He glanced sideways at her. Despite the rigid set of her body, and the temper on that lovely face, she excited him. One diamanté strap was halfway down a silky smooth arm, revealing more than a little of a tip-tilted breast. The silk fabric outlined every curve of her body, and he could smell the floral perfume that wafted around her like a seductive cloud. She put his teeth on edge, and it irritated him beyond all reason.
He lit a cigarette that he didn’t even want, and abruptly put it out, remembering belatedly that he’d quit smoking just last week. And he was driving faster than he normally did. “I don’t know why in hell you invited me over here,” he said curtly, “if you planned to spend the whole evening with the damned city clerk.”
“Assistant city clerk,” she mumbled. She darted a glance at him and pressed a strand of long hair away from her mouth. He looked irritated. His face was harder than usual, and he was driving just as fast as Wyatt had been.
“Whatever the hell he is.”
“I didn’t realize you’d even noticed what I was doing, King,” she replied sweetly, “what with Wyatt’s pretty little cousin wrapped around you like a ribbon.”
His eyebrows arched. “Wrapped around me?”
“Wasn’t she?” she asked, averting her face. “Sorry. It seemed like it to me.”
He pulled the car onto the side of the road and turned toward her, letting the engine idle. The hand holding the steering wheel clenched, but his dark eyes were steady on hers; she could see them in the light from the instrument panel.
“Were you jealous, honey?” he taunted, in a tone she’d never heard him use. It was deep and smooth and low-pitched. It made her young body tingle in the oddest way.
“I thought you were supposed to be my guest, that’s all,” she faltered.
“That’s what I thought, too, until you started vamping Wyatt whats-his-name.”
His finger toyed with the diamanté strap that had fallen onto her arm. She reached to tug it up, but his lean, hard fingers were suddenly there, preventing her.
Her eyes levered up to meet his quizzically, and in the silence of the car, she could hear her own heartbeat, like a faint drum.
The lean forefinger traced the strap from back to front, softly brushing skin that had never known a man’s touch before. She stiffened a little, to feel it so lightly tracing the slope of her breast.
“They…they’ll miss us,” she said in a voice that sounded wildly high-pitched and frightened.
“Think so?”
He smiled slowly, because he was exciting her, and he liked it. He could see her breasts rising and falling with quick, jerky breaths. He could see her nipples peaking under that silky soft fabric. The pulse in her throat was quick, too, throbbing. She was coming-of-age tonight, in more ways than one.
He reached beside him and slowly, blatantly, turned off the engine before he turned back to Tiffany. There was a full moon, and the light of it and the subdued light of the instrument panel gave him all the illumination he needed.
“King,” she whispered shakily.
“Don’t panic,” he said quietly. “It’s going to be delicious.”
She watched his hand move, as if she were paralyzed. It drew the strap even further off her arm, slowly, relentlessly, tugging until that side of her silky bodice fell to the hard tip of her nipple. And then he gave it a whisper of a push and it fell completely away, baring her pretty pink breast to eyes that had seen more than their share of women. But this was different. This was Tiffany, who was virginal and young and completely without experience.
That knowledge hardened his body. His lean fingers traced her collarbone, his eyes lifted to search her quiet, faintly shocked face. Her eyes were enormous. Probably this was all new to her, and perhaps a little frightening as well.
“You’re of age, now. It has to happen with someone,” he said.
“Then…I want it to happen…with you,” she whispered, her voice trembling, like her body.
His pulse jumped. His eyes darkened, glittered. “Do you? I wonder if you realize what you’re getting into,” he murmured. He bent toward her, noticing her sudden tension, her wide-eyed apprehension. He checked the slow movement, for an instant; long enough to whisper, “I won’t hurt you.”
She leaned back against the leather seat as he turned toward her, her body tautening, trembling a little. But it wasn’t fear that motivated her. As she met his smoldering eyes, she slowly arched her back, to let the rest of the bodice fall, and saw the male desire in his dark eyes as they looked down at what the movement had uncovered.
“Your breasts are exquisite,” he said absently, that tracing hand moving slowly, tenderly, down one tip-tilted slope, making her shudder. “Perfect.”
“They ache,” she whispered on a sob, her eyes half closed, in thrall to some physical paralysis that made her throb all over with exquisite sensations.
“I can do something about that,” he mused with a brief smile.
His forefinger found the very tip of one small breast and traced around it gently, watching it go even harder, feeling it shudder with the tiny consummation. He heard the faint gasp break from her lips and looked up at her face, at her wide, misty eyes.
“Yes,” he said, as if her expression told him everything. And it did. She wanted him. She’d let him do anything he wanted to do, and he felt hot all over.
She moved against the seat, her body in helpless control now, begging for something, for more than this. Her head went back, her full lips parting, hungry.
He slid his arm under her neck, bringing her body closer to his, his mouth poised just above hers. He watched her as his hand moved, and his lean fingers slowly closed over her breast, taking its soft weight and teasing the nipple with his thumb.
She cried softly at the unexpected pleasure, and bit her lower lip in helpless agony.
“Don’t do that,” he whispered, bending. “Let me…”
His hard lips touched hers, biting softly at them, tracing them warmly from one side to the other. His nose nuzzled against hers, relaxing her, gentling her, while his hand toyed softly with her breast. “Open your mouth, baby,” he breathed as his head lowered again, and he met her open mouth with his.
She moaned harshly at the wild excitement he was arousing in her. She’d never dreamed that a kiss could be so intimate, so sweetly exciting. His tongue pushed past her startled lips, into the soft darkness of her mouth, teasing hers in a silence broken only by the sounds of breathing, and cloth against cloth.
“King,” she breathed under his lips. Her hands bit into his hair, his nape, tugging. “Hard, King,” she whispered shakily, “hard, hard…!”
He hadn’t expected that flash of ardor. It caused him to be far rougher than he meant to. He crushed her mouth under his, the force of it bending her head back against his shoulder. His searching hand found first one breast, then the other, savoring the warm silk
