her skin. He followed the pants, falling to his knees before her as she revealed her skin and this time, she couldn’t drop a skirt to hide.
This time, she didn’t want to.
They felt like they were starting from the same spot—but it was different, too. She hadn’t known anything about Seth the first time she’d balanced a hand on his shoulder so she could step free of extraneous fabric. She hadn’t known if he was rich or poor, old or young. All she had known then was that she was safe with him.
She still was. “Tell me what you want,” Seth said when she had stepped free of the slacks. He grabbed them and threw them out of the way, then began to slide her trouser socks off. “I want to give you what you need.”
Her eyes fluttered shut and she tried to put words to what that was.
She wanted to be selfish. She didn’t want to swallow down her disappointment in bed to protect anyone’s feelings. She didn’t want to accept mediocre sex because Roger was incapable of putting forth the effort to get better. She didn’t want to settle because it kept the peace.
She needed to know what Kate Burroughs wanted. She needed to know that person was valuable and desirable and worth the risk.
She needed Seth to fight for her.
She needed to fight for herself.
“Anything,” Seth said as her other sock and shoe were also tossed aside. He sat back on his heels and ran his hands up and down her bare legs, warming her skin. “Be honest, Kate.”
“I don’t want to regret this,” she said, because that was the most honest thing she could think of. “I don’t want to regret you.”
“You won’t. And I won’t, either,” he assured her. He leaned forward and pressed his lips against her thigh. “I had the most erotic dreams after the last time,” he whispered against her skin as he kissed his way up her leg.
“I’m different now. Everything’s changed.” She felt huge and she knew she was only going to get bigger. Rationally, she knew it was because of the baby, but it was still hard to know that an ugly black suit was the only thing she could wear for her standing date with Seth Bolton.
She didn’t feel ugly now, not as Seth moved to the other thigh and began to kiss and nip at her skin. She watched in fascination.
“You were gorgeous two months ago, but now?” Seth leaned back and began to undo the buttons on her shirt. He had amazingly long arms, powerful muscles. Everything about him was powerful and he was here with her. How did this make any sense?
“But now?” he said in such a sincere voice that even though it didn’t make any sense, she had no choice but to believe him. He got the buttons undone, and she shrugged out of the shirt, letting it fall. “My God, Kate—look at you.”
She was going to protest that there was nothing to look at—at least not anything good—but he sat forward and pressed a kiss right below her belly button. And then one below that. And then one even lower. What started out as a sweet, tender gesture rapidly became something else entirely.
“Seth,” she said, her knees beginning to shake as his mouth moved over the thin cotton of her panties, coming ever closer to her sex.
“Tell me what you need, Kate,” he said, bringing his hands up to cup her bottom—and bring her closer to his mouth. “Do you need this?”
He skimmed his teeth over her panties, pulling the fabric aside. She was so shaky that she had no choice but to bury her fingers in his thick black hair and hold on. He looked up at her and squeezed her bottom, a knowing smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “Come on, Kate—you have to tell me.”
“Yes,” she whispered. He was slow and methodical—and focused entirely on her. He wasn’t keeping an eye on the clock or an ear on the game. He wasn’t wishing he were anywhere else. She had his undivided attention and that, more than anything else, was what she needed right now.
That and his mouth on her. “More.” It came out half an order and half a plea.
His grin sharpened. “Good girl. I want to hear what you like.” Then he buried his face against her sex.
“Ohh...” That. Definitely that.
Somehow, he pivoted her so instead of her standing, she was leaning against a wall. He scooted her legs a little farther apart and pressed himself between them. He still gripped her bottom with one hand, but with the other, he reached around the front and pulled her innocent-looking white panties to the side. Not off—just to the side. “How about this? Do you need this?” he asked, pausing just long enough that she knew if she said no, he’d stop.
She didn’t want him to stop. “I do,” she said, her voice little more than an exhale.
He kissed the top of her thigh, teasing her. “Are you sure?”
For some reason, the question irritated her. She was tired of people not listening to her, tired of them assuming they knew best. She wanted Seth to make her feel gorgeous and sexy, she wanted the release of a good orgasm—but more than that, she wanted him to listen. She wanted to be heard.
She tugged on his hair—hard—pulling him back to where she needed him. “I said yes,” she hissed, watching as his eyes fluttered shut and he inhaled her scent deeply. “And I meant it. I won’t beg, Seth. You’re going to give me what I want and that’s final.”
He moaned. He was on his knees in front of her, his face buried against her sex, and he moaned. It was a noise of pure want and it shot straight through her. And then he kissed her, right where she needed his mouth. His lips moved over that nub of skin and nerves and then it was her moaning as she held him to her. His tongue flicked out and traced a pattern on her skin, one that she would feel for the rest of her life.
He was marking her, and she was his to be marked.
As his mouth worked her body, the rest of the world fell away. She stopped worrying about her rounded tummy or her woeful closet. Commissions and tours and kitchens—they all fell away. Even the fantasy that had been Seth—him stripping her at the scenic overlook and instead of putting her on a motorcycle, doing this exact same thing—it fell away because that hadn’t been real. It’d been a bedtime story she’d told herself, a lie to convince herself that she was still Kate Burroughs and that was good enough.
This? This was not a lie. She was Kate Burroughs and Seth wasn’t some mysterious, handsome stranger, he was a man—a warm, solid, flesh-and-blood man—who wanted her. More than that, he was putting her first. Hell, she hadn’t even gotten his shirt off. She wanted to see his body, to touch it and taste it.
She wanted him all for herself. Not for anyone else, not for a commission. She wanted Seth Bolton because he was a man she liked, a man who cared about what happened to her. A handsome, confident man.
A man who was very good with his mouth. There was something naughty about this. They hadn’t made it to a bed—no one was naked. But there was something freeing about it, too.
“God, Kate—you taste so good,” he murmured against her sensitized flesh, his words vibrating right through her. “Better than I imagined.”
Well, they were being honest. “I dreamed of you doing this, too,”
