to happen after tonight.
She didn’t care. She didn’t want to think about it. Since Ben had died, she’d spent too much of her life trying unsuccessfully to focus on the moment when she’d really never been able to do more than endure.
Not now.
Not tonight.
Not when this moment and those immediately following were going to be spent with Nick Savas—making love with Nick Savas.
She was going to savor it. Why not?
She’d missed the intimacy of the bedroom. Her first experience, with Kyle, had left her wondering what all the excitement was about. During the few weeks they’d been together, he had been fierce and hungry and demanding. He’d always directed things. Always taken charge. And with the eagerness of youth—he’d been twenty-three—Kyle had been more concerned with the end than the journey along the way. He’d never given her a chance to discover the subtleties of lovemaking.
With Ben it had been different. The two of them had learned together. They’d explored together. With Ben it had been about the journey, about pleasing, about loving, not simply about the orgasmic rush. It had been about knowing and being known.
She knew better than to expect that here. A single night meant nothing compared to the years she’d had with Ben. But until tonight she’d never even been tempted. She wasn’t sure what that meant.
She wanted to find out.
Would she be in bed with him if Kyle hadn’t turned up?
Probably not. Her well-developed common sense would likely have led her back to her room at a reasonable hour to her chaste single bed. And once there, then what? Would she have dreamed of Ben?
Lately she had not dreamed of him. For the past few months, she barely remembered dreaming at all. For all that she wanted to hang on to every memory, she knew he was slipping away from her. If she had gone to bed alone, would it have been memories of Ben that would have kept her awake? Or would she have tossed and turned all night thinking about this dark, handsome man who was holding so still now while she undid the buttons of his shirt.
The shirt was starched, the buttons stiff. It took a while. Edie enjoyed every moment.
It wasn’t as if she was going to do it again, she told herself. Nick had been absolutely clear about that.
They were having a “one-night stand,” she thought, and was appalled that those trite tawdry words could be used to describe what was happening at this very moment.
It didn’t feel tawdry at all.
For all that it was unexpected, it felt—right.
So Edie shoved the words away, shoved all the rest of her life away, and focused on the man—and the moment.
She slid the last button loose, then eased the shirt off his shoulders and down his arms. Before she could decide where to go from there, Nick took it from her and tossed it aside. Then he yanked his undershirt out of his black trousers and started to pull it over his head.
Edie caught his hands. “Mine,” she said, astonished at the word as it came out of her mouth.
Nick groaned, but he dropped his hands. “I get to undress you, then,” he muttered, giving her a look that promised action.
“When it’s your turn,” she agreed, trying to sound as if it didn’t make her shiver with anticipation. She was getting enough shivers just peeling his shirt over his head, then resting her hands for a moment on his shoulders before daring to rake her nails lightly down over his hair-roughened chest.
She could feel a tremor run through him as he remained still under her hands, his dark eyes hooded, watching her every move. She traced circles around his nipples, then arrowed her fingers down the center of his chest across his abdomen. They stilled when they came to rest at his belt.
“I suppose that’s yours, too,” Nick rasped, looking down.
Edie looked, too. “Sounds good to me,” she said. “Do you want to stand up?”
He stood. She was just above eye level with the belt in question now. She brushed her fingers lightly over the front of his trousers as she began to undo the buckle. Nick drew a quick breath.
The buckle was easier than the buttons had been, and in bare seconds she had it undone. Without stopping to think about what she was doing, Edie skimmed down the zip of his trousers. Only when she did so, did she realize how close she was to the hot flesh that she wanted to touch, that she could tell, from its persistent press against the front of his shorts, wanted to touch her.
Belt undone, zip down, his trousers fell to the floor. Nick toed off his shoes and kicked them away, then stepped out of his pants and stood before her in only a pair of cotton boxers that did nothing to hide his arousal.
“Yours, too, obviously,” he said gruffly, looking down. Then he lifted his gaze to meet hers. “Now it’s my turn.”
“I’m not done,” Edie protested.
“Neither one of us is done,” Nick said, grasping her hands in his, holding them loosely so she couldn’t continue. “Let me catch up.”
He bent his head and kissed his way down her bare shoulders, his hot mouth against her skin making her shiver as his fingers went to the back of her dress. Then he groaned and dropped his head against her shoulders.
“What?”
“There’re five thousand buttons back here.”
“Only forty, I think.” But she remembered standing still for what seemed like forever as her mother had done up the dress. “Or maybe fifty.”
“Fifty?” Another groan. But even as he did so, his nimble fingers set to work.
Nick Savas was a man of many talents, and he could multi task with the best of them, Edie thought, as his lips nibbled her jaw, her earlobes, her shoulders even as his fingers undid the buttons one at a time. Even his hair seemed to be actively seducing her as silky black strands brushed softly against her sensitized skin.
Then he sighed, pleased and lifted his head to smile at her. “Victory is mine,” he murmured and hooked his fingers in the top of her dress and drew it slowly down.
The bra was part of the dress, and when he lowered the bodice, he bared her breasts. The cool air made her shiver. But so did the look on Nick Savas’s face. Edie had never had the confidence in her bodily beauty that her mother and Rhiannon did. While she’d always known she had no major defects, she couldn’t help feeling as if she suffered by comparison to her mother and sister.
But Nick seemed to be entranced by what he saw. His hands came up to cup her breasts, to weigh them gently in his hands. His thumbs rolled over her nipples heightening her awareness of her body’s needs.
“Beautiful. You are so beautiful,” he murmured and bent his head to lave first one breast and then the other. And Edie felt a shaft of desire clear to the center of her. She shivered.
“Are you cold?”
“N-no.
