Further down went the drift of her gaze until it came to a rest—on his cockstand. There was simply no denying it.
A dusky blush pinking her cheeks, she bit her bottom lip between her teeth—and he knew. Her cheeks weren’t rosy from embarrassment or shyness, butdesire.
What she saw, she wanted.
She wantedhim.
Her gaze lifted and found his. He met wanting there, naked and raw.
“May I?” she asked.
Who was he to deny this woman anything?
His eyes fast on hers, he nodded.
Her attention turned toward the towel covering his lower half, and her hand slipped beneath. Uncertain fingertips touched his calf, and a bolt of heat lashed through him. His eyes closed, and he allowed himself tofeel. It had been so long since a woman—thiswoman—had touched his body. He’d closed himself off from that want, knowing he would never have it again—a woman touching him, not out of duty of care, but out of desire.
Butthis… He couldn’t close himself off from it.
Her fingers wrapped firmly around his calf, and he sucked in a sharp breath when she began to knead the muscle. Her brow knitted with concern. “Is it too much?”
Too much?
No such thing when it came to Artemis.
He shook his head.
Her hand moved along his calf, higher, as she gave her all into the massage … over his knee … onto his thigh. Deeper, she dug into dense muscle, working and loosing two-year-old knots. As much as he wanted to sink into this feeling of pleasure and release, the call of a different sort of pleasure and release pulled at him.
Could a cock burst from wanting?
It was possible he would find out tonight.
Before he sank irretrievably far down into these thoughts, he opened his eyes in the hope reality would cool fantasy.
The view did nothing to temper him.
It only threatened to ignite ember into flame.
With her exertions, Artemis’s robe had fallen open into a V down her décolletage. Impossible to ignore was the tendril of long, sable hair that led the eye toward the sway of round breasts that promised to have grown only more delectable in the years since he’d last tasted them.
He’d experienced desire too many times in his life to count. So, too, had he quenched desire nearly as many times. But this desire was like none other.
He wanted Artemis.
Of course, he wanted her.
But this wanting … He might die of it.
Unable not to, he reached out, a tremor within his fingers, and touched fingertips to her face in a light caress. She stilled, and her eyes drifted shut. He was feeling feminine downy softness, and she was feeling masculine calloused roughness.
They were unified in the feel of each other.
Something he’d thought never to experience again.
Never thought to allow himself.
But here, tonight, a spell had been cast around them.
