Slowly she freed her other shoulder, sliding it from the nightgown, until the warm comfort of the old flannel was shoved to the floor.
Devon Franklin was bare to the waist.
In the carved mirror above the dresser, she could see the powerful lust in her eyes, her lids falling heavy. All her muscles turned soft, except for one, the low, hammering pulse between her legs, the one that was directing her movements in spite of the risk.
Her brain knew that all pleasure came with pain, but this time, it was a statistical certainty that whatever the pain, the pleasure would be greater.
Her hand slid over her breasts, down the relatively firm line of her torso, gliding further down beneath the yellow cotton panties. Her legs moved apart, and she braced her free hand against the dresser top, taking a deep breath, toying and teasing. She didn’t dare check the monitor, she didn’t dare know what was happening to Chance because she was so turned on, she didn’t want to know the hard chill of rejection. She didn’t want to think about falling tree limbs, or wrong phone numbers, or magically misplaced keys.
No. Today, she was going to live.
Daringly, she slid one finger inside her, feeling the wet, swollen flesh, and Devon sighed with relief. Oh, yes. Oh, please, yes. Her fingers moved, knowing the places that gave her pleasure, recognizing the building of pressure, the fluttering clenching and relaxing of muscles. Lost in this magical world, her hips rocked back and forth.
She could only think of her black-haired stranger with starkly pale eyes. She gazed into the mirror, met those pale eyes and her whole body froze.
He was here.
This was no longer safe solo sex on a screen. This was full-body contact, this was sweat and skin…with a high probability of never sleeping with Chance Cooper again.
Devon swallowed, sliding the wet-slicked finger out of her body, and lodging it safely behind her back.
One side of his mouth quirked upward with an easy tenderness. She liked that about him, the way he simply accepted things and moved forward.
His fearless intent, the hard strength of his body and his easy confidence flew in the face of every deterministic model that Devon had ever devised. She started to shake—nerves, emotions and the certainty that she didn’t want to be alone with her fantasies.
“I thought you might need some help,” he told her. Silvery eyes raked over her bare breasts, admiring her, desiring her. “You’d been gone so long that I wasn’t sure if something was wrong, or you might have been in trouble and—oh, hell, honey, I aced high-G training and breezed through bat-turns and I have never been this knotted up before.”
His voice was hoarse and unsteady, missing the easy charm his tone held earlier.
“Can you stay?” she asked, dangerous words that sounded foreign on her lips.
He didn’t answer, but limped toward her, his gaze locked with hers. She loved the fire in his eyes; hypnotized her. Tonight she wanted the burn.
She thought he would touch, ached for him to touch her body, but he didn’t. Instead, his hand reached for the braid at the back of her head, capturing the length of it, tugging ever so slightly.
“I want to see your hair down. I want to see it splayed over your shoulders, long and silky. It’s beautiful and you keep it hidden in plain sight.” His free hand touched the tip of her breast lightly, short-circuiting her nerves, blowing all function to her brain. “Like these.”
Sadly she possessed no backup generator for her mind.
“Can I take down your hair?” he asked. The request robbed her of words, of any survival technique. Devon nodded once.
Gently his hands pulled and discarded the elastic band. Patiently he took apart the braid, one section falling, then another, fanning it out over her back, over her shoulders. She shivered from the warm feel of his hands in her hair, skimming over her skin, and from the sensual brush of the strands.
Devon never wore her hair loose. It was impractical and silly, and she’d told herself a gazillion times that she should cut it off if she wasn’t going to do anything with it, but now she knew why she’d refused to cut it. Because she was waiting for the one man who knew. The one man who was willing to work his way into her tightly braided hair and, in the process, make her feel gorgeous, admired, loved—instead of cursed.
The way he looked at her now, as if there was no other woman he ever desired more, she didn’t feel cursed. His nose was starting to bruise along one side, at some point, he’d developed a limp, but he was still more amazing than any other man she’d ever met.
Maybe it was an illusion. The ultimate April Fools’ joke. Maybe he was a good actor. Maybe, maybe, maybe. For one night though, Devon wanted to go with maybe.