter. But somewhere along the way, another motivation had worked itself into his consciousness: to make her come, with his fingers and his mouth, again and again, until her fear came true. Until she fell in love with him.
Crazy to think that sex could make her fall in love, but she seemed to believe it could happen. Crazy for him to want her to fall in love … but he did.
And he'd never been one to swerve from a goal he'd set for himself.
With his blood throbbing in his temples and his arousal achingly hard, he yanked her panties in purposeful tugs down the curve of her hips, past glistening curls, down long, elegant legs.
The sight and scent of her naked beneath him fired him to the very brink of reason. With an impatience he couldn't help, he slid his hands up her satiny legs, gripped the undersides of her thighs and spread them. An involuntary growl reverberated in his throat as he leaned in and indulged.
Sarah gasped at the hot, wet glide of his tongue over highly sensitive folds. The intimacy of what he was doing shocked her, and she felt she should stop him.
She really should stop him…
But his eyes were closed in such intense concentration, his virile face beaded with sweat … and the lingering licks he lavished between her legs sent seductive pleasure dancing along every nerve ending in her body. His tongue glided along intimate ridges, then lashed across them in unexpected flicks that set her to trembling.
A pleasured sob escaped her.
He growled and plunged deeper—swirling, probing, sucking with a profound intensity. She cried out and closed her eyes, lost to the sensations coursing through her like molten rivers.
He shoved her leg over his muscled shoulder for greater access, then drove his tongue into her. She bucked up off the bed in a rigid arch. He gripped her hips and relentlessly pressed on.
A tear slipped from her eye and trickled past her ear to the pil
low; a keening sound issued from her throat. The sensations grew sharp and intense, building into an exquisite need … a clawing, ravenous need.
And when she thought she could take no more, his finger pushed inside her, hard and large and invasive.
Her gasp mingled with some hoarse utterance of his as a climax ripped through her body. Wave after wave of white-hot pleasure broke and frothed within her.
He kept his finger inside her as she tightened around it, trapping him in a vise-like hold between her thighs.
They remained that way for a breathless eternity before he cautiously withdrew his finger. The withdrawal itself caused quivers and shivers of reaction.
He disengaged himself from her thighs and caught her to him in a hard embrace. She trembled, panted and curled against him, stunned by the intensity he'd invoked.
"Sarah." His hoarse, tremulous whisper reverberated against her temple, sending shivers down her spine. He sounded every bit as shaken as she. He tightened his arms around her, his heart hammering. "You're a virgin."
It took a moment for the information to penetrate her post-orgasmic haze.
"A virgin," he repeated.
The concept didn't surprise her as much as it seemed to surprise him, but the ramifications unfolded for her in exceedingly slow motion.
"Are you sure?" she whispered, almost afraid to believe.
"Very."
Her mind whirred with realizations.
Connor shifted her onto her back and raised himself above her. A poignant relief clouded his eyes and crammed his chest to overflowing. "You're not married, Sarah. You can't be married."
"I'm not married," she acknowledged in a tone of discovery.
"And of course, you've never had a baby. You've never…" His throat closed up and he forced out a harsh breath. He wanted her so badly he wasn't sure he'd be able to breathe at all.
Gladness blossomed in her eyes and shimmered on her lips. Because he couldn't possibly stop himself from kissing her, he pressed a carefully restrained kiss beside her mouth, and another on her fine-boned jaw.
"Am I still a virgin?" Her skin heated beneath his lips. "Even after what we just did?"
SAY AHHH... Page 9