“Is that what you think … that you’re the only one?”
Her gaze was unsteady, faintly hopeful. “Am I wrong?”
“Very.”
She held her breath.
“You’re a beautiful woman,” he murmured as his eyes moved from one of her features to the next.
“I’m a girl,” she whispered.
“That’s what I keep trying to tell myself, but my body doesn’t seem to want to believe it. I’ve tried, Marni. For the past month I’ve tried to keep my hands off. It was dangerous to come here today.”
Marni reached heaven by leaps and bounds. Her body began to relax against his, and she grew aware of his firm lines, his strength. “You didn’t do it single-handedly.”
“But I’m older. I should know better.”
“Are there rules that come with age?”
“There’s common sense. And my common sense tells me that I shouldn’t be lying here with you curled against me this way.”
“You were the one who pulled me over,” she pointed out.
“And you’re not protesting.”
She couldn’t possibly protest when she was floating on a cloud of bliss. “Would you like me to?”
“Damn right I would. One of us should show some measure of sanity.”
“There’s nothing insane about this,” she murmured, distracted because she’d let her hand glide over his chest. She could feel every muscle, every crinkling hair beneath his T-shirt, even the small dot of his nipple beneath her palm.
“No?” he asked. Abruptly he flipped over and was on top of her. His blue eyes grilled hers heatedly, and his voice was hoarse. “Y’know, Marni, I’m not one of your little high school friends, or even one of the college guys I’m sure you’ve dated.” He took both of her hands and anchored them by her shoulders. Though his forearms took some of his weight, the boldness of his body imprinted itself on hers. “I’ve had women. Lots of them. If one of them were here instead of you, we wouldn’t be playing around. We’d be stark naked and we’d be making love already.”
Marni didn’t know where she found the strength to speak. His words—the experience and maturity and adventure they embodied—set her on fire. Her blood was boiling, and her bones were melting. “Is that what we’re doing … playing?”
He shifted his lower body in apt answer to her question, then arched a brow at the flare of color in her cheeks. “You don’t want to play, do you? You want it all.”
She was breathing faster. “I just want you to kiss me,” she managed to whisper. The blatancy of his masculinity was reducing her to mush.
“Just a kiss?” he murmured throatily. “Okay, Marni Lange, let’s see how you kiss.”
She held her breath as he lowered his head, then felt the touch of his mouth on hers for the first time. His lips were hot, and she drew back, scalded, only to find that his heat was tempting, incendiary where the rest of her body was concerned. So she didn’t pull back when he touched her a second time, and her lips quickly parted beneath the urging of his.
He tasted and caressed, then drank with unslaked thirst. Marni responded on instinct, kissing him back, feeding on his hunger, willingly offering the inside of her mouth and her tongue when he sought them out.
His breathing was as unsteady as hers when he drew back and looked at her again. “You don’t kiss like a seventeen-year-old.”
She gave a timid smile. She’d never before received or responded to a kiss like that, but she didn’t want Web to know how inexperienced she really was. “I run in fast circles.”
“Is that so?” His mouth devoured her smile in a second mind-bending kiss, and he released one of her hands and framed her throat, slowly drawing his palm down until the fullness of her breast throbbed beneath it. “God, Marni, you’re lovely,” he rasped. “Lovely and strong and fresh …”
Her hands were in his hair, sifting through its thickness as she held him close. “Kiss me again,” she pleaded.
“I may be damned for this,” he murmured under his breath, “but I want it, too.” So he kissed her many, many more times, and he touched her breasts and her belly and her thighs. When his hand closed over the spot where he wanted most to be, she arched convulsively.
“Tell me, Marni,” he panted next to her ear, “I need to know. Have you done this before?”
She knew he’d stop if she told him the truth, and one part of her ached so badly she was tempted to lie. But she wasn’t irresponsible. Nor could she play the role of the conniving female. He’d know, one way or the other. “No,” she finally whispered, but with obvious regret.
