He made a wounded, hungry sound, his hips rocking up into her.
Mmm. Every texture and pressure and pleasure of his body was delicious. She loved arousing him. His hand curved against her head, and she nestled her face into it to suckle the base of his palm as she slanted a wicked look up at his face. “You might be right. Slow might be fun.”
“Did I say slow?” His voice sounded thick and heavy. “What I must have meant was…honey, you can do anything to me you want.”
She grinned and teased the base of his palm with her tongue. “I know.”
“God, you are glorious.” He sank his fingers into her damp hair and brought her head to his, kissing her. The first kiss grew into another and another, stretched into a long gluttony of kisses that could have been one or could have been a hundred ways of shaping their mouths to each other, tasting and seeking and finding out what they each liked.
They seemed to like everything. Hard and soft, open and closed, teeth and silk, tangling and elusive.
Less and less elusive. Deeper and hungrier until she twisted her face into his throat for breath. God, he smelled good. Just this himness plus vanilla.
Vanilla. Something about that delighted her whole body, that instead of smelling of sand and sun and all the places he must have been, he smelled like someone who carried a homesick scent of cookies with him in his aftershave.
She kissed him for it, kissing down over the hollow of his throat and lingering there, while his hands flexed into her butt and stroked up her back and down her thighs and back to her butt again as if that was their homing place, gripping her, rocking her into him as his hips thrust up to hers.
She nuzzled her face close to his ear to whisper: “How complicated are you feeling?”
“Pretty damn simple,” he admitted. “And easy.” His hips rocked up to hers. “Or hard.”
She laughed low into his throat and stroked a heavy hand down his chest.
He drew her hips against him, to and away, to and away. “How about you?” he asked, deep.
She laughed again, into his skin. Simple. So simple. Everything falling away, outside this space of him and them. His heat and hers, his skin and hers, the way his hand sank into her hair, the hint of the prickles of his chest hair through his T-shirt as her face rubbed over it.
She pulled at the hem of his T-shirt with her good hand, frustrated that she couldn’t just grab it and rip.
He arched up and pulled it off, this long, gorgeous reveal of ripped abs taut with the motion, of heavy shoulders, of the curl of hair across his chest and the fine V of it down to his jeans. She followed it, running her fingers through that hair for the pure pleasure of its texture, following it as it grew finer and softer over hard abs, as those abs sucked in to try to lure her fingers under his waistband.
She toyed there, laughing low in her throat. “Complicated, are you?”
He grinned up at her. “Honey, you’re making me feel like myself again. As straightforward as a man can be.”
She kissed under the hollow of his throat and lower, lower, following pleasure, all the pleasure of his body, the tickle of hair, the hardness of muscle, the warmth, the surprising silk smoothness of his skin on his back and ribs.
The way he flinched a little as she lingered over his ribs. “You’re ticklish,” she said in delight, playing her fingers ever so lightly over the spot that had made him flinch.
He flinched again and grabbed her hand. She brushed his ribs with the two unsplinted fingers on his other side, laughing as he reacted involuntarily.
“All right, now.” He rolled them over suddenly, pinning her to the floor between the couch and the coffee table, holding her good hand above her head. “Two can play at that game.”
He drew his hand down over her ribs. She held her breath and tightened all her muscles in stern control.
“Seriously?” He tried brushing more lightly, then pressing his fingers into just the most sensitive spots between ribs. She tightened as hard as she could. “Tough girl,” he said admiringly and kissed her.
Just kissed her and kissed her, this long, luxurious pinning of her body under his as he savored her mouth as if he never would stop. And then, when all her body was relaxed and pliant under his, when her knees kept bumping against the table as she tried to wrap her legs around him—he dove his fingers into her ribs again.
She yelped and jerked and bumped her elbow.
He grinned in triumph.
“A?e.” She flexed her funny bone.
He bent and opened his mouth over her elbow, kissing and tasting and sucking gently, until that vibrating numbness was lost in erotic sensation.
It made her feel almost…precious. In the weirdest way, as if she could be tough and strong and still be precious to someone, too. It almost made her eyes sting.
Merde, was he pulling emotions out of her? All silky and pretty and fragile?