Now the sweatshirt was up to her armpits and Larkin had his fingers at the button of her jeans. She shivered as chilled night air danced across heated skin. Shaking her head in frustration at the impossible setting, she moaned.
Larkin bit the side of her neck, hard enough to leave a mark. “I want to make love to you, Winnie. Please. If you ask me to wait, I will, but it just might kill me.”
He slid the flat of his hand down inside her pants, his fingertips brushing the lacy edge of her bikini panties. “Yes,” she said, the yearning for him so thick and sweet, it threatened to choke her. “I want you, too…tonight.”
Twelve
Larkin could barely process her words, so crippling was the haze of lust that engulfed him. Winnie was the kind of woman who needed to be courted…cherished. He was long past such niceties in this instant, and it took everything he had not to shove her down in the raw dirt and pound into her until the roaring in his head and the fire in his gut subsided.
“What did you say?” He was befuddled, torn by a knife-edged desire beyond anything he had ever known.
Winnie turned in his arms to face him, her bountiful breasts crushed up against him, her delicate fragrance driving him mad. She tilted her head backward. Even, white teeth gleamed as she smiled. “I said I want you, Larkin. I never really knew I could feel this way about anyone. My brain tells me this is a mistake, but I don’t care. Take me to your bed. And show me how good it can be.”
He was barely aware of the trip from the cliffs to the house. They moved rapidly, insanely perhaps, through the forest. He was terrified she would change her mind, and equally terrified that he was treading a path he would bitterly regret.
He was not only choosing to ignore his guidelines about mixing business and pleasure, he was rewriting the whole damn rule book. But the time for rational evaluation was long past. Even if this was a colossal mistake, he had to have her. Once inside the castle, he spirited Winnie up a remote staircase. In the dimly lit, seldom-used stairwell, he drew up short, his chest heaving. “Your room? Mine?”
Her tiny grin was adorably sheepish. “You gave me a suite for a princess. Let’s live the fantasy.”
He would have stood on his head and recited the Greek alphabet if she had asked him to. In fact, pretty much anything Winnie wanted was his new mission in life. At her door he glanced both ways to see if anyone was watching. The hallway remained empty, so he twisted the doorknob and ushered her inside.
He gulped hard. “Do you need anything?”
Winnie’s eyes were huge. Her blush reached from her hairline to her throat. “I’d like to freshen up. I bought some new…well, in case…” She stuttered to a halt.
Larkin ground his teeth and managed to smile. “Fifteen minutes? I’ll jump across the hall to my room and do the same.”
Relief and shy pleasure beamed at him from those exotic eyes. “That would be great. You don’t have to knock when you come back…just, well…you know…come on in.” Now her cheeks were beet-red.
He backed toward the door, at some level worrying that if he lost eye contact with her, this amazingly perfect turn of events would go up in smoke. “I’ll be back.” It was more a vow than simple information.
She nodded, reaching into her suitcase and giving him a view of her heart-shaped ass. “I’ll be waiting.”