Red.
All he could see was red. The richness of it spread across his pillow, a mane of it, tangling and inviting, as tempting as original sin.
Jake was sure he was insane, of course. But it didn’t matter. They were both insane.
Maybe one madness canceled out the other.
She was simply, at that moment, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. The most desirable. She moved as no other woman had ever moved. Her eyes were green fire, her lips…he’d never seen a mouth so perfect. The air was filled with electricity wherever she stepped. No one had ever, ever, made a cotton T-shirt appear so blatantly erotic.
God, she was perfect.
What the hell was she doing? Ashley wondered. Then she rejected the question. She had dreamed of this, dreamed of him. And God, he was perfect. Rugged face, with lines that still bordered on the classical. Handsome, but still dripping with rugged machismo. Broad shoulders and chest, hard flat stomach, lean hips, muscles rippling, golden, catching the moonlight. And the scent of him…So compelling. Sea, salt, soap…some distant aftershave, elusively tantalizing, beckoning…
Jake argued with himself that she could have stopped, could have pulled back, could have spoken. Because it would take a far better, stronger man than he to back away now.
She didn’t speak.
In fact, they hadn’t exchanged another word. Not as they walked to the Gwendolyn, not as he paused to lock his door behind them, and not even when he indicated the few steps to the master cabin. He hadn’t spoken when she’d doffed the T-shirt, couldn’t have, because his breathing had gone so erratic. The black lace thong she wore was in direct contrast to the silly cotton T-shirt.
A contrast that sent a rush of adrenaline erupting through him like a geyser.
He’d ripped the covers from the bed with the expertise of a magician, revealing the clean sheets beneath, and it was there that she had crawled, lying back, waiting, all but blinding him in the maze of red, a red he felt, as if he could see it pumping through his bloodstream, just as he could see it splayed across the white sheets of his bed.
At last he spoke. “Jesus,” he whispered. One word. Not blasphemous. Awed.
He forgot his own cutoffs in his haste to join her. His attention went from the red of her hair, to the tiny wisp of black lace. Straight to the point, eh, buddy? he mocked himself, but what the hell, it wasn’t as if they were in the midst of a slow seduction. He crawled atop her, met her eyes briefly…
Color, more color. Green, cat green, and as sensuous as ever those of a feline had been. Half closed, lashes low.
And her lips…moist, parted, her breath emerging in quick little pants. She touched her lips again with her tongue. Perhaps in anticipation. He ignored her mouth, no matter how appealing. He had a one-track mind.
He lowered his head against her, breathed in the sweet scent of her flesh. Tasted her from the valley between her breasts downward with the tip of his tongue. God, that strip of lace. He paused briefly at her navel. He was in love with whatever soap she used, whatever lotion, perfume. Maybe it was just the scent of her flesh. The touch of it, the feel of it. Like silk, but hot, so alive. Lower, his tongue moved finding the lace, teasing at the band, stroking over the sudden roughness. He was aware of the intake of her breath. Just a brush of his mouth at first, over silk, over lace. His fingers gripped the elastic then, moving fabric, sliding beneath. He gripped the band, drew it away.
Red.