Maybe it was the sunshine, maybe it was the spring air, or maybe it was the dream she’d had about Jackson.
Her very own Moonlight Kiss.
They were in the library, alone, in the night.
She climbed the rolling ladder to fetch a book.
But the moment she stepped up, she felt Jackson behind her. Quiet, steady, close enough that the air shifted with his breath.
Jackson didn’t speak at first. His hand rested lightly on the ladder’s frame, steadying it. Steadying her. She looked down, and his eyes were already on her, dark and smoldering.
“I thought you were looking for a book,” he murmured.
“I was,” she whispered, though she couldn’t have said what book if her life depended on it.
“Still want it?”
She looked down and rational thought slipped away, replaced by the pulse of her heartbeat and the quiet electricity stretching between them.
His hands slid up the backs of her thighs, slow and sure, finding the hem of her skirt. The old wood creaked softly beneath her feet as he bunched the fabric in his fists.
Dream Zoe was warm and aching, and she wasn’t wearing anything under her skirt.
Jackson made a sound low in his throat, something between a groan and a prayer. He dropped to his knees at the base of the ladder, spreading her legs gently around the rails, pressing one kiss to the inside of one knee, and then the other, as he slowly made his way up her body.
The world narrowed to the sound of the ladder creaking, the warmth of his hands on her skin, the steady pull of her heartbeat matching his. Every inch of her leaned toward that next touch, that inevitable, impossible moment when his mouth found her center.
Zoe gasped, clutching the sides of the ladder as his tongue was there, slow and deliberate. His hands held her steady, one at each thigh, thumbs stroking her skin in time with his mouth.
She couldn’t move.
Not with the way her balance teetered on each rung, not with the way pleasure licked up her spine like fire.
Jackson licked deeper, firmer, dragging his tongue along her clit and making her vision blur. Her forehead pressed to theladder’s cool wood. Her thighs trembled. The room around her swayed.
But his grip never wavered.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured against her, and then he did it again. He was slower this time. Savoring her. Driving her wild.
Zoe’s breath came in short, desperate bursts. Her fingers clung to the rails, the old brass cold against her palms. Books towered around them and the smell of parchment and pine dusted the air. Outside the stained-glass window, moonlight spilled through in fractured patterns, casting a kaleidoscope of light across the spines and shelves.
He sucked gently, just enough to make her cry out. Her hips jerked forward, instinct chasing pleasure, but the ladder rocked in warning, and Jackson’s hand flew up, steadying her.
“Careful,” he whispered. “I said hold on.”
“I’m trying,” she managed, breathless.
His fingers joined in then, sliding inside her, filling her in a slow, coaxing rhythm while his mouth stayed focused on her clit. She could feel herself coming apart, every part of her drawn tighter and tighter, and still, he kept her there. Breathless. On the edge.
And then she had woken up, heart racing, body aching with need.
It was rather cruel the way her body craved that orgasm even now, several hours later.
The feeling of Whiskers’s soft fur weaving around her ankles snapped Zoe out of her steamy thoughts.
“No, no, no, get back inside,” Zoe said to Whiskers, who was attempting to sneak out. “What has gotten into you lately? You, my friend, are an indoor cat.”
Whiskers sneezed and batted at her face.
