Holding the Dream Page 0,59

simple. Nip or Tuck was draped across her thigh, snoring. She busied herself with stroking his head. "We don't - I don't jump into bed with men I hardly know."

"It was going to be the floor," he reminded her. He still had a hard time going into his own kitchen without imagining what might have been. "And I never assumed you did. Otherwise, it wouldn't be two years since you've had sex."

Her mouth dropped open. "Where did you get an idea like that?"

"You mentioned it," he said easily, "when I was trying to get your clothes off."

She closed her mouth, let air out her nose. "Oh. Well, that only strengthens my point." Uneasy, she watched him gently lift the puppy from his lap and set it aside, where it curled deeper into sleep. "What happened was just a moment." He repeated the procedure with the second puppy. Kate's heart began to thud. "A hormone burst."

"Uh-huh." He didn't even touch her, just leaned forward until his mouth slid expertly over hers.

Kate could almost feel her mind tilt and her brains flow out. Well, she needed a distraction, didn't she? An outlet for all this tension. It seemed like the most sensible thing in the world to unfold her legs, wrap them around his waist and dive in.

"This only proves it," she murmured. She threaded her hands through his hair and gripped. "Proves I'm right."

"Shut up, Kate."

"Okay."

It was wonderfully, brutally hot. She hadn't known until that instant how cold she had been. Until his unshaven cheeks rubbed roughly over her skin, she hadn't known how soft she could be. Or how gratifying it could be to be the soft one.

She let out a long, grateful moan when his hands streaked under her T-shirt to stroke her back, slid around to cup and squeeze her tingling breasts. The flick of his thumbs over her nipples shot a bolt of heat through her center that vibrated achingly in her crotch. Arching back, she pulled his head down until his mouth replaced his hands.

He suckled through cotton, tormenting himself with fantasies of what her flesh would feel like, taste like, sliding under his tongue. She was so... slight. That neat, almost boyish torso should never have appealed to him. There was no womanly flare of hip, and her breasts were small.

And firm, and warm.

The way she moved against him, that edgy eagerness of a woman already teetering on the edge, was viciously arousing. He wanted, needed, to shove her back, rip aside that denim and drive himself inside her until they were both screaming.

Instead he dragged his mouth back to hers, slid a hand between their bodies and sent her free-falling over the edge. He shuddered himself when she convulsed, ordered himself to breathe when her head dropped limply on his shoulder.

Well, he thought, that should hold one of us.

It took her a moment to realize that he'd stopped, was just holding her. "What?" she managed. "Why?"

The dazed questions nearly made him smile. "I decided I didn't want it to be a hormone burst. For either of us." He eased her back, studied her flushed face, the heavy, glazed eyes. "Better now?"

"I don't think - " Couldn't think. "I don't know - Don't you want to - ?"

He crushed his mouth to hers in a kiss that tasted of dark and swirling frustration. "Does that answer your question?" Taking her by the shoulders, he gave her a quick, satisfying shake.

"You're trying to confuse me." Part of her brain was starting to regenerate, and with it, temper. "This is some kinky version of Gaslight."

This time he did smile. "God, you're a pain in the ass. Listen to me, Katherine, I want you. I haven't the smallest clue why, but I just want the hell out of you. If I'd followed my first instinct, you'd be flat on your back, naked, and I'd be feeling a lot better than I do right now. But I'll be goddamned if you're going to pick yourself up afterward and claim I just helped you end your sexual drought."

Her eyes snapped back into focus. "That's a hideous thing to say."

"Yeah, it is. And that's just how you'd have rationalized it. I'm not giving you the chance. What I am doing is giving you the chance to get used to the idea of having me as a lover."

"Of all the - "

"Just keep quiet for once," he said mildly. "We're going to take this slow, go out together in public, have a