muscles. When she wrapped her hand around his hard length, his breath hissed between his teeth.
“You know, I’ve seen a lot of half-dressed men running around in my life. Hazards of growing up in the kind of house I did. But I’ve never seen a naked man like this.”
His response was nothing more than a guttural sound.
“I didn’t know that I’d think...you’re kind of beautiful.” She squeezed him, and he jerked in her palm.
“You’re the first woman who’s ever called me that,” he said, his voice gritty.
“I find that hard to believe.”
Suddenly, she hated the woman that had married him. Hated her with everything inside of her. And Pansy hadn’t known that she possessed the ability to hate that way.
She had always taken the stance that life was too short for negative feelings. But forever would be just long enough to hold a grudge against the woman that had taken this man, this beautiful man who saw her for who she was, whose body was a damned work of art, and seen him locked away in a prison cell.
How had she not appreciated him? How had she not appreciated this?
She pressed herself against him and kissed him hard, not letting go of his hardened length as she did. She wanted... There was no way she could ever be close enough to him. She wanted to make up for those lost years, somehow. She wanted to fix the fact that he’d given his heart to someone who’d done that to him.
She wanted to protect him.
Ex-convict West Caldwell, and she wanted to protect him.
With all of her five feet four inches.
A tear slid down her cheek, and it was embarrassing and ridiculous, but she didn’t even care. She just kept on kissing him. His hands were big and firm on her butt as he held her against him, as she kissed him and kissed him and tried to pour all of the confused feelings that swirled around inside of her into that kiss.
She kissed his neck, his chest. She remembered the way that he had explored her body, and she moved her way down his body. Her lips blazing a trail over all that hard packed muscle. He took a sharp breath and they shifted beneath her mouth, and her stomach tightened in response.
She dropped to her knees, examining the deep line that ran just below his hip bone toward that hard, male part of him that jutted out away from his body. She wrapped her hand around him again, and leaned in, tasting him shyly.
The deep groan that vibrated through his body told her that she was doing it right. Then she followed that. Exploring him in a way that she hadn’t realized she needed to. Taking him in deep.
Taking every harsh, fractured sound he made as her due for the pleasure that she gave him.
“Enough,” he said, panting hard.
He hauled her up off the ground, and then kept on lifting until her legs were wrapped around his waist and he was walking her back toward the bed. He stripped her top off. Her bra.
Then threw her down on the bed and took her jeans off, leaving her panties on.
He followed her onto the mattress, his breath hot against her stomach, just beneath her belly button. And he kissed her there. Just above the waistband of her panties. He pushed his finger beneath the gap in the fabric where the seam met her thigh and he teased her. Finding where she was slick and hot for him and dragging his fingers through her folds. He teased her until she was arching up off the bed, but still he didn’t take the underwear off. Then he pushed them aside and spread her thighs ruthlessly, dropping his head and dragging his tongue directly down the center of her body, the center of her need.
She gasped.
He wasn’t tentative. He wasn’t shy.
He consumed her like a starving man. Pushed her to the brink, then pulled back. Using his lips, his tongue and his fingers to create a symphony of madness that stretched tight through her body. Then he let her fall. Let her go over the edge. But he didn’t stop.
He kept going. Until tears of pleasure were streaming down her face. Until she couldn’t breathe.
Until every carefully placed stitch that she had used to sew herself up tight over the years was undone. Unraveled.
And so was she.
Completely and utterly unmade on her very neat bedspread.
And then he was tearing a condom open—she hadn’t even