Jerry and the stamps could take a backseat. For tonight she just wanted.
And then their mouths came together and she didn’t have to want anymore.
Her fingers were still curled in his but she didn’t feel it. All her awareness was concentrated in the feel of his mouth on hers. He didn’t just kiss, he savored, feasting on her as though she were some rare delicacy. A shift, a nip, a quick slick of tongue. There was a sumptuousness in the slide of lip against lip, temptation in the taste. Her system began to buzz.
When his hand slid to cup her neck and pull her closer, Gwen went willingly. When his mouth opened against hers, she made a little sound of pleasure in her throat. It didn’t matter that she hardly knew him, that he was just a pair of teasing eyes and a devilish smile. Something about him tempted her to take a risk. Something about him sent desire surging through her with an intensity she couldn’t recall feeling before.
In the casino a cacophony indicated that someone had won a big jackpot, but neither of them even registered the noise. All that mattered was this moment, this place, this feeling.
If he’d felt the need to take before, now Del fought the urge to plunder. Up close, her scent wove around his senses, making him imagine her naked, hot and urgent against him. Her mouth was warm and alive. She tasted of Courvoisier and arousal, he thought hazily. Driven by the slide of her tongue over his, the nip of her teeth, he only wanted more.
And so he took the kiss deeper.
The teasing swirl of her tongue around his had desire coiling in his belly. She might have been an enigma, but her trembling response didn’t lie. Throughout the night she’d been an odd mix of uncertainty and confidence. There was nothing tentative here now, though, only a heated certainty that sent urgency thudding through his system.
Finally Del broke away. He sat for a moment, waiting for his system to level. It was going to take a while, he realized. “You pack quite a punch,” he told her.
“So do you.” It took her two tries to get the words out. Gwen stared back at him, breathing hard. She wanted, oh, she wanted. If he could take her this far with just a kiss, how much more was waiting for her? Her lips still felt as though they were vibrating, she realized. And she wanted more. She leaned toward him again, but he stopped her.
“Maybe we should go somewhere else,” he said, staring at her. “Someplace less…public.”
She nodded, not in answer to the words he’d said but to the question in his eyes. “I think you’re right.”
“Oh, yeah?”
Gwen leaned forward to press a kiss on him. “Oh, yeah,” she breathed. Del tossed a twenty on the table and rose, catching her hand.
And a bubble of exhilaration began to swell in her chest.
It wasn’t her usual style. Gwen dated clean-cut, serious men who took her to a few weeks of movies, concerts and dinners before they segued into decorous sex. That part usually lasted until she was bored mindless with them. She certainly didn’t pick up the kind of men who hung out in casinos. She definitely didn’t kiss them in bars the first night she’d met them, even if they did have perfectly delicious mouths.
And she absolutely didn’t wind up in bed with them.
Maybe it was being in Vegas, maybe it was the cosmopolitans, but suddenly it didn’t matter. Suddenly what she wanted was this moment with this man. She could go back to being careful and deliberate Gwen tomorrow.
Nina was taking over.
5
THE ELEVATOR WAS A BLUR, THE walk down the hall a desperate trek broken up by pauses to just stand fused together, desperate to get their hands on one another. Finally they stood at a door, Del fumbling for his passkey.
Gwen had never known anything like this before. Certainly sex had involved some excitement, but all to a manageable level. Getting swept up in passion was what Joss did, not Gwen. Gwen kept things tidy and controlled.
But now she was Nina, and Nina wanted no truck with tidy and controlled. Nina wanted hot. Nina wanted the rough feel of a man’s hands, the pumping urgency of his body.
Nina wanted it all.
Gwen leaned against him, up on tiptoe. “I want you naked,” she whispered over his shoulder. “Now.”
And the door latch clicked open.
Inside the room Del groped for a light switch, and a recessed light in the entryway came on. It was as though Gwen had a fever in her blood. She was hot, light-headed with wanting. Del turned to her and she flowed into his arms.
She’d never been kissed like this. She’d never had a hot mouth and a pair of hands fling her into arousal so quickly. As he pressed her against the wall and took the kiss deeper, she could taste a faint hint of the bourbon he’d been drinking. The stroke of tongue against tongue sent desire arrowing through her. He was hard, she could feel it, and she shivered a little with anticipation as she shifted her hips in response.
He groaned. With an exultant laugh Gwen broke the kiss and let herself nuzzle his throat, the skin taut under her lips. She could feel his hard-muscled body under the shirt and made a noise of impatience.
“More,” she breathed. “I want more.” Her mouth still on his, she stepped back enough to push his shirt away from his shoulders, and he shrugged it off.
And she caught a breath of delight. His was a body made for movement, the arms hard and sculpted, the belly corrugated with muscle. She traced her fingers down over the ripples of his abs. When he sucked in a breath, she dipped lower to trace over the swell of his hard-on under his jeans.
She wanted the feel of his skin against hers. Gwen reached for the hem of her own top, but Del caught at her hands. “Oh, no, that’s for me to do,” he murmured. He slipped his hands around her waist, sliding over the bare skin and up under the stretchy crop top she wore. His fingers trailed up her back, and the immediacy of the contact made her shiver, and shiver again when he slid them around to the front to fill his hands with the curves of her breasts. The fabric diminished the sensation, and she strained against him with a noise of frustration. She wanted his touch on her naked breasts. Instead he slid his hands up her sides and along her arms, until the rolled-up shirt was just a memory tossed across the room.
“God, you’re gorgeous,” Del said hoarsely as he stepped back and just looked at her in her sheer black bra. She flushed and glanced down, pulling her arms in toward her in what seemed like a reflex action. Catching her wrists, he pulled them gently aside. “Let me look at you. You’re such a turn-on.”
She was delicious, all soft and curvy. He wanted more, though. One minute she was all confidence, the next minute self-conscious. There was something about the way she met his eyes, suddenly hesitant. He wanted it gone. He wanted her wet and abandoned, twisting against him. He wanted to hear her cry out. He wanted to taste her. Reaching down, he unzipped her jeans. “These come off. Now.”
Slipping the denim down, he savored the feel of her silky skin against his palms, then pressed her back onto the ridiculously high sleigh bed that mirrored the decadence of the rest of the hotel. One at a time he pulled off her spike-heeled shoes. Her jeans followed and he tossed them aside.
She sat up. “I want to…”
