He met her gaze, his eyes dark. “You are so damn beautiful.”
Heat rushed through her. She blushed and opened her arms. He joined her on the bed, pulling her close, shaping her breasts through her blouse, pushing his knee between her thighs. The friction made her crazy. She wanted the texture of his chest on her breasts, his hot sleekness everywhere.
Clumsy with desire, she struggled to raise herself, yanking at her top. Jack’s warm hands moved deftly to help her, sliding her top over her head, working her skirt down her legs. While he was down there, he kissed her ankle and then the inside of her knee and then...
Her hips jerked against his mouth as he worked her, as he kissed and sucked and stroked, reading every hitch of her breath, every twitch of her body like a blind man reading Braille. She panted.So close.
“Jack!”
He dealt efficiently with the condom and then moved over her, his heavy legs tangling with hers. Her hands fell from his shoulders and grabbed his ass hard.
He laughed low and rubbed against her, his hot sex gliding where his mouth had been. He slid the first little bit inside her, the feeling so good, so intense, she contracted and moaned.
His eyes gleamed. “Is this what you want?”
She arched helplessly against him, trying to take him in, desperate to have all of him inside her.
“Here you go, baby. Take it.” He pressed deeper, his dark voice filling her head, his hard sex filling her below. “Jesus, you’re tight.”
Carefully, he began to move, each thick, deliberate thrust followed by an achingly slow withdrawal. She clenched around him anxiously, hoping to help, trying to hurry him up, but he was too strong for her. Too much. His control was absolute. Indecent. Arousing.I’ll take care of you. Slide and withdrawal, over and over, heavy and relentless. Until his rhythm caught and overtook hers like the rise and fall of his breath in the bakery. Until she moved to his tempo, until she pulsed to his beat, absorbing his cadence in very fiber and tissue. Until everything in her swelled and broke, and she came, again and again.
He turned his face into her neck and followed her into the depths.
***
JACK STARED UPat the twilight sky through the windows in the bow, his body heavy and replete. Satisfied. He stroked his free hand lazily down Lauren’s back, and she made this little sound and burrowed against him, her head on his shoulder, her fingers exploring the hair on his chest like she was testing the curls for spring. His arm tightened around her reflexively.
She tilted her face up, her hair tickling his jaw. “You’re smiling,” she observed. “That’s good, right? It was good.”
He slanted a look down at her. He’d figured a woman like Lauren—smart, articulate, college educated—would be a talker during sex. Obviously, having skipped the play-by-play, she was ready for the post game analysis.
Her hair was mussed, her lips swollen. He wanted her all over again.Wanted her hot and slippery, yielding under him...
“There is no bad sex,” he said. “But there are different kinds of good, you know?”
She nodded, her eyes dark and dilated like she could see inside his head. God, she was so fucking beautiful.
“Like sometimes you’re hungry, you get a steak and a nice bottle of red,” he explained. “And sometimes you’re on the go, you grab a hamburger. Either way, you get fed, you’re lucky.”
Her expression shifted subtly, the warmth more projected, less personal. A therapist’s face. “So, are you saying this was like fast-food sex for you?”
“No.” He cupped her jaw. His thumb traced the arch of her eyebrow, skimmed the soft pout of her lower lip. “I’m saying that it’s like all my life, I’ve been going to the wrong restaurants.”
Her smile started in her eyes and grew.
Her glowing look kindled something inside him. Not only heat, but warmth. And what he thought was simple appetite became a hunger for something else, for her smiles and compassion, for her quick, questing intelligence, for the optimism and empathy that made her brave.
Something—pleasure, misgiving, a cop’s instinct for danger—raised the fine hair on the back of his neck, shivering over his skin.Shit. He could be in trouble here.
He pushed the thought away. It felt too good to lie here with her squashed and warm against his side.
Squashed and warm and naked. That was nice.
He ran a hand down her smooth, bare arm and patted her hip. In the evening glow of the skylights, the jewelry in her navel glittered like stars. He flicked the stones gently with his finger, making them dance against her skin, surprised by this unexpected kink in his psyche. It turned him on, how they made her tough and vulnerable at the same time, the contrast between the hard, polished metal and her sensitive skin. Like the ink on her back. Or the cuff in her ear. Or that tiny, winking nose stud.
He frowned, his detective’s instincts stirred. As if he were staring at a big, fat clue and missing the vital information that would put the puzzle all together.
“When did you get this?” he asked.
