She touched him.
She lifted her hand to his collar and smoothed it, then fingered the hair that brushed his collar. What she really wanted to do was grab him and pull him across the stick shift on top of her.
“What?” he asked, apparently seeing the indecision in her eyes. He took her hand from his nape, turned it palm up and pressed a very hot kiss to the center of it. Then, while she was still melting into a puddle, he lifted his gaze enough to capture hers and gently sank his oh-so-white teeth into the tender skin beneath her thumb.
If it was possible to climax from palm fondling, she would have, right then and there.
“Where to, milady?” he asked, still holding her hand.
She tried to speak, not that she had the faintest clue what she’d have said, but her throat had dried up.
“Outdoor recreation?” He flashed that grin again. “Or indoor?”
She swallowed hard. “I…indoor.”
His eyes went incredibly dark, and he tugged her hand so she leaned across the seat. He tucked his hand around her nape and pulled her the rest of the way, until she was almost sprawled into his lap. His kiss was hot and demanding.
Dear God, when she’d thought of him as a real man, she hadn’t known the truth of it. Men of her acquaintance didn’t have this kind of raw passion.
For the first time in her life, she wondered if she was enough. Raw enough to be able to satisfy him.
He must have sensed it, because he broke their kiss to say, “What? Do you want me to stop? Too fast? Too soon?”
She shook her head. “No.” She looked at him, and he brushed her hair from her cheek. It was little gestures like that that melted her heart. “But…”
“But what? You’re used to a more refined kind of courting?”
This time she didn’t take offense. Because he was right. “Yes, but that’s not it.” She shifted nervously, and again he smoothed his hand over her hair and face reassuringly. “It’s just that you’re so open and honest about what you feel, and, well, I’ve spent my life learning to curb my feelings, my passion, channel it all in appropriate directions. You…” She smiled. “You make me want to be inappropriate.”
“I have no problem with that.”
She stroked his cheek. “What if it’s not enough? If I’m not…enough?”
He laughed. “Trust me, Sunny. You’re enough. So much in fact, I’m drowning in you.”
His easy assurance thrilled her. But she said, “I’m not used to just letting it all go.” She let out a self-deprecating laugh. “I guess what it comes down to is I’ve always had polite sex.” There, she’d said it.
Nick laughed again, but there was affection in his tone. He pulled her mouth to his. “Well, we’re about to change that.” He looked into her eyes, his own smiling and confident and, most of all, wanting her. “Kiss me, Sunny. You kiss me. We’ll just take it from there.”
So she did. And realized that, with the right man, finding raw passion was not only possible, but wonderfully easy.
She framed his face, loving the slight bristle of his burgeoning five o’clock shadow. She loved the taste of him, too. His lips were full and warm and pliant. She felt his grip on her tighten as she dipped her tongue into his mouth, tentatively at first, then more deeply when she heard the moan in his throat. She felt it. Primal. That’s how this felt. And it was only a kiss.
Her body tightened as thoughts of where this was going began to fill her mind. Carnal thoughts that she desperately wanted to turn into reality. Right now. “Take me home,” she managed to say hoarsely.
He lifted his head enough to look into her eyes. “I’d like to take you to my home.” His voice was so rough, it all but vibrated her skin.
She nodded, understanding. Making love to her in his brother’s bed would not be her first choice, either.
HOW THEY MANAGED to get to his condo without totaling his truck or anyone else’s was a mystery. She couldn’t even remember most of the drive. He’d been doing amazing things to her knees with his fingertips, and she’d been tasting the side of his neck and discovering that his thighs were every bit as rock hard as she’d thought they might be.
She hardly noticed the building, other than that it was on a quiet side street. It felt like forever before he found his key for the lobby door. They raced each other up the stairs, and any awkwardness that might have happened at his door vanished when he leaned her against it and took her mouth in such a way that she was begging him to take her to bed. Or on the floor right here in the hallway. Whatever. She was out-of-her-head wild for him, wanting and needing as she’d never been in her life. It was exhilarating. Liberating.
He opened the door and they stumbled backward into his condo. She didn’t even take time to notice his decorating style or lack of it. Her eyes were only on him. He closed the door and kissed her as she leaned against it. His shirt buttons opened slowly beneath her fumbling fingers, as hers did beneath his.
“Wait, wait,” he said, as breathless as she was. “I’m not making love to you in my foyer.” His grin surfaced, and she took a deep, steadying breath. For all the good it did. “Not this first time, anyway.”
So much for getting steady.
“Do you want a drink or anything?”
She shook her head. “Just you. I just want you.” She took immense pleasure in the instant reaction she got from him. He pulled her close, then swung her into his arms, eliciting a squeal of surprise. “Really, I can walk,” she said.
“Really, I want to carry you. In fact, I just realized I’ve always wanted to do that.”
And she discovered she’d always wanted it, too. Who knew? It was every bit as romantic as it always looked in the movies. “I’m no little thing,” she cautioned.
He grinned and rested her hip against the cradle of his. “Neither am I.”
He carried her through a living room that passed in a blur of tans and blues and down a short white hall into a bedroom that was all navy walls and heavy oak furniture. Her eyes closed blissfully as he kissed her again while they tumbled into his bed.
9
NICK WANTED all of her beneath all of him as soon as possible. His hands trembled as he tugged her T-shirt from the waistband of her slacks.
She was shaking, too. He paused and gazed into her eyes. “Are you sure about this?”
She nodded, her eyes huge, her skin flushed and her lips wet and puffy from his kisses.
“If…if I do anything you’re not comfortable with, you have to promise you’ll tell me. Too fast, too hard, too slow, whatever. Tell me. Promise?”
She reached up to stroke his face. He felt his heart make a strange shift, as if settling deeper in his chest…and swelling. God, everything was swelling.
“Promise,” she said softly. She laid her fingers over his. “Let me do that.” She pulled her shirt up and off, revealing a lacy white bra.
“Like unwrapping a gift.” He stroked his thumb over the silk covering one distended nipple, then the other, enjoying the storm brewing in the depths of her blue eyes. His body jerked in response to her gasp and the light arch of her back. “You’re so damn exquisite,” he said roughly. “And don’t ever think your body isn’t honest or passionate enough. Look what it does for my touch.” He rubbed his thumb over the silk again, this time eliciting a moan from her. He dipped deeply into her mouth with his tongue, immensely gratified when she moaned even louder.
He trailed his lips across her cheek and down her throat. “I want to taste you, Sunny. All of you.” He opened the front clasp and let the flimsy material slide from her skin. She cried out when his mouth closed over her bared nipple, her fingers sinking into his hair. She was pulsing beneath him, and his body ached to feel the curves and length of her beneath him. But he resisted, possibly the hardest thing he’d ever done.
He continued his delicious journey of discovery as he undid her black work trousers and slowly slid them down her thighs until she could kick them off. “Matching white silk panties.” He
grinned at her. “How appropriate of you.”
She smiled, then stunned him by pulling him on top of her. “I don’t want to be appropriate.”
“Good.” He ground the word out.
She pushed at his shirt until he shook it off, then tugged his T-shirt from the waistband of his pants, but as he went to help her, she covered his hands. Her wicked smile gave him goose bumps. Intensely pleasurable goose bumps.
“My turn to undress you.”
“By all means,” he said, choking lightly on the last word as her hands slid beneath his T-shirt.
She stroked his nipples just as he’d stroked hers. His hips moved off the bed of their own volition. Dear God, that felt insanely good. “I don’t think…. No one has ever…” Whatever else he’d been about to say was lost in a long, deep growl of satisfaction as she yanked his T-shirt up enough to taste his nipples with her mouth. “Oh…”
“Is something wrong?”
“Only you stopping that would be wrong. Sweet Jesus, don’t ever stop doing that.”
He felt her grin against his skin. That did it. He yanked his T-shirt the rest of the way off. His pants were gone a second later.
She stopped him with a hand to his briefs. “Can I?”
He had instant visions of her mouth doing the same sort of discovery routine it had just performed under his T-shirt. He nodded weakly. “Oh, yeah.”
She whispered in his ear. “Now, you have to promise me you’ll tell me if I’m going too fast, too hard…or too slow.”
He could only nod.
She took her own sweet, excruciating time traveling south. By the time her fingers…and her tongue…reached his elastic waistband, he was about one second away from total loss of control. He wove his fingers through her hair and urged her up to his mouth. He kissed her hard and long, a venting of every need and want he had, too many even to count.
“Why did you stop me?” she murmured.
“One more second and we’d have been done before we began.”
“Next time?”
He thought his eyes might have rolled back in his head for a moment. Lord, what had he done to deserve her? “Did I mention I am enjoying your search to find yourself quite immensely?” he said.
She cupped him through his briefs, making his hips jerk. “Immensely is right.”
He tugged off his briefs, glorying in the sudden chill of the air against his heated flesh. It gave him the slightest of edges, a fraction of control. He slipped a finger beneath the thin strap holding her panties on her hips. “How attached are you to these?”
She looked both amused and amazed. “Not very.”
“Good.” With one tug, the strap was history. He slid her on top of him so she straddled him. Words were lost to them both when she settled over him. So hot and wet, he felt the surge coming over him again, rushing him right to the brink. He lifted her hips and was pressed against her when some semblance of reason came over him. “Protection.” He barely managed to grind the word out.
“Pill,” she gasped.
“Thank God.” He pulled her down on him, and their joint groans filled the room as he filled her. She pressed down on top of him, her knees clamped to his thighs.
He wasn’t going to last long, not this time, possibly not the next dozen times. He shifted and tucked her beneath him, then sank all the way inside her. She lifted her hips, moving with him instantly, easily. Unbelievably, the pleasurable tension wound even tighter. He felt the rush overtake him. His head was back, eyes squeezed shut as he began to give himself over to it.
But something wasn’t right. He felt alone all of a sudden, and it felt wrong, simply wrong. He managed to open his eyes, look into her face. And when her gaze met his and he saw what was in her eyes…then he came. Hard, almost crushing pleasure drove through him…and he never stopped gazing deeply into her beautiful eyes. He fell into them, as what he saw there was even more intense than the other sensations rocketing through him combined. It wasn’t just coming, the release itself, it was coming inside of her, and seeing the pleasure in her face. In every movement of her body.
She held him against her, bearing all his weight even when he tried to shift off her.
“Not yet,” she whispered. “Not yet.”
He was more than happy to comply. His head was reeling. What had just happened?
She was stroking his hair, his back. Then he felt warm, little kisses being pressed against his neck. And it was the most natural thing in the world to turn his head and take her mouth. Softly this time, almost reverently.
It shocked him to realize that this time, these moments, right now, were crucial in some way he couldn’t fully comprehend.
He turned to his side and curled her into him, twining his legs with hers. He pushed the hair from her face. “We’re not through yet.” He didn’t know why, but he had to make sure she knew that. She couldn’t leave him yet. Maybe not ever. Not until he figured out what had happened to him.
She smiled. “Okay.”
A sort of lassitude stole through him, and his feelings of apprehension diminished. She was here, she was his, for now. His grin came easily. “You’re not through yet.”
Her smile faltered. “Oh? And what am I not through with?”
“Discovering. Neither am I.”
“What do you have left to discover?”
Millions of things. Her every thought, idea and opinion, every last detail of her held enormous appeal. But right at this specific moment… “I want to discover what it feels like to make you come apart with the same intensity I just felt.”
Her eyes widened slightly, then went dark again. He saw, almost felt her swallow hard. “Well. Okay.” His heart slipped a notch. “I wasn’t complaining, but I suppose fair’s fair and all.”
Nothing was fair. If life was fair, this dream would never end. He would deal with reality later, maybe in another life.
“Fair’s fair,” he agreed. And with a smile, he slowly worked his way down her body with his mouth and hands until she was sheened with sweat and writhing beneath him, and to his shock, he was ready for her all over again.
There was no poetry profound enough to describe the taste of her on his tongue. She was sweet perfection. It should have been more awkward, this first time, learning her body, and yet he brought her to the brink almost effortlessly, simply taking his pleasure and all but drowning in the knowledge that it was her pleasure, too. When she went over the edge, his hips dug hard into the mattress of their own volition, the joy he felt in pleasing her almost as strong as the climax he’d experienced. He’d always thought himself a generous lover who took care of his partner, but this was on a different plane altogether.
He moved up her body. And when he locked his gaze on hers and sank fully into her again, the shattering emotions that rocketed through him when he realized the hot, slick wetness coating him was from both of them could not be denied. There was no explanation. The power of their union defied description.
He gathered her into his arms and held her. He wanted to tell her, wanted to make sure she knew that this had been no ordinary event for him. So far from it, it should have terrified him. Only it didn’t. A smile spread across his face as he allowed the joy of this moment to wash over him.
She snuggled more deeply into his arms, and he felt her smile against his chest. “You would have done well a few hundred years ago.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Meaning?”
She propped her chin on his chest and looked into his eyes. “Well, let’s just say, as explorers go, Lewis and Clark got nothing on you.”
He laughed and kissed the tip of her nose, then dropped another more lingering kiss on her mouth. Her eyes were all dark and dreamy again. He loved that. That his kisses did that. Contentment like he’d never known seeped into his veins. “I could spend every Saturday like this.”
“Whoa,” she teased. “Pretty hearty praise from a workaholic.”
“I’m not a workaholic. I know how to have a go
od time.”
“Boy, do you ever!”
He grinned, but persisted. “I am not all work and no play.”
“You do put in long hours, you’re in your office till the wee hours, and I’ve never known you to take a day off in the three weeks I’ve been here.”
“I take time off, just maybe not whole days at a time. I’m taking time right now, as an example.”
She sighed lustily. “For which I will forever be indebted to Louis.” She stroked her palm over his chest. “I know you enjoy your work, that it’s your life.”
“A life I like very much.”
“It’s obvious that it gives you as much as you give it, which is a great deal.”
He covered her fingers. “It’s not just dedication or an overdeveloped work ethic, though Lord knows Bennie and Sal drummed that into all of us from a young age. I’m not doing it for the success or because it’s family tradition.”
“Did you ever feel that pressure? To carry on the family business?”
“I guess, but it wasn’t really a problem, because I wanted to do it. I grew up in the restaurant and can’t imagine being anywhere else.”
“Had you wanted to do something else, what would your family have said?”
“There would have been disappointment, but I think they would have supported me if they knew it was what I really wanted, like we all support Joey in his career choice.” He laced his hand through hers and drew her fingers to his lips, kissing each one, until he had her full attention. “I’m sorry your family isn’t close like mine.”
“You’re lucky to have that kind of support. To know it’s just there for you.”
“Absolutely. I honestly can’t imagine what would have happened to me when my parents died if I hadn’t had Joey and even my sisters—though I’ll deny that to my grave.”
She smiled, but there was a sadness in her eyes that tugged at him. “I know it must have been hard for my grandparents to have to deal with the death of their only son and take on the care and responsibility of me. They never once complained, and I never once felt I was a burden to them. Far from it. I was everything to them, and they made sure I knew it.”
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