into each other's eyes, noses touching. She quivered, but not from the cold.
"Would it surprise you to know," he said, "that I've always wanted to make love on a beach under a full moon with a batch of turtles ready to hatch?"
A smile touched her eyes. "What a coincidence."
He twirled his nose around hers, stole a featherlight kiss from one side of her mouth.
"Cole, when I said something might happen, I didn't mean this."
His hand on her arm, he brought her closer.
"I did."
Chapter Thirteen
Cole had said they shouldn't worry about words. As he drew her close and his mouth took hers, Taryn couldn't help but agree. The time for talk and gibes and delays was over. When she'd said she hadn't thought this would happen, she'd lied, and not only to Cole. She'd lied to herself.
All barriers needed to be lifted. No matter the reason for them being here, neither of them was able to escape the fact that they were attracted to each other - sexually, intellectually. On every level she could think of, she found Cole...intriguing.
Make that irresistible.
And as she pressed into his heat and accepted his kiss, that was all her mind could grasp and hold on to. He may be mulish; there were times she'd like to grab his shoulders and shake. He could irritate her. Goad her. At the same time, he stimulated her so often and so deeply, there was a part of her that had begun to crave the sound of his laugh, the slant of his smile. The incredible way he made her feel inside and out.
She drove her hands up through his hair, letting him know he didn't have to stop. He could kiss her harder, if he wanted. The physical flesh-on-flesh pleasure he stirred up within her...the heady, almost desperate feelings that followed... People may have been making love since the dawn of time, but never like this. If the world were to end in an hour, she wouldn't care, as long as she spent these last moments here, with Cole, like this.
Cole had flicked open his shirt buttons and was rolling out one shoulder and then angling while he shucked out of the other. When the rock-hard breadth of his chest brushed her bodice, her body instantly responded, her breasts swelling and nipples hardening to tight aching points.
Running out of air, she broke their kiss long enough to suck down a breath then clutch the hem of her dress. His gaze dark and hungry, Cole reached to help. While he grabbed the fabric rumpled around her thighs, she lifted up and raised both arms. She wiggled, he wrenched, and a moment later she was naked from her panties up.
His gaze filling hers, he crowded her back until she lay against the blanket-covered dune again. Then his head lowered, his mouth covered the peak of one breast and his tongue began to twirl. When his teeth nipped twice quickly, a bolt of shimmering lightning ripped through her veins.
Groaning in her throat, she held on to his head as her own rocked to one side and she arched up to soak in as much of this heaven as she could. His palm had molded over her other exposed breast, tracing and tickling the bead in an expert, mind-bending way. As her hands knotted in his hair then trailed to knead either side of his broad steamy back, she trembled with an overwhelming carnal need. She had to discover all of him. Every inch. Every shape and line.
He was kissing her again, his palm ironing down her belly, in beneath the elastic of her panties. When he reached the feminine crease between her legs, he sighed into her mouth. It felt as if his every muscle relaxed and then contracted extra tight. As he murmured something against her lips, a phrase about how beautiful she was - how much he'd looked forward to this moment - a more cynical Taryn might think that those were the kinds of things men said when they made love to a woman. But in a place she trusted more, she knew that he meant it. And right now she felt beautiful. Beautiful and about to go up in flames!
She fumbled to grip the waistband of his jeans. Grinning against her mouth, he let her struggle while his fingertip rose up and down her swollen cleft. The crotch of her panties was soaked and he seemed intent on only making her wetter. Dabbing soft moist kisses on