The brutal angles of his dark face tensed, and his obsidian gaze grew vivid. His Power sharpened and turned predatory. He ran his hands up the side of her body. He stood. “Poor little faerie,” he murmured. “Are you sexually dissatisfied?”
“Maybe a bit,” she muttered. She blinked up at him. Good gods, he was built like a brick shithouse. He went long and grew wide, and he was looking at her like she was his newest favorite snack. She was doing much worse than teasing a tiger. She started to babble. “You’ve got to admit we’ve had some pretty frustrating moments in the last few—”
“Didn’t I tell you once to shut the hell up?” he said gently. He took her dress in both hands and tore it from neckline to hem.
Sequins exploded everywhere. They showered the room in sparkling silver lights. She gawked at the wrecked material that hung off her arms. Maybe she needed her head examined. Tigers were *cats in comparison to this walking, talking holocaust of a male. Then her teeth clicked together as she found her voice. “How could you, you stupid man? I loved that dress!”
“So did I,” he breathed. He stared at her, transfixed. He had already removed her thong, and she wore no bra. She was as exquisitely made as his imagination insisted she would be, with round pink-tipped breasts in full, ripe bloom, a narrow rib cage and an even tinier waist, and a flat stomach that flared to trim hips. There, between slender thighs, was a small shadow of black hair.
He knew how silken that private, luscious tuft of hair was. He had stroked it so briefly not long ago.
And, good Christ, she still had on those four-inch stilettoheeled fuck-me silver shoes.
He met her gaze and said from the back of his throat, “I’ll buy you a thousand pretty dresses, a mountain of pink lipsticks and a queen’s ransom in jewels, and I will never let anyone hurt you again.”
Her pixie features shivered. The anger faded away to be replaced with things that were much more breakable and precious to him: trust and hope. She let her head tilt to one side, and holding his gaze, she slipped the ruined dress from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor.
He stepped forward, and it felt so right to pick her up in his arms. Pivoting on one heel, he carried her to the couch. He went down on one knee and laid her slender, curved body down on the cushions, then divested himself of his weapons, laying guns and fighting knife within reach on the floor.
She slipped off her shoes and stroked up his muscled arm, watching him. When he was through, she whispered, “Now your shirt.”
He took a deep breath. Then he reached back, grabbed his shirt and dragged it over his head and flung it on the floor. He held her gaze as he unbuckled his belt and unzipped his fatigues. She felt herself growing drenched as she watched him undress, revealing, bit by bit, the massive architecture of his body. He stood, and the heavy muscles of his chest and arms flexed as he toed off his boots. He kicked off his fatigues.
It was the most beautiful gift, to feel this extravagant fullness of desire.
She gorged on the sight of his nude body. His strong, sleek legs went on forever, his flat abdomen rippling with an eightpack. His erect penis jutted over heavy round testicles that had drawn up tight underneath, unmistakable evidence of his own desire. She reached out and stroked him. He was so big she couldn’t close her hand around him. As she massaged his penis’s thick, broad head with her thumb, he sucked in a hissing breath and the muscles in his powerful thighs quivered.
She had enjoyed sex for a long time and made no apologies to anyone for it. She had bounced and shimmied through the 1960s with too much glee to be embarrassed or self-conscious now about their surroundings. But something had happened to her along that journey. She had grown, not indifferent exactly, but detached, unmoved by pretty men and frothy flirtations. Even though she loved sex, she found she no longer wanted any. She had stuffed herself on a banquet of dessert and walked away from the table unnourished.
This was the sweetest hunger she had ever known, leavened by the tenderness softening his hawkish face and how much she loved him. She caressed him, her fingers trailing along the huge velvet length of him, watching as sensual pleasure flushed over him and the tight clench of his body loosened.
He came down over her, and it felt more right than anything he had ever experienced to pin her down with his weight. He braced himself on one forearm and caressed her cheek and the side of her neck as he stared down at her. He was coming to a place he had never been before, a new and necessary place he hadn’t even known to miss. It had all started with those first steps he had taken toward her in New York.