do a different kind of appraisal?” he suggested. His fingertips trailed down her neck.
“What did you have in mind?”
“Let’s agree that I have excellent skills as a manny and move to a blow-by-blow appraisal of my skills as a lover. You can score me out of ten.”
Jane gave a half laugh, which melted into a nonsensical kind of sound as his head lowered and his lips brushed her jawline. She shut her eyes as sensations swirled in her belly. “You won’t feel…objectified?”
He chuckled low and close to her ear. “Objectify me, baby.” And then his hand slid around to her back, and somehow he was easing her down to the mattress, his lips barely lifting from her skin. Her head landed on the pillow, and he licked her neck.
“How’s that?”
Jane swallowed and shut her eyes, glorying in the wet lap of his tongue. “Good,” she panted, her pulse fluttering madly. “Very good. An eight, at least.”
“Hmm,” he murmured, and it buzzed against the hollow at the base of her throat. “I’m sure I can do better than that. Where else?”
“What?” His lips brushed her skin as he talked, which was exceedingly distracting.
“Where else should I lick you?”
Wicked, wicked thoughts exploded in her brain. Lower. Her nipples, her belly button, her…god, just everywhere. But she pointed to her mouth, because if she didn’t kiss him soon, she was going to die. “How about here?”
He lifted his head, chuckling as his mouth drew nearer to hers, puffing warm air over her as he hovered his lips, teasing her with their nearness.
Well…screw that.
Jane lifted her head and snatched his mouth for her own. Opening to him—unleashing, devouring, her tongue stroking inside and owning the kiss, her arms snaking around his neck, her fingers thrusting into the wild tangle of curls at his nape as she pulled his body flush with hers. But then he unleashed, and she moaned and clung to him as he took the kiss deeper and wetter and dirtier, her head sinking into the pillow as his lips moved hard and hot over hers.
For long, drugging moments, there was nothing but his mouth and his taste and the husky chug of their breathing and the loud thrum of her pulse through her ears. But then he was gone again, and Jane whimpered something unintelligible—hell, it was barely human—in protest.
“Don’t worry,” he panted, his lips at her throat again, “I’ll be back for more soon.”
Then he was licking down her body, wreaking all kinds of havoc with his hot tongue. Along her collarbones and following the V of her T-shirt as his hand found the hem and slid it up, his palm smoothing up her belly and her chest until her breasts were fully exposed and his mouth found a nipple.
Jane gasped at the hot lick on the almost unbearably aroused tip. Her hand sank into his hair, holding him there, her body shuddering and melting as he trekked his tongue from one to the other, lingering longer each time, the rhythmic suction strumming nerve endings buried deep inside her inner thighs and the lips of her sex.
Then he abandoned the flushed, engorged peaks for destinations farther south. The surface muscles of her abdomen leaped and contracted beneath his mouth, and the erotic rub of his whiskers. His tongue played around her belly button and lower again, his hands busy easing her pajama shorts and her underwear down her hips and then stripping them off until she was automatically kicking them off her feet and spreading her legs for him to settle between.
His tongue licked up her inner thigh, and Jane cried out as she arched off the bed.
He chuckled low, puffing warm air over the wet streak he’d just made on her thigh. “How am I doing?”
Confused for a moment, Jane lifted her head. Her belly contracted hard at the sight of him propped up between her thighs, all smug and comfortable, overbearingly masculine with his dark whiskers and his hair rakishly tousled. Like a king settling in for a feast. With his big shoulders filling the space between her legs, spreading them wide, he grinned at her, resting his chin on her mons, making hot, frank eye contact.
“Well?”
Jane frowned. “What…?” She’d already forgotten the damn question, and him lazily rubbing his chin back and forth was not helping her recall.
“How am I doing?”
How was he doing? Jane made a nonsensical noise somewhere between bone-deep pleasure and red-hot lust with a side of you really need to ask?
There wasn’t a