the morning if she’d just let herself rest, but he didn’t question what he did as he slipped down, bringing her with him.
His lips grazed the spot on her cheek where they’d literally bumped heads that morning. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”
Turning her face to him, she whispered, “Why not?”
He’d been about to tell her to go to sleep, that he wasn’t going anywhere. But with her sweet breath filling his lungs, the feel of her supple little body playing pure havoc with his intention, he leaned closer.
“Because you’ll make me forget why I shouldn’t do this,” he murmured, and brushed his mouth over hers.
Once.
Again.
“Or this.” He carried that gentle caress between her eyebrows, to the space where the twin lines formed when she was worried.
He cupped his hand at the side of her face.
“Or this.”
The admission vibrated against her mouth a faint second before he increased the pressure ever so slightly. His lips were firm, cool and far softer than anything that looked so hard had a right to be, but it was the feel of him tipping her head to gain the access he wanted that had her reaching for him herself.
Relief gave way to something infinitely less soothing. It barely occurred to her that this was exactly what she hadn’t wanted when she found herself opening to him, flowing toward him, kissing him back. She’d known what she would feel if she ever got this close to him again. And she’d been right. She felt everything she had when he’d kissed her before: that deep, awful longing, the yearning to simply sink into his compelling strength, his incredible gentleness, and have him take away the ache in her chest. To relieve the void, the emptiness. Only now with her fingers curling around his biceps and his hand slipping to the small of her back, pulling her closer, the hollowness inside her seemed to be receding, and the emptiness felt more like...need.
When he lifted his head long moments later, his features had gone as dark as his voice. “I think you’d better remind me.”
Her own voice came as a thready whisper. “About what?”
He touched the first of the short line of buttons on her nightshirt. His fingers trailed down, found her soft breasts unrestrained beneath thermal cotton.
His lips hovered over hers. “Why we should stop.”
Surrounded by his heat, that warmth gathering low in her belly, her voice went thin. “I don’t remember.”
She didn’t know what he saw in her shadowed face when he lifted his head. Whatever it was caused his body to go beautifully taut before his hand slipped over her hip.
“Me, either. But if you do,” he warned, the low tones of his voice sounding half serious, half teasing, “stop me.”
She was about to tell him that wasn’t going to happen, but he lowered his mouth to hers just then and she almost forgot to breathe.
There was no demand in his kiss. Just an invitation to a heady exploration that was deep, deliberate and debilitatingly thorough.
Winding her arms around his neck, she kissed him back just a little more urgently. With him, because of him, she finally felt something other than alone and uncertain, or the need to be strong.
She’d been so frightened by her doubts, so afraid that what she’d thought had been real in her marriage hadn’t been at all. If she’d been so wrong about all of it, that meant she couldn’t trust her judgment about anything, or anyone, else. But he’d helped her see that she hadn’t been wrong about what had mattered most. And more important than anything else he’d taught her, he was teaching her to trust in herself.
She could love him for that alone.
The thought had her clinging a little more tightly, kissing him a little more fiercely. It hurt to know how much of herself she’d let others take away from her. But he was taking that pain away, too, allowing parts of her to come back, allowing feelings she hadn’t realized she still possessed to finally surface. For the life of her she had no idea why those thoughts made the back of her eyelids start to burn again. She just knew that at that moment, nothing mattered to her so much as the sense of reprieve she was only now beginning to feel. And the fact that it was he who had finally allowed it.
Erik caught her small moan as she pressed closer. Or maybe the needy little sound had been his own. There wasn’t a cell in his body that wasn’t aware of how beautifully female she was, and of how badly he wanted her beneath him. To him, she was perfect. Small, supple and infinitely softer than his harder, rougher angles and planes.
He would have just held her if that had been what she’d wanted. It would have about killed him, but he’d have done it. Yet, incredibly, she seemed to hunger for the feel of him as much as he ached for her.
Stretched out beside her, he drew his hand over the nightshirt covering her belly, letting it drift upward, pulling soft cotton away with it. He kissed her slowly, tracing her soft curves, allowing himself the sweet torture of finally knowing the silken feel of her body, the honeyed taste of her skin. He didn’t know what to make of the tears he tasted again at the corners of her eyes when he kissed her there, or the almost desperate way she whispered, “No,” when he started to pull back to make sure she was all right. Slipping her fingers through his hair, she drew him back to her, meeting him in a kiss that nearly rocked him to his core.
Gritting his teeth against the need she created, he skimmed the bit of silk she wore down her long legs. It landed somewhere beside the bed, along with his jeans.
He’d left his billfold on her nightstand. Some miracle of common sense made him drag himself from her long enough to fumble for the small packet inside. He’d barely rolled their protection over himself when she curled into him, seeking him as he sought her.
The intimacy of gentle exploration had created its own tormenting heat. What they created as they moved together now, his name a whisper on her lips, had him thinking he’d never be able to get enough of her before that heat turned white-hot and he was barely thinking at all.
Rory burrowed deeper under her comforter. A delicious lethargy pulled at her, coaxing her back toward sleep. But she heard voices. Male ones. One sweet, the other deep.
Sleep was suddenly the last thing on her mind.
Tyler was awake. Erik was with him. Through the two-inch-wide gap he’d left between the door and the jamb, she could see the light from Tyler’s bathroom faintly illuminating the hall. The gap in the curtains next to the bed revealed a thin sliver of gray.
It was daylight. That meant it was somewhere after seven-thirty. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept that late.
She threw off the covers. Nearly tripping over her nightshirt, she snatched it up and moved to the door. They were just disappearing down the stairs, Tyler in his pj’s, Erik in his undershirt and jeans. From the conversation, it sounded as though they were discussing breakfast. Specifically, which one of them got to slice the bananas.
