Carol slid down his whole body when he went to put her down on her feet, and they stood there for an aching moment while Keenan wrestled his baser urges back. “Carol,” he said, not sure how to explain what he was feeling.
“Trollme,” she invited.
Keenan grinned, before habit made him cover the teeth that he could, but Carol tipped her face up for his kiss anyway, and didn’t close her eyes in horror at the sight of them.
Neither of them had flipped on the overhead, but there was a vending machine in the corner casting a gentle light through the room, and Carol herself was glowing slightly.
The promised couch looked too narrow for what Keenan intended, but Carol pulled herself away and wrenched the cushions to the floor. That would work, and Keenan realized that the idea that someone might walk in was an exciting sprinkle of danger to an already-sizzling…
What was this?
It didn’t feel like a one-time hookup to Keenan. If felt like he’d been waiting for this woman, for this moment, for this place…well, maybe not this place. Carol was contorting herself trying to reach the zipper of her red velvet dress, and Keenan caught her hands, holding them both in one of his while he found the tiny zipper pull.
It took all of his hardwon dexterity, complicated by Carol’s soft noises of need and the way she squirmed in his grip, to unzip her, and Keenan did it more slowly than strictly necessary. It was in part to prove to himself that he was still capable of gentleness, and in part because, if the glow of her skin where he held her was an indication, she loved it.
And it was intoxicating to uncover her, to watch skin as it was slowly exposed between the slit of scarlet fabric. First it was just her shoulders, pale and round, and then the curve of her back, broken by the line of her bra, and then the dimples at her waist, then the swell of her hips, promising the ass beneath. The zipper caught and Keenan barely kept himself from ripping the rest off.
She turned lithely in his grip and the dress fell from her shoulders to expose the bra beneath.
It was utilitarian, a flesh-colored satin support garment that cupped her breasts and barely covered them, and Keenan sank to his knees so that he could kiss between them, catching Carol in both hands by the waist to a shower of sizzling sparks.
“Yes,” she cried, as he kissed her and licked her. She threw her head back in pleasure as he worshiped each in turn.
Then, to Keenan’s dismay, one tusk snagged the bra and got caught.
“Oh, er…” He was truly stuck, and Carol laughed, making the breasts in question bobble against him.
“Got you now, big guy!” she chortled, twining her fingers into his hair. “Mine forever.”
“I want to be yours forever,” Keenan wanted to say, but he had a tooth stuck in her undergarment, so it came out more like, “I aunt oo ee ores orver.”
Carol took pity on him and unclipped her bra from behind, lifting it off of her breasts and untwining it from Keenan’s traitor tooth.
If they had been magnificent in a bra, that was pale compared to what they were when freed. Carol was a goddess, and every part of her was generously built. Keenan cupped them each reverently.
“I am sohungry,” Carol hissed. Her dress was still pooled at her hips, and she reached around to find the zipper herself this time, slipping it down so that the skirt slid off the rest of the way.
If her dress was sexy, and her bra was pretty, her underwear was something else entirely.
“I didn’t exactly coordinate my wardrobe for doingthis,” Carol said as she looked down in chagrin. Her cheeks flushed.
They were cheerful cotton, a bikini cut, and the fabric was printed all over with bright green frogs and golden crowns.
“Someday, your prince will come?” Keenan heard the words as he spoke them. “I mean, I don’t know if I’m a prince, but I do plan on coming…”
5
CAROL
For the second time that night, Carol found herself laughing helplessly, and it made her realize how long it had been since she’d really, really laughed.
There had been polite chuckles to appease her boss and her coworkers, and once in a while television still surprised her into giggling, but it wasn’t much fun laughing in an empty apartment for a cat, and she never felt included in the work jokes. As a programmer, she wasn’t quite part of the IT team, and was too deeply a geek for the rest of the office.
And now, here was this great guy as nerdy as she was, with his big grin and polite demeanor (except for stealing her chair), and he said such sly and unexpected things that Carol couldn’t resist chortling.
And oh, was he sexy.
Carol had gotten his tie and shirt off, through sheer wiggly willpower, and he was made of ropy muscle and graceful limbs. His skin was textured, but not unpleasantly so; it was soft, with little curls of hair down his chest.
