couldn’t get any better. “Then you won’t.”
Ten minutes later, amid gasps of laughter and lust, Garrett turned the key and Nichole’s front door swung open under the combined weight of their bodies. Spilling into her front hall, Garrett righted them both, kicked the door closed with a sweep of his leg and threw the lock. She backed across the open hardwood, barely a step ahead of him, eyes glittering, lips curved and parted as her breath came in shallow pants.
Her gaze swept the length of him and the now persistent flush of her cheeks deepened, driving the blood hard and fast to his already aching groin. Reaching for him, her slender fingers curved around his belt, pulling until he allowed her to tow him closer. Close enough that he could reach around her, cover the firm curves of her ass with his hands, slide lower still to the backs of her thighs and hoist her up against him.
Her breath caught as her ankles locked behind his back, the soft brown of her eyes going nearly black as her pupils pushed wide.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he groaned, fighting the urge to take her there against the wall.
Nodding distractedly, she went to work on the buttons down the front of his shirt, pushing at the panels like she was revealing Superman’s emblem beneath. And when she answered, “You too,” her eyes glazing at the sight of him, taking a building in a single bound didn’t seem so impossible.
The door to her room was open ahead, and the sight of her neat bed with its delicate lilac print spread made him harder than he could ever remember being. Hell, yes, he was hungry for the sex. For her body. For the pretty pink that tinged her skin and the sounds she’d make when he took her over the edge. He wanted all of that. But this—this anticipation burning through his veins—was for what would come after. For the part that was going to be different. The part he would wait for until he’d wrung every moan and gasp Nichole’s body had to offer out of her.
At her bed, he set her back on the mattress, supporting himself on one arm.
Legs still wrapped around his hips, she looked up at him. “I don’t even know your name.”
He’d opened his mouth to tell her when something in the depths of those deep dark eyes gave him pause. Something excited.
The corner of his mouth kicked up. Lowering his voice to a taunting growl, he asked, “So the question is, do you like it better that way?”
The half-moan, half-gasp that escaped her slender throat was answer enough to just about push him over the edge.
Had he actually thought she couldn’t get any better?
Perfect. This hot, hard, mouthwatering male specimen was her sunset. Her uncomplicated simple pleasure. This was the fantasy she could finally afford to play out. The reckless adventure she hadn’t dared to dream. And, more, it was safe.
Because she didn’t even know his name.
Women didn’t plan forevers around nameless men. They didn’t get the wrong idea. Misinterpret intentions. Or get caught up in dreams that would take them nowhere.
They got a single night sans complications.
This was the one night of wild abandon she’d been unconsciously saving up for for three years. Longer than that if she was willing to look back. But she wasn’t. Not tonight. Not when this moment, right now—as the familiar stranger above her lowered his mouth to the hollow between her breasts—was too good to miss even one second of.
Those blue eyes peered up at her as the corner of his mouth twisted into a mischievous smile. “This little bow here,” he murmured gruffly, “has been begging me to play with it all night.” Then, catching one loose string between his teeth, he tugged until the knot slipped free, taking Nichole’s next breath with it.
She hadn’t thought of the peach cami as particularly sexy, hadn’t consciously drawn attention to herself for years. But at the rough sound of appreciation scraping from his throat as he used his hand to part the tiny expanse of soft cotton between her breasts just that much further, she flushed with the pleasure of knowing it was.
His tongue swirled deep in the hollow there, wetting the skin first and then blowing a cool breath across it after, making her belly turn and twist.
There wasn’t enough contact between them. Not for the way her body was beginning to ache. To heat. To need. He was above her on the bed, his weight supported on one arm and the knees that straddled her thigh.
His tongue made another wet foray across the swell of her breast and then stopped within a warm, teasing breath of her nipple. So close.
Arching into him, she offered the straining bud to his kiss, begging him to push her bra aside and take. But just as quickly he eased back, drawing another wet trail up to her collarbone, her neck and then to the decadent spot behind her ear that had never felt quite so sensitive as this.
“I want you naked, Nichole,” he growled against the spot, making her heart skitter and pound.
“You know my name,” she gasped as his palm smoothed over her belly to the hem of her shirt and pushed it up.
Pulling the gathered fabric over her head, he tossed the shirt aside and stared down at her breasts, covered in a plain cream demi-cup. “And you don’t know mine.”
She swallowed hard.
It shouldn’t have been exciting. She only wanted to think of it as a safeguard, a defense against this man who’d stirred the first response her body had known in three years, and quite possibly the strongest ever. But there was no mistaking the playful taunt in his tone. This was sexy gameplay. Or maybe a second cousin to it. It had to be some relation based on the way the words alone and all their suggestive implications licked at the needy, achy places within her. Places she hadn’t thought existed.
A flick of his finger and the front clasp opened. Another and she was bared to him. The peaks of her nipples tight and straining for a touch only he could give her. And now, watching the way that electric blue glaze zeroed in on them, she didn’t think she’d manage her next breath if he didn’t ease them.
“Naked, Nichole.”
BACKING OFF THE BED he helped her out of her jeans and panties. Staring in blatant appreciation at her naked form spread out before him, he shed his shirt with a few efficient jerks and went to work on his belt.
Nichole’s mouth went dry, her eyes wide. And then she was on her knees at the edge of the bed, pushing his hands from the wide length of leather and running her own up the steep plains of his chest. She’d felt the power in his shoulders when he carried her, seen the definition across his pecs when she’d opened his shirt, but this—nothing had prepared her for the hard-cut terrain of his shirtless form.
He was like a work of art. A Greek god. A veritable playground of muscle and man. And he was only half undressed.
“Naked,” she murmured, her fingers jumping the crest of each abdominal ridge as they descended back to his belt, tugged the stiff leather until the buckle freed, before moving on to his straining fly.
He
