eased back, looked down at her. ‘So … Did you like that, Sarah?’
‘It was …’ Beautiful. Intense. Amazing. More, I want more, I want— No! That wasn’t the deal. She had to stop this now. She cleared her throat. ‘Okay.’
Silence, deep and heavy, as a shiver trembled through her. He touched her hot cheek, as though he were testing the blush she knew was there. Lying—he knew she was lying.
‘Just okay?’ he asked softly, and something flared in his eyes that was completely different from his usual slightly bored amusement. ‘Then I think we’d better analyse it.’
‘I don’t unders—’
‘What was wrong with it?’
‘N-nothing.’
‘But nothing was especially right with it, either. Was it too wet?’
‘No.’
‘Too dry?’
‘No.’
‘Too tentative?’
‘No.’
‘Was I too aggressive?’
Sarah licked her lips as though recalling the kiss—saw his eyes zoom in on her mouth, and found herself licking her lips again. ‘No.’
‘Taste bad?’
‘Wh—? No! You tasted like … like wine. At least … Did you? I don’t know. That was a closed-mouth kiss.’
‘Ah, I see.’
‘And seriously, there was nothing wrong with it. I just … it just … was okay.’ Blushing hard. ‘Same as Craig.’ Blushing harder.
‘Same as Craig,’ he repeated, and there was that flare in his eyes again. Danger. ‘I think you know I can’t leave that comparison unchallenged, Sarah,’ he said, and then he smiled—minus any hint of a dimple. ‘So brace yourself.’
As David stared down into Sarah’s big blue eyes, common sense nudged at his frontal lobe, telling him he was making a mistake. But it was no match for the roar of blood in his veins urging him to prove he was nothing like that anaemic fedora-wearing fucker Craig.
David had the moves, he had the technique, and he had the control to employ both with clinical accuracy. He could get a woman halfway to orgasm from one kiss if he chose to. And at that moment, he chose to, goddammit.
He wrapped his hands around Sarah’s upper arms, and the frailty of her, the ease with which he could circle her arms with a hand apiece, sent the warning whispering through his head again: mistake. For a split-second he hesitated—but then Sarah swayed towards him, her eyelids fluttered closed … and taking her mouth became his sole focus. Her breath hitched, and he fucking loved that sound, the vulnerable anticipation of it. When her teeth bit and released her bottom lip, it was the final trigger; he might slow things down, but he wasn’t going to stop.
He drew her in so their chests were just touching, just—God, the torture—and put his mouth on hers for a long, long moment as he absorbed the feeling of having her there. Half of him wanted to slam her against his body and go for broke—the crazy half. The other half, the part of him that was still sane, was scared he’d hurt her if he let himself lose it; she was so damn small.
So he reined himself in hard, comforting himself with the knowledge that there was no need to rush, that it would go further when the time was right, that he could take the time to savour this first real taste of her. He rubbed his mouth softly, inexorably, against hers, waiting for a sign that she was ready for him to go deeper.
It came, the sign, almost immediately. A soft hum that had her lips puffing open. David sucked her top lip into his mouth, using lips and teeth and tongue to explore and taste. She moved impatiently against him, trying to get closer than he would allow, nudging her mouth against his, urging him on, urging him … in? Yes, in. Ahhh, God, yes. He wanted in. In the next second, his tongue was inside her mouth, licking deep and sure, and she was curling her own tongue around his, and it was thrilling the hell out of him. Harsh breaths mingling, bodies twisting, her hands gripping the sides of his T-shirt in greedy fistfuls.
In the midst of it all, he became aware of her thigh sliding up his own, like she was climbing him. Climbing, Jesus God! Well, he could help her with that. He pulled her closer, plastering her against him at last, keeping her right there as he battled to control himself … But it was a lost cause; he was going to explode if he didn’t get her edged into a more strategic position. He slid his arms around her, held her closer still, closer dammit, for a red-hot minute, then slid his hands down to grip her bottom. He lifted her against him until the juncture of her thighs was right there, where he needed it, where he was aching, throbbing for her.
Her hands were in his hair now. He wanted to rip the dress off her, tumble her to the couch, shove himself so deep inside her she’d never forget it. He hitched her again, rubbed against her to the point of lunacy, took a hurried step towards the couch. He was going to have her, take her, right now.
A bump, a clatter, and the warning leapt into his head: You are not in control any more. No, he wasn’t going to hear it, wasn’t going to stop, didn’t want to stop. One more step, and his foot slipped on something. What was—? Ah, the sketchbook. But … how …?
Crystal-sharp image of the two of them. Stumbling for the couch, mouths fused together. Sarah, one leg hitched on his hip, her other foot dangling. Her other foot dangling … having hit the coffee table and knocked the sketchbook to the floor without either of them noticing.
You are not in control.
He raised his mouth from hers, lowered her until her feet were on the floor, released her, drawing in lungfuls of head-clearing air, struggling against the need to reach for her again as he saw her chest rising and falling in dramatic surges like his, her bead-hard nipples pushing against her bodice.
One of her hands came up; a trembling finger traced her darkly swollen top lip. And then her eyes dropped to the front of his jeans where he wouldn’t have been surprised to see his zip exploding from the pressure of his epic hard-on. But there wasn’t a hell of a lot he could do about that, short of excusing himself to jack off. Given she’d felt his erection two weeks in a row now, she was probably starting to think it was his natural state.
Which was better than the alternative—that it was specifically her he wanted, to the point of bursting. A truth he didn’t like, didn’t want, wouldn’t acknowledge.
‘So, Sarah,’ he said, and welcomed the chill he could hear in his voice. ‘Are you going to tell me that was “okay”?’
‘That was a little bit more than okay,’ she said shakily, and smiled.
The smile. Her mouth. So sweet and pliant. Almost too perfect to be real. He wanted to touch it, touch her. God, this was bad.
‘Rulebook moment,’ he said, very deliberately not smiling back at her.
‘Rulebook?’
