Once Upon a Rose(90)

She bit her own smile. In the light from the bathroom, her eyes glimmered with excitement and arousal and maybe a last hint of the tears that had almost fallen a moment before. “I might be hungry, too,” she murmured. “I only had cereal for supper, after all.”

“Yeah?” He dragged his body gently up and down hers, a few centimeters back and forth, rocking himself against all the right places. “Something you want to bite, Bouclettes?”

“Oh, maybe…this.” She curled a hand over his upper arm, running her thumb over the curve of his biceps.

“Mmm.” The sound vibrated deep in his throat. “Go ahead.”

“Or…definitely this.” She lifted her other hand to his face, tugging on his lower lip. He caught her thumb, sucking it into his mouth, holding it with his teeth as he teased the tip of it with his tongue.

Her eyes grew dreamy, and her hips rocked up against his in slow, almost sleepy motion. Desire surged through him.

“Making love to you is like…like swimming in gold, or something,” he said. “You’re just so damn sexy.”

Her face crinkled with pleasure. “Gold is sexy?” she challenged, despite that pleasure, a natural word-splitter.

“You’re the songwriter. You find a better comparison.”

“It’s like swimming in rose petals,” she murmured, stroking both her hands down his arms. “It’s better. It’s like being lost in you.”

Damn, she had a way of finding words that reached right to his heart. The way the calluses of her left hand scraping over his right arm sank into his heart, too, and the way she teased him and the way she smiled at him and…

He took her left hand from his arm, holding it against the bed so that he could run his thumb over the calluses on the tips of her fingers. “You worked your hand to death to get it this strong, didn’t you?” he murmured, and lifted it to run her calluses over his lips.

“You like them?” She sounded puzzled.

“They’re sexy as hell.”

“Well, yours are, but…” She trailed off, confused by her own statement perhaps.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yours are, too.”

The sexiness of someone who tried hard for what she wanted, who kept at that work every day no matter how much her fingers ached, who gave it her all.

He kissed her again, wanting that persistence and that dedication for himself, too. Don’t leave. Stick with me, too. I know I’m a pain, but…persist with me. She made a little humming sound and dragged her hands down over his back. He flexed into the touch. “Harder,” he whispered. “Give me more of what you can do.”

Her eyes glinted, and she slid her hands all the way to his butt and dug those fingers in.

Ow. Yeah. “Yeah,” he said out loud, guttural. “Yes, just like that.”

“I bet I can grip something else hard,” she murmured, with that glint of sexy mischief. “And maybe play some calluses over it. See what sounds I can get out of you.”

“Oh, holy fuck,” he whispered. “Yeah. Please.”

She found the button of his jeans and undid it, and his breath hissed between his teeth.

“We’d better slow down.” He grabbed her hands, pressing them to his stomach. “I was making love to you.”

She laughed. “We can do it at the same time. Make love to each other.”

“I’ll lose my concentration.” He touched his forehead to her cleavage and then rubbed his face sideways until he could press a kiss to her nipple through the shirt and bra. “Or rather, I’ll only be able to concentrate on that one spot. We can’t have that, can we?”

He’d much rather give her the kind of experience in his bed that kept her coming back for more.

Persisting.

Giving it her all.

She took advantage of his loosened jeans to slide her hands over his back and slip them in under his briefs. And squeeze again with those strong fingers.

“Shit, that feels good.” He found the catch of her bra under her shirt and pushed both bra and shirt off together. He loved getting her clothes off. When her breasts were revealed, it was like discovering buried treasure. Again. Coming back to his special treasure spot and discovering it was all still there, all for him. He cupped one breast with delight, rubbing his thumb over her nipple, which perked up for him immediately. Damn, that was beautiful. Her arousal, her response.

His own arousal wasn’t so beautiful. It was hard and greedy. But he enjoyed it with everything in him.

Stroking her, kissing her, feeling the hunger in his body, watching her grow more and more yielding, more and more wanting, even as her hands pulled at his body, fighting him for more.