“Is that why your body reacts to mine the way it does?”
I swallowed.“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure, you do.Every time we look at each other something hot and sexy passes between us.”
“No,” I said and shook my head, only to become aware that Peter’s hand was curled around my neck.His thumb traced the outer shell of my ear.
“It’s there, Jill, and it’s mutual.We don’t have to be touching, but it’s there.And the closer we get, the stronger it is.”He took my hand, the one I’d snatched back and was holding in a fist against my stomach, and returned it to his chest.Unfurling my fingers, he dragged them up until my palm lay flat on his heart.
“Feel it?”he asked.
I couldn’t have missed it.It was like broken thunder.Ka-thunk.Ka-thunk.Ka-thunk.
“Yours is like that, too.”
“No.”
“Yes.”Locking my eyes with his, he slid his hand from my neck down the column of my throat, over my sweater to my breast.Fingers splayed, he covered my heart.
Move,I told myself, but I couldn’t budge.The whole of me seemed trapped beneath that large hand.Everything that I’d been and done and wanted for the first thirty-one years of my life seemed suddenly suspended.Only my heart moved.Ka-thunk.Ka-thunk.Ka-thunk.
In the gentlest of motions, he contracted his hand until it lightly kneaded my breast.I felt a corresponding contraction deep in my belly andsucked in a lungful of air, which served to offer that much more of me to his touch.My body swelled and tingled.I couldn’t think of anything but how nice that felt, how deep, how rich.
Suddenly the heat left my breast, and he closed his hands around my upper arms and drew me forward and down.
“No,” I whispered.
“Just a kiss,” he whispered back.He continued to draw me down, now with his hands on either side of my head, but it was his eyes that drew me most strongly.I could see darker shards among the light green there, and though those shards were mossy, they smoldered.
I felt the smoldering to the tips of my toes, a heat that poured through my veins like a flash of white-hot light, sending sparks radiating outward all along the route.I’d never, never felt anything like it before, neither with Adam nor with any other man who’d chanced to look at me with desire.But I wasn’t so naive that I didn’t know what it was.I was in the midst of a passion attack so intense it scared me to death.
“No, please—”
His mouth touched mine.The sensation was so light, so new, so pleasurable that I gasped.He took advantage of that small parting of lips to deepen the kiss.But he wasn’t a marauder.As though he knew how frightened I was, he caressed my mouth with slow, gentle, moist strokes.He nibbled here and sucked there.And he kept on doing it, kept on doing it until all Icould think about was how lovely it felt.I didn’t have to give; I simply received.Even when he broke the contact to try a different angle, he was the one to turn my head to the angle he sought.
I was stunned, because the pleasure increased with each second that passed, and with each one of those seconds, the fear seemed to fall away, well into the periphery of that kiss.I was caught up in it, caught up in the texture and heat and scent of it.
I’d never been a particularly sexual being, had never given much thought to the individual aspects of lovemaking.A kiss was a kiss, pleasurable, yes, but still only a kiss.I’d never dreamed that a kiss could make my mind whirl, but that was just what it was doing, which was why, when he whispered, “Open your mouth for me,” I did.
That was the extent of the demand he made.Once more he was the doer, the taker.He explored the insides of my lips, drew the lower one into his mouth and sucked on it, sought out and stroked my tongue in a way that offered such delight that I opened for more.
It seemed to go on forever, which was just what I wanted.I wasn’t in a rush to go anywhere.I had nothing to do that was more pressing than exploring the outer reaches of the pleasure Peter’s mouth offered.So I gave myself up to his ministrations without a peep.
At length, and reluctantly if the last, lingering touches were any indication, he separated ourmouths.I had had my eyes closed, but when I realized that my lips were alone, I opened my eyes.Though his were heavy-lidded, he was watching me closely.
“Don’t,” he warned just as I was about to stiffen.“Don’t make something wrong about what was very right, anddon’t—” he caught me opening my mouth “—say it wasn’t right, because it was.I’ve been around a lot, and I know the difference between right and wrong.I’m not saying that there has to be anything more.We may have just hit the apex of our relationship.Maybe that’s as good as it gets with us.But it was good.Don’t tarnish it by getting your back up.It was just a kiss.Just a kiss.There is no grand commitment in a kiss.”
I wasn’t so sure.Something had definitely changed in the course of that kiss.A barrier was down.I no longer felt quite so strange sitting on the edge of the bed with Peter in it.I felt as though I had a right to be there.
Which was rationalization enough not to move, though I did pull my hands back from his chest and tuck them in my lap.
Peter settled back on the pillow.He left one hand on my arm, as though ready to catch me if I decided to flee.It was the mildest of restraints, but welcome.If I wouldn’t be able to escape, I reasoned, there was no point in trying.
“Tell me about you, Jill.Tell me what makes you tick.”
I stared at him for a minute, then tossed awide-eyed look at the ceiling.“That’s an impossible order,” particularly when I was still feeling warm and light-headed from his kiss.“I wouldn’t know where to begin.”I was looking for direction from one who was more experienced in coping with the post-passion-attack muzzies.
Peter was just the one.“Why are you here?I know you said that you came here to pot, but we both know you could have done that back home.What made you leave?”
