the conflagration he knew was about to ignite.
He tasted her again, drawn in by her contrasts, her lips and tongue like wine and butter, at once mellow and sharp, and oh so heady.
Taking control, he pushed her coat from her shoulders to the floor.
He unbuttoned her dress and ran his hands over her breasts. Even confined by her bra they were full and ripe and womanly. His hands arced across the soft skin of her abdomen and waist and around to her back to cup her generous behind and pull her against him. He strained against his zipper, hungry for release.
Breathing hard, Laura took his hand and led him through a dark room to a bedroom. She lit a match and touched it to a trio of candles and a stick of incense in a holder. Her eyes shone when she pressed a button on a small stereo and Dr. John’s rasp filled the room. “Makin’ Whoopee.”
He laughed and dragged her into his arms like oxygen into his lungs.
Her bedroom suited her. Warm colors tumbled like acrobats across her duvet, reds and purples and oranges. Fine gauze draped from the ceiling in swaths of color like swooping cockatiels.
She’d turned a plain room into a sensual paradise.
Taking his eyes from her briefly, he pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, removed a condom from it and tossed it onto a small table beside the bed.
Prepared.
Laura turned up the volume until the driving drums and horns filled the room, drowning out sense and reason. Her eyes shone. She unbuttoned the rest of her dress and shrugged out of it, the move so sexy Nick nearly swallowed his tongue.
Candlelight flowed over her lavish curves like melted butter. A scrap of lace between her round thighs hid treasures he wanted to plunder with his fingers and tongue.
Sandalwood, rich and thick and redolent with heady promise, scented the air.
His blood beat to the pounding of the drums.
He hauled her into his arms and took her mouth, biting her lips, sweeping her with his tongue, sucking on hers as though it were cinnamon candy—hot, spicy, juicy.
His fingers dived into her luxuriant hair, took fistfuls of it and angled her mouth where he wanted it. Her nails scraped his neck and he shivered.
Her tongue played with his, her fingers grabbed at his belt, annihilated the zipper of his pants and wrapped around him.
He couldn’t breathe.
“Laura,” he moaned, her name a benediction and a curse. Sweet Laura.
He popped her bra open and her breasts spilled into his hands in their ripened glory. He pulled back to feast on her beauty. Her nipples peaked in dark aureoles centered in pendulous goddess breasts. Not perky, not sweet, but full, mature and perfect.
He kissed and bit and sucked them then trailed his lips to her stomach, kissed and bit the fullness there, then licked farther down, skimming off her panties with his teeth. She leaned against the dresser, her head back and her legs spread wide—nothing shy about Laura. He drank in the sight of her, her chestnut curls barely hiding pink wet folds of unashamed arousal. He tasted her, sucked her and caught her when her knees went weak.
He turned her around. While he paid homage to her glorious ass, she leaned her arms against the wall and hummed low.
He kissed every tiny bone of her spine then nipped the back of her neck. She shivered and turned.
“Come to me,” she said, reaching for him, her voice husky, as though her throat ached with unlocked secrets. “Give me...”
She took him in hand again, squeezing and urging him to meet her, falling back onto the bed and taking him with her.
He plunged into her and her lustrous body wept around him, hummed with energy and sexuality.
He pulled out then plunged again.
“Magnifique,” she whispered, and he’d never heard anything sexier.
He rose to kneel on the bed between her legs, driving into her, and a satisfied laugh burst from deep in her throat.
God, she was uninhibited and hot, driving him to go deeper still, harder.
He took her hand and bit her fingers, one by one, starting hard then gentling. He sucked on the inside of her elbow and the soft flesh of her underarm.
Honest and earthy and loud, she cried out.
Wrapping his arms across the back of her waist, he leaned forward and sucked her breasts, first one and then the other. He hardened further inside of her.
Grinding into her—she wanted nothing gentle, demanded more—he urged her until she hung from the