Texas Proud and Circle of Gold (Long, Tall Texans #52) - Diana Palmer Page 0,49

grew in him.

“Oh, baby,” he murmured as his mouth grew hard on hers and his big hand tenderly swallowed her breast up whole, his palm rubbing gently at the hard little nub he found.

She caught her breath and moaned.

“This is sweet,” he ground out. “Oh, God, it’s sweet like sugar candy...”

He moved, turning her so that she was lying under him, full length, on the plush couch. He was on his side, his elbow taking his weight as his hand moved the bra out of his way so that he could touch her more easily.

Her body arched, helpless, as she reacted to the intimate tracing of his hand. She couldn’t even pretend not to want it. She was aching, throbbing with hungers she’d never felt in her life. A faint whimper escaped the mouth that his was devouring.

“Yes,” he whispered huskily. “It’s not enough, is it? Try not to cry out,” he added as he slid the sweater and bra up under her chin. “They might hear us...”

What he was saying didn’t make sense until his mouth lowered, and she felt it cover and consume her whole breast, taking it slowly into the moist, warm darkness, his tongue sliding over the nipple and making her throb from head to toe.

She had to stifle a cry. She sobbed under the expert touch of his mouth, shivering, arching as she pleaded for something more, something to ease the ache that was slowly consuming her.

He began to suckle her, hungrier than he could ever remember being with a woman. She sobbed as if he was hurting her, but he knew he wasn’t. His long, powerful leg inserted itself between both of hers in the slacks she was wearing and began to move sensuously, making the hunger even worse.

He rolled over onto her completely, hesitating just long enough to open the buttons of his shirt and pull it apart over the thick hair that covered his muscular chest. When he went down against her, it was bare skin against bare skin, something she’d never felt.

Her arms went under the shirt, around him, her hands digging into his bare back. Odd how it felt there, she thought dimly, because there was a definite depression, a coin-shaped one. But he was moving on her and she felt the power and heat of him, the sudden surge of his body that told her graphically how capable he was.

His mouth ground into hers. He groaned as he pushed between her long legs and right against the heart of her in that soft fork of her body. She lifted up, shivering, and he moved roughly on her, feeling the passion burn him alive.

But his mind froze the passion as he realized how innocent she was. This was wrong. He could live with it, he could love it, but it would shame her, make her feel soiled. He couldn’t do that to her. He couldn’t, even if it was agony to stop.

He rolled over, shivering, and pulled her hard against his side. “Don’t move,” he whispered unsteadily. “Just lie still. Please, honey. Help me. I hurt like hell!”

She managed that, just. She was on fire and he’d stopped. Why had he stopped? She wanted him so desperately, just as desperately as he wanted her.

But sanity slowly returned. Was this what she really wanted, to have sex with a man on a sofa in a room with an unlocked door, a man to whom she had no real ties except physical ones? She was religious. She didn’t believe in sex before marriage. But she wanted Mikey. She wanted him so badly that she’d have given in right here, without a single protest. In fact, she’d done that. But he’d stopped. She could feel how difficult it had been for him to do that. His body was shaking with unfulfilled needs. Now she felt guilty that she’d let it go so far. How would she have felt afterward? She didn’t even know how to protect herself. What if she’d become pregnant? How would she live with that in a small town where everybody knew her, and knew that the only man she’d kept company with in recent years was the one lying so stiffly beside her right now? It would be no secret who the father was. Mikey had a casino in Las Vegas. He was a big-city man. It was highly unlikely that he’d throw all that up to live in a little town like Jacobsville with a woman who might