“You are my everything, Nikki. You have to know that. You have to believe it.”
“I do,” I whisper. I see the tremor run through his body, then the way his muscles tighten as he pulls me against him and holds me close. I melt into his arms, so in love with this man that it almost hurts.
“You are my everything,” he repeats. “But I can’t be true to you if I’m not true to myself.”
“I know,” I say, my lips against the cotton of his shirt. “I get it.” I tilt my head back and look up into his eyes. “That doesn’t mean it hurts any less.”
“Then let me try to make it better.” He eases me away from his body, then bends down to kiss the corner of my mouth. “Is that where it hurts?”
I shake my head as tears tease my eyes and a small smile tugs at the corner of my mouth.
“No? Then how about here?” His lips brush my jawline, and I suck in a breath, undone by the sweetness of his touch.
“No,” I say, and my smile is no longer tremulous.
This time, his lips find the indentation at the base of my throat. I tilt my head back, giving him better access, and feel my pulse beat wildly against his lips. “That’s not it, either,” I whisper.
“Tricky,” he says. “How can I kiss it and make it better if I can’t even find it?”
“Keep looking,” I say.
“I’ll never stop,” he promises. His lips drift down, pausing over my heart that is pounding in my chest. “Not here, surely,” he says, then moves on as I laugh, the sound cut off by a raw, sensual cry when his mouth closes suddenly over my breast.
“Damien!”
His arms around my back support me as he suckles me through the silky material of this insanely expensive dress. His teeth graze my sensitive nipple, and I arch back, lost in a desperate haze of pleasure.
“Here?” he murmurs, his lips never fully releasing me.
“Yes,” I say. “Oh, God, yes.”
“I’m not so sure,” he says when he takes his mouth off me. “I’d better keep looking.”
He shifts me gently off his lap and lays me down on the soft grass, his legs straddling my waist.
“Damien,” I murmur. “What are you—”
He hushes me with a finger, then leans over me, his mouth on my breast again. I groan with pleasure. “I told you,” he says. “I’m going to kiss it and make it better.”
His mouth closes this time over my left breast as his hand cups my right. It is as if his body is a live wire, sending current through me at every point of contact. Sparks shoot from his fingertips through my breasts, curling through me and making my body arch up with an insatiable desire for more.
All too soon he shifts, his mouth leaving my breast to trail gently down my body, nothing between his lips and my skin but this thin layer of silk.
His mouth is on my belly, his teeth nipping at my navel. His hands have slid down over the dress, and he is easing it up. The soft material glides over my skin even as Damien’s lips ease down. His kisses are feather soft across my skin, along the rise of my hip bone and then gently, sweetly, over my pubis before he continues lower, and then lower still. My back arches involuntarily, and I gasp as his tongue flicks playfully over my clit before his mouth closes, hot and demanding, over my sex.