and asked, “You still on fire for me?”
“Ravaged by flame,” he said. “Day and night.”
“What else?” She hardly knew what she meant, but still wanted to hear his answer.
His gaze was unwavering in the dull light. “I’ve woken up next to my best friend. And I can’t believe it’s really happened—that you’re here, looking sleepy and sexy, and the same but somehow so different in my bed without clothes on. I can’t believe I’m going to wake up next to you every morning. That I’m going to learn more about you—little things, amazing things, like that sound you made right before you woke up or how hot you take your showers.” He paused, voice dropping to a rumble. “Or the feel of your release when I’ve had you for longer than a few minutes.”
Her skin flushed, and emboldened, she rolled onto her side to face him. His attention leapt to her breasts, hungry, yet holding back.
“Want to learn that one now?” she asked.
“God, yes.” She felt his answer in the pit of her stomach. “Yes.”
Then his hands were on her, drawing her to him as his lips found hers. Slow and lavish, his tongue took her straight back to the night before. That’s right, her mouth remembered, that’s his taste. His naked skin sparked against hers, waking her in a rush before he pressed her onto her back with the hard length of his body.
She tensed, and he drew back in silent question.
“I—don’t generally like missionary,” she admitted, curling a hand around his shoulder, somehow seeking his protection against the threat of his own position.
“Doesn’t feel good?” A line appeared between his brows. “Or something else?”
She swallowed at the old memory of the Burberry boy—at how she’d felt powerless and scared and trapped within his braced forearms. “Something else.”
He scanned her face, serious. “You want to sit up? Turn over? Choose a wall, any wall? Table, chair, windowsill?”
She rolled her lips together a moment before she laughed. “All of the above.”
“Anywhere except on top—not yet,” he said, kissing outward along her left cheekbone. His breath was a soft shock in the shell of her ear. “I get to do things to you first.”
She heated at his wicked promise, and found herself relaxing, loosening back onto the bed. On her back, with him above her. “I think this might be fine.”
She wanted it to be. For her—for them.
He grinned back. “It’s going to be more than fine.”
Then he kissed her again, banishing thoughts of her past while his hand moved down to the waistband of her underwear, toying with the elastic, his fingers dipping beneath as far as his first knuckle and running across her stomach from one hip to the other. The touch teased her, flared heat between her legs in calling. Down here. His fingers ran back the other way and she lifted her hips a little with a gasp. Come all the way down.
“Just once, wasn’t it?” he murmured against her mouth.
“I’ll kill you,” she said.
Chuckling, he slid down her body, tugging her underwear off over her feet. Settling at her hips, his erection snug against her outer thigh, he pressed an openmouthed kiss to the sensitive skin below her belly button—at the same time as his fingers pressed between her legs. Her body arched, she moved her hips against him, and he made a deep noise of satisfaction as he started to circle her.
Time passed, measured in his strokes.
Not that she had the mind to count.
Heat bloomed beneath his fingers. She gripped his shoulder tighter and tighter, almost embarrassed at how quickly her pleasure built. She’d hardly held on the night before, blamed it on years of anticipation and the thrill of finally being with Kris, but already, the heat at her core was threatening to spill beneath his touch.
On a moan, she stole a glance at where he lounged beside her, one arm draped over her waist, the other busy, so busy.
His gaze flicked up, and he smiled, his eyes glinting. “So ready.”
“Maybe I like you,” she said on a gasp.
“It’s going to make this next bit a little harder,” he said, ignoring her frown as he moved to settle between her thighs. His broad shoulders brushed against her skin, and something about all his strength and rough-hewn intensity serving her pleasure sent shivers right to her toes. God above, there’s a cowboy between my legs. And his tongue was about to swagger all the way inside her. He held her stare, giving her time to