that night, Axell popped the tiny hook holding up her dress.
"If the cat's got your tongue, I want it back," he murmured beside her ear as her dress fell to the floor.
Axell's kiss was as devastating as she remembered. Maya tasted traces of the wine they'd consumed earlier before her mind hit sensory overload.
Her palms stroked over solid muscles that rippled and surged beneath her caress. The heat between them was intense enough to ignite spontaneous combustion. His mouth savored hers as his hands explored, and his touch brought the realization that except for garters and stockings, she was completely naked. Somewhere in the trash of the storeroom, she'd left behind what remained of her panties.
He stroked between her thighs and she almost crawled up his leg. Axell stepped back to study what he'd bared. Maya had known the intensity of his concentration could be a dangerous thing. She melted beneath the heat of it now.
"You're so... so... petite," he struggled for the words as he stared.
Maya saw the worried frown form between his eyes as Axell fingered her nipple. She knew she wasn't anything to write home about. "Disappointed?" she asked lightly, as if the bottom hadn't fallen out of her stomach. People had rejected her all her life.
He looked startled at her question. "Disappointed? Are you kidding? You're so perfect, you scare me. Did I hurt you earlier? I didn't realize..." He gestured helplessly, but his hungry gaze dropped to the dainty blue garters on her thighs.
Maya didn't know if it was his words, or his gesture, or his gaze, but suddenly, it was all just right. He wasn't rejecting her. He wanted her. She was woman to his man, and all their other differences disappeared.
She reached for his belt buckle. "Do I look hurt?" she asked in a sultry voice she scarcely recognized.
"You look glorious." He unfastened the buckle on his own, stripping off trousers and briefs faster than she could think of it. "I'm thinking that I got the best of this deal."
Without any warning, Axell caught her waist and dropped her on the bed, falling down on top of her so that his knees splayed her thighs wide. "Were the garters for my benefit?" he whispered as he nibbled her ear.
Yeah, they were, but she didn't think she'd inflate his ego further by admitting it. "I just thought I'd make things easier, in case you'd forgotten how," she teased.
"The basic principles don't seem to have changed any." He teased her breast into a pucker and kissed her until time stood still. Then, lifting his head, he finished thoughtfully, "It goes in like this, right?"
Maya squealed as Axell drove home with a thrust so powerful it lifted her from the bed.
Amazingly perceptive was this business-suit husband of hers, she reflected wryly in those few seconds left in which she could think at all. It went in just like that.
* * *
Axell breathed the heady aroma of roses. Air-conditioning cooled his backside, but the warmth of summer snuggled against his morning arousal. How long had it been since he'd held a woman in his arms when he woke? Not even Angela...
He didn't need to take that path. For the first time in his life, he held a woman who caused him to forget the bar and all the demands of his day. He didn't want to just make love to her, although the physical pressure to do so was strong. But the urge to see Maya's eyes when she woke was stronger. He wanted to watch her wakening interest, hear the humor in her voice, longed to see the affection...
Hell, he wanted a lot more than the same affection she gave to her students. Axell cupped his hand around a full, firm breast. He'd take his pleasure where he found it, and he found it in the warm curve of buttocks pressed against his arousal, and the enticing moan his caress elicited from the woman snuggling into his arms. His woman. He really, really liked the idea of this wonderfully imaginative, inherently passionate woman belonging to him, alone. If that was disgustingly prehistoric, then so be it.
"Do you like mornings?" He leaned over her, admiring the tousled spill of colorful hair across the pillow. He pulled the purple strand, discovered gray at its roots, and smiled as he realized Maya didn't believe in dyeing her hair in any normal manner.
"I do now," she murmured sleepily. "No one's pounding on the door?"
"Not yet." Even as he said it,