Sinful Love (Sinful Nights #4)

He kissed her like the world was ending, but it was only the beginning of something entirely new between them. He couldn’t get close enough to her, and he could barely accept that she—his what if girl, though she was all woman—was moaning softly in his mouth, pressing her breasts to his chest.

With his hand caging hers above her head, he pushed against her, craving this frenzied foreplay of clothed bodies, of clawing at each other to get close. God, he wanted her with a desire that couldn’t even be measured. It felt like the kind of want that could scale mountains, invade countries, and send men and women to the moon. He broke the kiss, breathless, and held her face in his hand, getting lost in her emerald eyes.

“I’ve dreamed about this so much for so long. I can’t believe it’s real,” he said, fighting so hard to hold in all the other feelings. If she knew how much and how deeply the need to be with her had defined him, had driven him to learn new ways of living, he might scare her away.

His muscles tensed from the restraint inside him as he reined in all the words he wanted to say. It was too soon, too much to share.

“But I’m real, Michael,” she said, breaking free of his grip to place her hands on his face. “Feel me. Touch me. I’m here.”

He closed his eyes, and his skin turned electric from the tender possession in her touch. No one had ever made him feel this way. All the other women were right. They had been completely right in their assessment when they’d said to him: You’re in love with someone else.

He was.

Irrevocably.

This was his fate in life, to fall in love with the same woman over and over.

A rush of air escaped his lungs with the sharp, clear realization. He was in love with Annalise once more. He’d been madly in love with her before, and now it was happening all over again as he fell for the woman she had become—for her fragile but strong heart, her open mind, her willingness to try, her compassion, and her understanding of him.

He was dying to tell her, to imprint on her flesh: I’m in love with you.

Instead, when he opened his eyes, he chose his words carefully. “All I want is to touch you. To feel how real you are.” He tugged off her dress, drinking in the sight of her in a black bra and nothing else.

A groan rumbled up his chest, then he dropped his face to her collarbone and slid his hand between her legs, the temperature in him soaring as he touched her silky heat. Lightly he stroked, teasing her, drawing out gasps and moans, sexy little sighs and sweet, heady murmurs. He pushed the cup of her bra over one breast, freeing a nipple and sucking it deep, then nipping her.

With each bite across her flesh, he imagined tattooing her with words. The words he wouldn’t give voice to, he left as marks. A kiss on her throat. A long suck on the swell of her breast. A pinch of his teeth on her neck. Each one said, I’m so in love with you.

“Michael?”

His name was a question. He looked up, dazed from touching her. She spread her hands across his chest, her fingers toying with the buttons on his shirt. “I don’t want to use a condom. I want to feel you completely. I’m on the pill, and I’m safe,” she said, meeting his eyes. Hers shone with desire.

His mind and body latched onto the image of sliding into her, no barriers. His dick grew impossibly harder, straining against the zipper, fighting its way to get to the Promised Land.

That land just got even sexier.

He swallowed thickly, nodding. “I’m safe. I haven’t been with anyone in a year.”

Her eyes went wide. “You haven’t?”

“That surprises you?”

As she worked open the buttons on his shirt, she said, “You’re so handsome, I can’t imagine you would be alone.”

“I’m not a player, Annalise,” he said roughly, as her long fingers undressed him.

“No, you’re not a player. You’ve never been one. You always had your eyes on the woman you were with, and only her.” She said it generally, as if the statement applied to his approach to relationships, and it did. But God, if she only knew it fit her precisely.

“Look at you,” she murmured as she opened his shirt. Dipping her face to his chest, she planted kisses on his pecs, biting a nipple. He hissed in a breath. “You are so strong,” she said, dragging her fingernails across his muscles as she pushed off his shirt.

“You’re going to ruin me with all your compliments.”

“Your body,” she continued, as her eyes roamed over his chest and arms. “I love it. I love looking at you. I love touching you.”

And he loved being touched by her. More than anything in the world. Especially when her hands went there, to his belt, unbuckling it then unzipping his jeans. He helped push them down then off his feet, along with his shoes.

He glanced at her, then back at himself. “Feels like we’ve been here before. I’m kind of thinking we want to get to the next level of naked.”

She laughed. “You mean the completely naked level?”