an arm around her waist and drew her up to stand again. Holding her chin, he ran the wet tip of his tongue along the open seam of her mouth while, at her back, he unsnapped the strapless bra with one deft flick. His palm pressed down the dent of her spine and slipped into the back of her panties. She whimpered as her womb contracted and quivered … a tantalizing prelude to the climax she couldn’t wait to enjoy.
His fingertips pressed and seared into her flesh while his mouth covered hers completely again, and all the time her insides clenched and pulsed while her limbs and mind went to mush. She wanted this heaven to go on forever. But even more, she wanted him bearing down on top of her. Inside of her. Filling and fulfilling her now.
Her hands ironed down his sides. When she reached his lean hips, she urged him forward, toward her and the bed. With their mouths still joined, she felt his smile before he broke the kiss long enough to wrench back the sheets. With a determined gleam in his eyes, he crowded until the back of her legs met the cool edge of the mattress. His big hands ringed her waist and her feet left the ground long enough for him to lay her gently down. He followed a heartbeat behind.
Looming above her, everything seemed to still as he searched her eyes in a world of midnight shadows. His deep low voice seemed to fill the room.
“I didn’t ask you to stay here for this.”
She drew an aimless pattern through the hair at the base of his throat.
“I know.”
“Although I’m not sorry you agreed.”
She matched his grin. “I’m not sorry you asked.”
He dropped a tender kiss at the side of her mouth, a barely there touch that shot a fountain of star-tipped sparks through her every fiber.
“Come with me to France,” he murmured against her lips.
She groaned. The temptation was huge. She’d said no and had meant it. She was starting a job Monday. She didn’t want to take more charity. But those considerations didn’t seem quite so solid since he’d carried her to his bed.
Closing her eyes, she sighed. He was kissing the sensitive spot beneath her left lobe.
“What if I say please?”
She bit her lip. He was killing her.
“I’ll tell you what.” She filed her fingers up over his burning ears, through his hair. “I promise not to say no again if you promise not to ask.”
He moved lower to nuzzle the arc of her neck. “I don’t like when you say no.”
“To everything but that, Mateo …” She hooked her leg around his hip and drew him close. “Yes, yes, yes.”
Mateo couldn’t stop to think about how his unexpected encounter with Bailey Ross had come to this. How they’d gone from strangers to opponents to lovers in less than two days. As he tasted a leisurely line along the perfumed sweep of her shoulder, he only knew these sensations were too intense to analyze. More intense—more vital—than he’d ever had before.
When her heel dug into the back of his thigh, letting him know again she was on the same page, he ground up against her but then grit his teeth and blocked that insistent heady push. Tonight would be sweet torture. He’d need every ounce of willpower to keep this encounter—his pleasure—from peaking too soon.
Working to steady his breathing, his pace, he sculpted a palm over the outside of one full breast as he shifted lower. His mouth covered that nipple before his teeth grazed up all the way, tugging the tip of the bead. Her hands had been winding through his hair but now she dug in and held on as she shuddered and moaned beneath him. He heard her desperate swallow and listened, pleased that her breathing sounded more labored than his own. Savoring the way her breasts rose and fell on each lungful of air, he twirled his tongue around that tip and tried to ignore the fact his every inch was ready to explode.
With her leg twined over the back of his, her pelvis began to move in time with the adoring sweep of his tongue. She murmured something he didn’t catch. But he wouldn’t ask and stop the bone-melting rhythm their bodies had fallen into. He didn’t want to interrupt for a moment the feel of her body stirring beneath his. He could lie here all night, doing precisely this.
If only his erection wasn’t begging for more.
He repositioned again, higher to savor the honey of her lips at the same time his touch wove down: over her ribs, the curve of her waist, the subtle flare of a hip, then up over the same terrain. He was performing a repeat descent, stroking and playing—anticipating the added treasures he’d discover this time around—when she grunted, shifted and pushed against his chest.
He froze. Then, eyes snapping open, he rolled away. What was wrong? Had he hurt her?
When she slid over too—on top of him—he held his brow and almost laughed with relief.
“What are you doing?”
Crouched on his lap, she slid her hips one way and the other then tossed back the hair fallen over her face. “What do you think?”
She slid up a little this time then down over his throbbing shaft. That sent him reeling way too close to the edge. He was thrilled she was so completely in the zone that she wanted to take the reins, but any more of that kind of maneuvering and he’d reach the finish line way too soon.
He flipped her over so she lay on her back again, him firmly on top. While she peered up at him, a saucy glint in her eyes, his hand burrowed between them, down the front of her panties, and his erection grew heavier still. She was warm and moist. When his touch curled up between her folds and pressed against a woman’s most sensitive spot, she let out a time honored sound that told him she was ready.
Leaning over, he opened his bedside drawer, found the pack then tore a single foiled wrap with his teeth. As he rolled on protection, her fingers sluiced up and down his sides. Oh, he wanted to take this slower. Make it last. But this time, with this lady, that wasn’t going to happen.
Sheathed, he positioned himself, took a long slow kiss from her welcoming mouth then eased inside. Her walls clamped around him at the same time her hips lifted and she opened her mouth wider, inviting him deeper.
With one arm curled around her head, he drove in and clenched every muscle as a mind-tingling burn hardened him more. He felt as if he was drowning in a lake of fire. All exposed nerve endings and profound sizzling need.
Bailey trailed her fingers down his neck, felt the cords bulging and pulsing, and melted more. The way he moved with her left her breathless while his mouth on hers raised her up. She wanted this moment to go on forever. Never wanted the steep waves of pleasure to wane or fade. And yet they both needed to go that bit further. Needed to be thrown up to the stars and explode on their way back down.
He was snatching slow kisses from her brow, from her cheek, holding her hip securely as his strokes grew ever stronger and longer. The friction was scolding, the pleasure beyond what she could take.
And then his kisses stopped and his body grew still and hard. She sensed his every tendon stretched trip wire tight, could feel his heart thumping and pounding in his ears. The mind-altering fire at her core intensified, somehow changing in dimension and in shape. Then, in one finite moment, in less time than it took to suck down a breath, all the universe contracted into
