Breath in my throat, heart hammering, I crossed the room until I was standing in front of him. He didn’t speak for a moment. He looked at me with those dark brown eyes, so gentle, so reassuring, that I wanted to melt right into him. He slipped his hand beneath my chin and lifted my face for a lovely, feather-soft kiss that made light shimmer through me.
He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and I tentatively slipped my hands underneath to touch his skin. Warm, muscled ridges. Oh, he felt so good. Everything about him felt unbearably good and right.
I tilted my head back to look at him. He’d waited a long time for me. His gaze searched mine.
“Thanks for waiting,” I whispered.
“My beauty,” he said, “I’d wait for you forever.”
He took my face in his hands and kissed me again, with a delicious glide of his tongue across my lower lip. I opened my mouth to let him in, and then it was a deep kiss that tasted of pent-up urgency.
I felt one of his hands fumble at my neck, tug at my ponytail. I reached back to unfasten the clasp and let my hair fall loose. Dean skimmed his hands into the long strands and angled my head to deepen his kiss.
You’d think that after nearly three months of keeping our attraction at a slow burn, we would have been in a hurry, but he was determined to take it slow. For my sake, I knew. And I was so enraptured by his intoxicating kisses that I just wanted them to last until the end of time.
He touched my breasts, stroked the nipples through my bra, causing shivers to ripple through me. Our mouths met again and again, his hands sliding over the top of my clothes, my fingers moving restlessly over his back to the waistband of his jeans.
Then he eased my skirt up and pressed his hand between my legs. The warmth of his palm burned through my underwear. I curled my fingers reflexively around his wrist, pushing my hips forward. He muttered something under his breath, then reached around to stroke my rear and lift me against him.
It was exactly as sexy as it sounds. I wrapped my legs around his waist and bent my head to kiss him as he managed to get us both into the bedroom without tripping over anything. I felt the heat of him clear through the denim of his jeans. I started to writhe against his crotch before he’d even lowered me to the bed.
He looked down at me, a faint smile on his lips and his eyes hot. I twisted to unfasten the zipper of my skirt and pushed it to the floor. He reached for the fly of his jeans and flicked the top button open.
That was when I got anxious. My throat went dry and I closed my legs. I was breathing hard and my heart pounded with wanting him, but sudden fear froze every muscle in my body.
Dean paused. His eyebrows drew together. “Okay?”
“Yes.” My voice quavered a little.
He stopped unfastening his jeans and put his hands on my bare legs. Slowly he stroked my thighs from my knees to the hem of my shirt, never reaching far beneath it. I relaxed a little under the gentle rhythm of his touch, but nerves still knotted my stomach.
“Do you want me to stop?” he asked.
“No.”
“If you need me to—”
“I know. I know.” I tangled my hand in the front of his T-shirt.
He stroked down to my knees and back up again. “You’re nervous.”
It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway. It didn’t make a lot of sense that I was nervous now when I was so comfortable with him every other way and when we’d done some very sexy, intimate things already. But I was.
“So am I,” he admitted.
I wasn’t sure I believed that, but then I noticed his hands were unsteady as he moved them farther up my thighs. I swallowed hard.
“I don’t want to mess this up,” I finally said.
He laughed, a low, rumbling sound. “Beauty, if you had any idea…”
He moved to caress my inner thighs. I flushed when he brushed against my damp panties—no denying that evidence—but he didn’t ease his fingers beneath the elastic.
“Take my clothes off,” he said.
“What?”
“Go ahead.”
I pushed myself onto my elbows and gazed at the bulge in his jeans. I wanted to see him completely naked, and if I were undressing him, he wouldn’t be undressing me. Yet.
I pulled my shirt back down over my hips. Dean sat beside me on the bed and waited for me to drum up my courage. My hands started to shake as I took hold of his T-shirt and tugged it over his head.
His chest was so beautiful. Muscled, defined, the ridges of his abdomen warm beneath my touch. I put one hand against his chest and pushed him to lie on his back. Then I cupped my palm around his erection. He shifted.
I glanced at him. He was watching me with that anticipatory gaze that made my blood pound. Anxiety twisted through me again, but because I was in control I knew it wouldn’t overwhelm me. I lowered my head, and a curtain of hair fell across either side of my face—concealing Dean from my view and, hopefully, me from his.