pulling her even more intimately against him, getting little relief from the desire that was fast ripping through him.
“What, Moriah?” he rasped out raggedly. He had to get her into bed this instant. Alone. The longer he had to hold her up, the closer she’d pull herself next to him. And the closer Moriah got to him, the more dangerous their predicament became.
“Don’t go home tonight,” she murmured softly against his chin, following her words with feathery little kisses to his jaw. “Stay here with me.”
The hands that had been wrapped tightly around his neck now loosened, and Austen relaxed somewhat until he felt Moriah’s fingernails go scoring down his chest. He sucked in his breath as she spread her palms open across his flat belly and continued to kiss the warm flesh of his neck and collarbone. But when she came up on tiptoe to flick his lower lip with her tongue, reaching for the button of his jeans as she did so, Austen’s breath caught in a strangled gasp in his throat. “Moriah, don’t,” he warned her as he felt the first button slip through its hole.
“Austen,” she whispered on a seductive sigh. “I want you.”
The next button popped open at the same moment her lips fastened intently over his. Austen made a halfhearted effort to pull his mouth away from hers until he felt her fingers dip gently inside his waistband, then out again to stroke the hard fullness in his jeans.
“Oh, damn,” he muttered brokenly. “Moriah—” But his words were cut off as she cupped him fully in her palm and pressed her hand urgently against him.
That was the last straw. If she wanted to make whoopee, Austen thought, then damn it all, they were going to make whoopee. With the swiftness and grace of a pouncing jaguar, he swept Moriah into his arms and tossed her into the center of the flowered coverlet on the king-size bed. While she gazed at him with hungry intent, he reached back over his shoulder to bunch his T-shirt in one hand, then pulled it over his head and let it fall to the floor.
For a long moment he stood towering over her, his bronzed, naked chest sprinkled with coils of gold-tipped hair rising and falling rapidly with the passion she had raised in him, looking to Moriah like a glorious island king. Feeling more excited and reckless by the moment, she opened her arms to him in invitation, and with a deep and ragged groan, Austen threw himself onto the bed beside her.
For a moment he was too overcome with desire to know where to begin. He’d never, ever, wanted a woman the way he craved Moriah now. His arousal strained painfully against the heavy denim of his jeans, begging to be set free and buried deep inside her welcoming warmth. But Austen wanted this to go slowly, wanted to take his time savoring the gifts she had to offer, wanted her in turn to hit new heights with him she’d never known before. As she lay flat on her back feasting her eyes hungrily upon him, he felt as thought they had all the time in the world to satisfy each other, felt as though this night would be one that continued forever.
Wordlessly, his eyes never leaving hers, Austen dropped his fingers to the hem of Moriah’s denim skirt, spreading his hand open beneath her warm thigh before rubbing his palm urgently under her skirt to cup her hip tightly. Her pupils widened with wanting when he kneaded her flesh with determination, and she moaned out loud when his fingertips dipped quickly and firmly under the lacy fabric of her panties. He wedged his thigh between hers then, pressing it up feverishly to settle against the heated feminine core of her, pulling her body adamantly toward him to rub even more intimately against her. As Moriah arched her back and cried out loud, Austen’s other hand gripped the neckline of her shirt and urged it farther down her shoulder until he exposed one soft, supple breast. With a muffled growl he lowered his head to the swollen mound and took the rosy peak into his mouth. Moriah tangled her hands insistently in his hair and pulled him closer, crying his name out on a gasp, begging him please to never, ever, stop.
With one quick move, he pulled her T-shirt over her head and tossed it to join his on the floor, then bunched up her skirt around her waist and settled himself once again between her thighs. Grasping both of her slender wrists in one hand, he pulled her arms above her head until she was helpless to do anything but surrender to him. Her eyes grew stormy when she understood his intentions, and a wicked gleam joined the fire in Austen’s eyes. Bending his head once again over her breasts, he slowly circled the dusky peaks of one with the tip of his greedy tongue while thumbing the other to life with his rough, callused hand.
He’d never known a woman to be as sweet as Moriah, had never known a woman’s skin could be so soft, so warm, so incredibly responsive. As he touched and tasted her with quiet reverence, letting his fingers and his kisses blaze trails across her flat belly, Austen felt his own body coming alive for the first time. It was suddenly as if any other sexual experience he’d enjoyed in his life had only been a preliminary to this one, as if this time with Moriah were his first. All the anxiety and excitement of his first time paled in comparison to the feelings that burned and bothered him now.
When a new thought invaded his muddled mind, Austen raised himself up on his elbows and gazed down anxiously into Moriah’s drugged, delirious eyes. “Moriah,” he asked her urgently, “are you protected?”
She gazed at him blankly, clearly confused by his statement. “What do you mean?”
Austen dipped his head down with a defeated sigh. “No, for some reason, I didn’t think so.”
“What are you talking about?” Moriah demanded, feeling her blood start to cool rapidly at his seeming disappointment in her, suddenly feeling very tired.
“I mean, are you using any kind of birth control?” he clarified for her.
Her eyes widened in shock. “Birth control?” she repeated, aghast. “Why on earth would I be using birth control?”
He lifted an eyebrow suggestively and looked down meaningfully at their half-naked, intimately entwined bodies.
“Oh,” she said in a very small voice.
“It’s okay,” he reassured her. “I never leave home without one.”
Moriah was confused again, and Austen’s strange desire to have a conversation right now was really making her sleepy. “Without one what?” she wanted to know, successfully stifling the yawn she felt threatening.
But Austen had already started looking for the essential square, foil-covered packet that he always had tucked away in his wallet. As he pushed aside an assortment of business and credit cards, dumping a collection of bar receipts and hastily scribbled phone numbers onto the bedspread, he began to panic. He knew he had one in there, but where had it gone? Yanking out the contents of one of the wallet’s many compartments, he discovered an old photograph that he thought he’d lost, one of his father standing proudly beside the old man’s fishing boat. He smiled warmly and briefly at the picture, then remembered the task at hand. Dammit, where had he put it?
“Aha!” he cried triumphantly when he finally uncovered the small packet beside a torn, yellowed clipping from the Miami Herald that his mother had sent him some time ago, one about his ex-fiancée. “It’s all right, Moriah, I—” he turned quickly to Moriah, brandishing his find like a trophy “—I found it.” His shoulders drooped in comical defeat.
The woman who had lain so eagerly and anxiously at his side, the woman who had made him feel giddier and more aroused than he’d ever been in his life, the woman whose dangerous curves had promised the most enervating, exquisite, enlightening road to heaven, was now snuggled up against him like a child, fast asleep.
Chapter Three
When
