anything in a long time. She didn’t just want a quick peck, as he’d so carelessly put it. She wanted their lips to crash together like some sort of inevitable storm. She wanted to feel the wide expanse of his shoulders under her palms. She wanted to get lost in him.
Most of all, Zuri wanted him to make her feel something more than this pain, and this numbness that had begun to form like ice around her heart.
She knew his kiss would burn that wall down, it would singe her from the inside out. So yes, she wanted it, but she feared it, too.
“Zuri, I don’t want you to be a frog,” he said, when she still didn’t say anything.
She didn’t know what to say. Kiss me? Come here? Give it to me? They all sounded stupid to her. “Not even to keep you company in the fountain?”
“I hate that fountain,” he said, moving toward her.
She realized then she didn’t have to say anything at all. She held out her arms to him, and suddenly he pressed her down against the bed. His weight was a delicious sensation, and Zuri knew then she was in deep shit.
This wouldn’t be just a kiss, not with the fire that still burned hot and wild between them.
She hadn’t wanted a cold, impersonal peck, but she didn’t think she was ready for this, either.
His body was so big and hard, a perfect contrast to her softness. He cupped her face with his hand, and he looked into her eyes for a moment that seemed to stretch into forever. Phillip brushed his thumb over the fullness of her bottom lip.
She could feel his reaction to her, his arousal, and Zuri wanted to get closer. She wanted to feel everything he had to offer.
“You’re beautiful. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he said.
“I don’t even know how you can stand to look at me like this,” she whispered.
“A few itchy spots don’t change the light I see in you.”
Zuri wished desperately for that to be true.
She realized again that she was still in that moment of turning, that time when her path would change again.
Zuri had to kiss him to get well, but she had this sense that it was going to change everything. Including things she wasn’t ready to change.
So she waited to close that distance between them. She let them both hang frozen in the moment, with his warm breath on her lips and the desire building deep in her core.
“Tell me how you want this.”
The words she’d been unable to find came to her in a rush. “Kiss me like you want to forever.”
He descended slowly, and her lips tingled with the anticipation of his kiss. She’d swear that a thousand years passed before they made contact, but when his mouth slanted over hers, it was easily a thousand more.
The man obviously knew what he was doing, and she supposed he’d have to, being Prince Charming.
The itching that skittered across her body changed to something else. Something even more intense. Her whole body burned with the want of him.
She wound her arms around his back and gloried in the feel of his sculpted body. Zuri moved her hands over him and touched him in all the ways she’d fantasized about while he claimed her lips.
His hand moved from her waist up to the edge of her pajama shirt, and part of her logical mind told her she should tell him to stop, but she didn’t want him to stop. She wanted more.
Only, he made her make a conscious choice. His hand paused, his fingers warm on her skin. “May I touch you?”
“If you don’t, I’ll curse you again,” she whispered against his lips.
He held her gaze while his hand traveled up to her breast and he cupped the weight in his hand, his thumb stroking over the engorged flesh of her nipple the way he’d stroked her lip. Carefully, with a designed purpose. To bring her body to life.
“May I taste you?” he whispered next, his mouth just at the corner of her lips.
She loved everything he was doing to her, but it gave him too much power. She couldn’t surrender so easily. “What would you do if I said no?”
“Stop, of course,” he said, and pressed his lips to her jaw.
“Tell me more. Tell me how you’d feel.”
He moved his lips to her neck, and she was dizzy with her want of him.
“Which body part do you want to hear about