tasted sweeter when he kissed her neck and pulled the T-shirt aside and licked her shoulder.
“You smell so good,” she told him. She nuzzled his neck, took a deep breath. “On the plane I thought it was cologne. But it was you.” Teeth grazed his chin.
“I thought you were sick,” he teased. “Had I known you were trying to smell me, I’d have leaned over and let you.”
Shannon tugged at the edges of his shirt.
His hands rode down her back and then traveled up her shirt. Slender curves and smooth skin had him closing his eyes and imagining what he’d find when he removed the shirt from her back. His thumbs traced the outline of her breasts and ran over the pert nipples. Would they be pink, or dusty mauve? Tan, or a darker brown?
She pushed into his palms and he lowered his head to kiss them through the cotton of the shirt.
“Yes, please,” she said.
Her body responded with tight restraint. She pushed forward, head back.
He sucked in one nipple, through the cloth, and caught her when her knees buckled. Shannon was a ripe berry ready for harvest. He teased and nibbled. Let her pull the shirt from her shoulders.
His breath caught.
Victor had seen her frame through the moonlight over Tulum, but never did he imagine just how majestic it would be to hold and touch. “You’re exquisite.”
A soft, almost doubtful laugh made him tilt her chin and force her eyes to meet his. He didn’t repeat his words, he simply kissed her. And when she went pliant in his arms again, he felt his own knees give way and moved her to the bed.
He guided her back, felt her knee slide up his leg as he lowered her. Her dark hair spread over the pillow. He’d imagined this moment the first time she started singing to him at the bar in Tulum. There were fifty ways to leave the one you were with, to be with the one you wanted.
“Touch me,” she pleaded.
Victor lowered his lips to the hollow of her neck and farther, until he found and captured one dusky nipple between his teeth.
She surged, all of her. Welcoming, asking.
He answered with the spread of his hand over her ribs and down her slim waist until he met the elastic of her underwear. Slow fingers searched.
So wet. How was it possible she was so ready?
Victor had made love to many women in his life. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t enjoyed nearly every one. The first time, with fumbling fingers and a climax that only satisfied him . . . to the women that pretended and called out long before their breath had a chance to be snatched away. But this woman, Shannon. His fingers found her again . . . she jumped, so he repeated the motion.
“Yes.”
Her single word of approval had his lips grazing her skin as he moved down her body, pulling her panties away from her legs until they sat on one of her ankles.
Everything about her was intoxicating . . . the scent, the taste . . . he moved lower and replaced his fingers with his lips. Tease.
He did . . . with his lips, his breath . . . his tongue.
Her hips surged forward and his pelvis pushed against the bed between her legs. The need to bury into her was as carnal as it comes, but he held back and made love to her in a way that left them both in need of something more. He settled between her legs and felt his heart singing when she placed a hand on the back of his head to hold him exactly where she needed him.
The muttered words that he couldn’t decipher kept him going. He listened to the rate of her breath, the way she held it and pressed her hips forward.
Almost there . . . she was almost there.
Shannon cried out. The taste of her fueled every cell in his body.
She squirmed, pulling at his hair. “I can’t take it anymore . . .”
This was where he would have made her climax again, taking her . . .
“Good Lord,” she sighed, her body lax on the bed.
He looked up at the perfection of her body, past her thin stomach, over peaks of her nipples, and watched her smiling.
“You’re not even undressed,” she pointed out.
No. And he wasn’t going to get that way either.
“That was beautiful.” He dropped a kiss on the inside of her thigh. Told his