He saw twin moons, alabaster smooth and white.
His mouth was dry, his head thick, filled with cotton wool.
“But if I come very close, maybe you’ll notice.” She lifted herself up and bent over him…very near, too near.
One taut rosebud…inches from his parched lips…woman-scent, rich, coiling in his nostrils, swirling in his head.
“Jess.” His voice was cracked and harsh, parched.
His mind was a desert. No thought. No pride. He was mere sand, whirling in a windstorm.
With a choked cry, he pulled her down, and captured her mouth…sweet oasis…oh, yes, please…and she parted to his frantic plea. He raked her sweetness thirstily. He was dry, burning, and she cooled him and inflamed him at once. She was the rain, and she was hot brandy, too.
He dragged his hand down over her smooth, supple back, and she shivered, and sighed against his mouth. “I love your hands.” Low, the caressing whisper of her voice.
“Sei bellissima,” he answered roughly, his fingers curling and tightening at her waist. So firm and supple, but oh, so small under his big hand.
There was so little of her, but he wanted it all, and wanted it desperately. He raked his famished mouth over her face, her shoulder, her throat. He rubbed his cheek against the velvety slopes of her breasts and nuzzled the fragrant valley between. He made a winding path with his tongue to the rosy nipple that had teased him moments ago, and captured it. He caressed it with his lips, his tongue, and held her shuddering body fast while he suckled.
From above him came a soft, startled cry. But her fingers were tangling in his hair, moving restlessly over his scalp, and he knew the cry was not pain, but excitement.
The tormenting she-devil liked it.
Then, heated and maddened as he was, he knew he wasn’t powerless.
He could make her beg, too.
His heart was racing at a gallop and his mind was thick and drunk, but somehow he summoned a fragment of control and, instead of hurrying on, he laid siege to her other breast, more slowly and deliberately…
She went to pieces.
“Oh. Oh, Dain. Please.” Her fingers moved spasmodically, over his neck, his shoulders.
Yes, beg. He took the quivering nipple lightly between his teeth, and gently tugged.
“Dear God. Please…don’t. Yes. Oh.” She was squirming helplessly, arching toward him one instant and trying to twist away in the next.
He slid his hand up under the rumpled, tangled skirt and stroked over the silken drawers. She moaned.
He released her breast and she sank down and dragged her parted lips over his until he answered, and welcomed her in, and let jolts of pleasure shake his frame while she ravished his mouth.
And while he drank in the hot liquor of her kiss, he was pushing up the flimsy silk leg of her drawers, stroking over stocking and upward, to the knot of her garter. He swiftly untied it and pushed it away, and drew the stocking down, and slid his fingers over her thigh and up, over the bunched up silken drawers, to grasp her sweetly rounded buttock.
She came away from his mouth, her breathing shallow, uneven.
Still grasping her bottom, he shifted position, moving her with him, so that she lay on her side, trapped between his big frame and the sofa back. He kissed her again, deeply, while he moved his hand to the fastenings of her drawers, and untied them, and eased them down. He felt her body tense, but he held her mouth captive, distracting her with a slow, tender kiss, and all the while his fingers were moving over her thigh, stroking, caressing, stealing toward her innocence.
She squirmed, pulling away from his mouth, but he would not let her escape, and he could not keep from touching her…the fine, taut skin at the juncture of her thigh…a wanton tangle of silky curls…and sweet womanliness, warm, butter-soft…and butter-slick…the delicious evidence of desire.
He had stirred her, roused her. She wanted him.
He began to stroke the tender feminine folds, and she went very, very still.
Then, “Oh.” Her voice was soft with surprise. “Oh. That’s…wicked. I did not—” The rest was lost in a smothered cry, and the sweet warmth pressed against his finger. Her slender body twisted and turned restlessly, toward him, away. “Oh, Lord.Please.”
He scarcely heard the plea. He was beyond hearing. His blood pounded in his veins, thundered in his ears.
He found the tender bud and the narrow parting beneath, but it was so small, so tight against his great, intruding finger.
