silence. And then, ‘What kind of experiment?’
‘I’ll kiss you and you can see how that makes you feel.’
He opened his mouth to say no.
But Sunshine didn’t let him get that far.
She simply moved so she was straddling him. She undulated, once, against him, and he thought he would explode on the spot. Holy hell. Then she settled, cocooning him between her forearms as she gripped the back of the sofa, one hand on each side of his head. Jonquils. Red silk. Heat and buzz and glow. She dipped her head, nipped his lower lip.
‘No, that wasn’t the kiss—that was me signalling my intention, as I promised to do.’ She smiled. ‘So! Ready?’
Any thought of denying her went straight out of his head like a shot of suddenly liberated steam. Leo gripped her hips, ground her against him, wanting her to feel his raging erection—although he didn’t know why, unless her form of insanity was contagious—and took over, devouring her mouth with a hard, savaging kiss.
Her mouth was amazing. Open, luscious, drawing him in. His tongue, hot and agile, swept the roof of her mouth, the insides of her cheeks, under her super-sexy top lip. The tart sweetness of the lemony tea was delicious when it was licked from inside her. He could feel that slight gap between her front teeth. He moved his hands, cupped her face to keep her there, just there, so he could taste more deeply.
He could feel his heart thundering. Became aware that her hands were now fisted in his shirt as she rocked against him, forced her mouth and his wider still. She was whimpering, alternately jamming her tongue into his mouth and then licking his lips. And rocking, rocking, rocking against him until he thought he’d go mad with wanting.
Then her hands were moving between them, fingers plucking at the button of his jeans, which opened in a ‘thank God’ moment, then sliding his zipper down, freeing him.
‘Ah...’ he gasped, pulling his mouth away so he could breathe, try to think. But it was no use. He had to kiss her again.
She reeled him back in, pulled him closer, angled him so that when she lay back, flattened on the couch, he was on top of her.
Then his hands were there, pulling up the red silk. Up, up, up. So he could touch her skin, which was like satin. No, not satin—warmer than satin. Velvet...like velvet. His fingers slid higher, closer. He didn’t want to wait—couldn’t wait—had to feel her, to be in her the fastest way he could get there.
Without disengaging his mouth from hers, he plunged his fingers into her. Again. She arched into the touch.
She didn’t speak, but breathed out words. His name. ‘Leo. Yes, yes. Leo...’
And then it wasn’t his fingers but him needing to be there, buried in her as deep as he could go, panting, straining, wanting this, wanting her, silently demanding that she come for him. For him.
He felt her body tightening, straining, heard his name explode from her lips as the orgasm gripped her. He pushed hard into her, and kissed her drugging mouth again as he followed her into a life-draining release.
They lay there, connected, in a tangle of clothes, spent.
After a long moment Sunshine gave a shaky laugh. ‘That was some kiss,’ she said.
But Leo didn’t feel like laughing. He felt like diving into her again...and also, contrarily, like getting the hell away from her. From her rules. Her determination to fix him in the place where she wanted him. Just where she wanted him. No further.
Awkwardly, he disengaged himself from her body.
Sunshine sat up, pushing at her hair with one unsteady hand and at her dress with the other. She looked like the cat that had got the cream.
Infuriating.
Mechanically, Leo adjusted his clothing. He was appalled to realise he hadn’t even seen her during that mad sexual scramble. Did that make him some kind of depraved, desperate sex fiend, that he’d treated her body like a receptacle? But then, he hadn’t really needed to see her to know very well that it was her driving him wild—so wild he hadn’t been able to think past the need to be inside her.
‘Are you sorry?’ Sunshine asked softly.
She was watching him with wary concern.
‘No. Yes. I don’t know.’
Tiny laugh. ‘Multiple choice? How...comprehensive.’
He stood abruptly, shoved his hands in his pockets, not trusting where he’d put them otherwise.
‘Leo, don’t go. We have to talk about this.’
He shook his head.
She got to her feet, took his hand. ‘You will get all angsty if you leave now, because it happened so fast and we weren’t expecting it to go like that. We can’t have angst; we have too much to do. Come on, sit with me—let’s make sure we can get back to normal before you go.’
How did you talk yourself back to normal after that?
How did a kiss turn into rip-your-heart-out sex in one blinding flash of a moment? And that complete loss of control... It had never happened to him before. No condom. Not even a thought of one! He was shaken. Badly.
And—God!—she was still holding his hand, and he was rubbing his thumb over her knuckles, and he hadn’t even noticed he was doing it. He didn’t do that touchy-feely stuff.
He dropped her hand and stepped back. ‘You’re dangerous, Sunshine,’ he said.
She looked startled. ‘It’s not like I’m a black widow spider or a praying mantis.’
‘What the—? All right, I think I get the black widow spider. But what’s so dangerous about a praying mantis?’
Her eyes lit. ‘Oh, it’s really interesting! Praying mantises can only have sex once the female rips off the male’s head. Imagine! At least you still have your head.’
Leo felt his lips twitch. But he was not going to laugh. It was not a funny situation. It was an angsty one. Angsty? God.
‘On that note, I’m going,’ he said.
‘But we have to talk.’
‘Not now. Meet me... I don’t know... Tomorrow. At the Rump & Chop Grill. Five o’clock. It’s only a few blocks from here. I’ll send someone for my kitchen gear in the morning.’
‘All right, tomorrow,’ she agreed, and walked with him to the door, where she stopped him. ‘Leo, just so you can think about it before then...I want to have sex with you again. We have up to three more opportunities, and there doesn’t seem to be a reason not to use them. We just need to schedule them so we don’t get distracted from the wedding preparations.’
He was staring again. Couldn’t help it.
‘Far be it from me to distract you, Sunshine,’ he said.
* * *
So!
