between them, and crawled over her, forcing her back against the pillows. “Would you like to set some ground rules?” he asked as his gaze skimmed over her and settled on her mouth.
“Do we need ground rules?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I just want to make sure you’re comfortable.”
“I’m comfortable,” Carly assured him. “I’m more than comfortable. I’m totally into—”
Max suddenly kissed her, silencing her before she could spiral into some long-winded explanation of how she never did this sort of thing, but if she was going to do this sort of thing, she wanted to do it with him. Right now. But Max kissed her back into the headspace she’d occupied when she’d stepped out of her car and had seen him, and she was suddenly back to wanting him in the worst way.
When he lifted his head, he kissed the bridge of her nose and said, “Okay?”
“Let’s do this,” she said, maybe a little too sternly. She took his head in her hands and pulled him down and kissed him and decided, the moment her lips touched his, that she was going for broke. She was going to enjoy the hell out of this, because it had been a minute since she’d had sex, and she was not going to overthink it, she was not going to burden herself with rules. She was liberated.
Eew! Too much like Mom!
Okay, she was a modern woman who asked for what she wanted!
Much better.
She was going to go for it, all right, but first, she had to figure out which way was up and which way was down, because Max’s hands and lips were all over her and she’d lost touch with where she was in space. His touch was warm and heavy and very arousing. She felt glittery and weightless. She pushed against him, trying to roll him onto his back. Max grunted and resisted her, but Carly leveraged him with her knee and managed to push him onto his back and crawled on top of him.
Max opened his eyes. “Okay,” he said, as if trying to figure out the road map.
“I’m going for it,” Carly announced.
“Great. So am I.” He resumed his caress of her, kissing her in that way that sent her tumbling through some intoxicating space before sinking down into a cloud of sensation and pleasure.
At one point, she tried to remove her sweater, so anxious was she to feel his hands on her skin. But her efforts knocked her off-balance, and she had to catch herself with a palm to his chest.
Max grunted, reached for her sweater, and yanked it over her head. He tossed it aside and cupped her breasts, then kissed her neck at the point where it curved into her shoulder.
It felt as if thousands of fireflies flared through her blood. She shoved at his chest and forced him to lie down, crawled on top of him, and pressed her body the full length of him.
“Look,” Max said, and reached behind her and unhooked her bra. “We have to remove some of this clothing if we’re going to really go for it.” He suddenly surged upward and flipped her on her back again. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to take a moment to move things along here.”
She realized, even as he spoke, he was kicking out of his pants.
“Agreed,” she said, and kicked out of hers, too. And then he was kissing her again, and somehow, they managed to remove their clothes while he kissed her in all the spots that made her sizzle.
And then he slipped his hand into her panties.
Carly closed her eyes. “Wow. Okay. This is amazing.”
He whispered in her ear, “You’re amazing.”
And that was it, all the talking that was going to happen for the next several minutes, because Carly was floating above the earth on some pleasurable little raft, being pushed and pulled, following the trail of his hands and his lips, spinning faster and faster toward release. His attention to her was a bubbling concoction of warm bare skin and soft lips, and it was all mixing in her, building into a surreal little eddy. This would live with her forever and, holy cow, how had she gone so long without this delicious, earthy activity in her life?
They floated along, kissing and stroking and sliding and sighing. It was twinkly and fiery, it was tender and rough—it was magic. It was all the physical sensations and emotions wrapped into a frothy peak miles high.
Max suddenly sat up