me enough that I managed to calmly unbutton my shirt as I turned to where she waited for me. The other option was ripping it open in my haste to touch her, taste her, lose myself in her.
I’d still do all those things.
Isabel sat on the foot of the bed, hands braced behind her, long legs crossed demurely.
The way she held my eyes, the way hers burned as she watched me approach, it was like no image of any virgin I could’ve conjured.
Again, I was reminded of the black panther I’d seen at the zoo. I might’ve held a bit more experience than her, but she was looking at me like I was her next meal. And as soon as the thought crossed my mind, her eyes tracked down the front of my chest, and she licked her bottom lip.
Instead of prowling over her and pinning her hands over her head onto the soft mattress, I stripped off my shirt and let it fall in a heap on the floor.
She blew out a slow breath, and I held out my hand for her to stand. Not once did she blink shyly away, did her gaze waver, not a word spoken between us when she smoothed the flat of her hand up over my chest. My nostrils flared at her touch, the wildfire it set off in my blood. It had been so long, and I wanted her so viscerally.
It dawned on me as I drew my fingertips down the graceful line of her neck and carefully tugged her dress forward, that she and I were the same, and that was why I never expected her, never anticipated finding a well of feeling like this. Because I’d never, not in my entire life, met a woman who was my exact counterpoint.
Some people found a soul mate in the one who filled in the gaps and closed in their pieces with one of their own. But she and I, we weren’t like that. Isabel and I were the same in the heat that ran through us, and instead of tempering the flames, we burned that much brighter together.
The crisscrossing straps of her dress fell with a whisper, and I sucked in a breath as she was bared to me. Isabel needed no guidance from me as she tugged down the small hidden zipper on the side of her dress, and it slid quietly off her hips until she stood before me in nothing but a tiny scrap of fabric.
I drew the tip of my finger down the front of her throat, whisper-light between her breasts until my hand spanned her waist. She was panting just from that single touch.
“So beautiful,” I murmured.
With the grace of a goddess, she sat back on the bed and quirked an eyebrow. “Your turn.”
I shucked my pants off, and she rolled her lips between her teeth. Her body laid out like that, it was no sacrifice to fall to my knees in front of her. I filled my hands with her flesh and tugged her hips against my stomach, Isabel clutched my head to her as I used my lips and tongue and teeth until she threw head back with a loud gasp. With a hand on her chest, I pushed gently until she laid back on the bed, and I crawled up and over her, licking a line over her hip bones, nibbling the curve of her ribs.
When I place a sucking kiss just underneath her belly button, her skin shook with anticipation.
“Oh, please,” she whispered.
“You’ve waited this long,” I murmured against the sleek muscle on her thigh. “You can be patient a little bit longer.”
Her head thrashed on the bed at the use of my fingers, back arching in a delicious curve. “I can’t.”
“Hands over your head,” I instructed. “If you can manage this without laying a hand on me, I’ll give you what you want.”
Instantly, she complied, and I felt the snarling beast inside me shake dangerously.
And then I used my mouth, her legs snapped tight over my shoulders, but she kept her hands fisted in the comforter. When she finally broke, a low moan wracked her frame. Fists planted on either side of her, I slid up the length of her body until I covered her completely. My hand curled over hers where it stayed on the bed as we kissed. As she worked through the aftershocks of what I’d done with fierce, deep kisses, angling her head to take more and more