imagined her like this over the years with varying degrees of physical accuracy. But no matter how his mind had played with her, shaped and embellished, nothing could compare to the reality of her before him now—lean and sculpted and every inch the most intense fantasy of his life.
So this was Frankie.
She was blinking at him.
He stilled, hesitating. “This okay?”
“No one’s ever got me naked that fast.”
Lust clawed low inside him as he looked her over. “Four years isn’t exactly a record.”
Her smile bordered on shy. “Your turn.”
She helped him. Their hands tangled at his shirt buttons, fumbled at his trousers because their mouths met again and split focus was beyond him. He stopped caring when his hands found her waist and slid up to cup her breasts. Christ. He dragged her nipple into his mouth, sucking and reveling in her ready moan. She was perfect. That was his only clear thought.
Utterly perfect.
His breath was quick, his cock rigid. Vaguely, he was aware of her hand dipping into his front pocket for the condom before she freed him and kicked his clothes aside. Sparks flared beneath his skin at the slide of her hands on his chest.
“Goddamn,” she muttered, shifting closer and brushing her lips over his pecs. “No wonder you’re arrogant.”
He smiled distractedly, struggling not to gather her naked body to him and show her the more pertinent reason for his arrogance. “You’ve seen me without a shirt before.”
Her fingers drifted lower. “I’ve never touched you.”
“I wish you—”
His mind emptied as she grasped the length of him. All that was left was the tight stroking of her hand. The slam of his palm returning to the wall. The blaze of his pleasure growing ever-hotter. The strained sound of her name on his lips. And cursing, he was almost definitely mouthing profanities in mindless reverence at her rhythm. Frankie was touching him. Frankie was pressed naked against his side, her mouth roaming the muscles of his arm. It was too much. Urgency surged through him and he dragged her hand away.
Then he was returning his thigh between her legs, angling it against her clit—and rubbing firmly. She moaned, shuddering, and moved with him. If her gratification lay in outer orgasms, he’d have no regrets for it to end just like this.
“Kris.” Her indignance sparked through her pleasure. “I don’t need a bed for our first time, but I draw the line at coming on your fucking leg.”
That answered that. He laughed, darkly delighted by her crudity, and raised his head to kiss her slow and deep. Feasting from her gutter-mouth was literal bliss.
“Lift me?” she asked, fastening her arms around his neck.
He passed a hand down her stomach. “I want to touch you first.”
“Next time.”
“Once.” His fingers found her soft curls and he went mad imagining how she must feel beneath them. “Please, just once?”
“Okay.” Her green eyes were burning. “But we’re on a timeline.”
Jesus. Okay. Just once.
With his mouth behind her ear and eyes closed, he slid his fingers between her legs—and almost lost control at the silky, swollen feel of her. She weakened in his arms, pulling on his neck with a tremble, and he stroked her, a single two-fingered slide that went deep and wet and drew a sound of strangled pleasure from low inside her. Lost in the sensation, he dragged back the other way, harder this time, teasing, closer to where he most desperately wanted to delve.
God. He had to feel the inside of her.
“Just once,” he murmured, seeking permission through his mindless haze. He grazed against her, preparing, poised to start shallow but not making any promises to stay there.
“Cheater.” She nipped his earlobe and he opened his eyes with a swift breath. “You can’t start again from zero.” Her voice was hoarse with wanting. “I don’t want it to happen like that—not this time.”
Freeing his ear with a tug, he scraped his teeth down her neck and murmured, “How do you want it?” He was pushing her. She’d claimed she could do sex and attraction, but not intimacy. And while dirty talk was all sex on the surface, peel back the lust and those confessions were intensely intimate. “Tell me.”
“I want . . .” She trailed off as he circled his hands around the backs of her thighs and lifted her to his hips. He fought the urge to enter her as he pressed her back against the wall. “You inside me,” she said, the quiet words seeming to blush. “Right here.”