Texas Heroes_ Volume 1(169)

Those hands had been on her once in complete abandon.

She wanted them on her again.

“How’s the champagne?” he asked, but in his voice, she heard a darker shading that had her pulse kicking up.

Lacey made herself meet his gaze and wanted to sigh.

Dev was not classically handsome, but he was so magnetic, so undeniably male, so comfortable inside his skin that she envied him almost as much as she wanted to sigh like a teenage girl.

The teenage Lacey had been overwhelmed by Devlin Marlowe. The woman she was now was barely more able to keep from melting into a puddle.

“Lacey?” he prompted.

“What? Oh yes—the champagne. It’s good, Dev.” Though she’d scarcely registered the taste.

He filled in where her social skills failed her, turning turned the conversation to cases he’d had, amusing anecdotes about clients. Soon he had her laughing and forgetting that she was nervous.

Forgetting that she wanted his hands on her, though—well, even Dev wasn’t a miracle worker.

They teased and talked and laughed for at least an hour, then finally Dev sat up from where he’d reclined on pillows like a pasha and reached for something behind him.

“All right. The pièce de résistance—” His French accent wasn’t bad at all. With flair, he crossed the small space between them and opened a basket lined with satin.

Dark ovals lay inside, glowing in the candlelight. The scent was straight from heaven.

Lacey inhaled it like oxygen in a vacuum.

Dev set the lid down and plucked one oval from the basket, holding it above her lips. “Somewhere I got the idea that you’re fond of chocolate.”

Lacey grinned in memory. “I love chocolate, the darker the better.”

Dev watched her mouth form the words and felt them right down to his groin. Stifling a groan of pure pain, he continued to tease her lush lips, wondering who he was actually torturing.

Her mouth parted slightly in anticipation, and it was all Dev could do to recall that they were not alone.

He touched her lips lightly with the oval of dark chocolate, sliding it over that full lower lip of a mouth that ought to be against the law, then trailing it over the upper one slowly.

Lacey’s pink tongue lapped out, tracing the chocolate—and his fingers.

Dev did groan aloud, then.

And cursed himself for a twice-damned fool.

With mingled mischief and heat in her eyes, Lacey licked out and sucked it from between his fingers, her warm, wet tongue scalding his skin. Dev dropped the basket to the rug and jerked her close, holding her head imprisoned as he sought surcease from her mouth.

She tasted of chocolate and champagne and sin. Dev’s mind roared white-hot without a thought of where they were or who they were, edgy, dark need wind-whipping his control into shreds.

Lacey rose to her knees and pressed herself against him, her whimpers sounding as lost as he felt.

He had to have her. Had to be inside her at last. Too many years had gone by, but they were as nothing now. He was a man full-grown, with a man’s needs, but he was also a lovesick young boy who only cared that a foretaste of heaven lay in his arms under moonlight’s glow.

A siren screamed through the street outside and dimly penetrated the buzz in Dev’s brain. He ignored it and shifted to slant his mouth against hers to go deeper, to reach for something that only Lacey could provide.

But the sound had registered on Lacey and she stiffened slightly, sighing against his lips.

Dev forced himself away, his chest heaving. He shoved to his feet before he took her right there, heedless of any audience. Need clawed at his chest and made him angry and uncaring of any cost he might bear.

But the strength of that very need reminded him that the barbarian in him was never far from the surface—and Lacey was a lady.

He risked a glance at her, seeing swollen lips and night-dark eyes, nerves skittering past the heaving breath of desire. He held out his hand. “I won’t apologize for that.”

Placing her hand in his, she looked up, humor scampering past nerves. “I won’t ask you to.”

That touch of humor shot down his spine worse than a blatant statement of desire ever could. “Damn. You’re killing me. But I’ve got something else planned first.”

“Really?” she smiled, her eyes lighting up as he helped her rise. “More?”

Her pleasure was more seductive than a hundred naked women parading past his view. He wanted to delight her, to challenge her notion of him, to show her that he was more than just a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, the one who hadn’t been good enough for a princess to risk.

So he nodded and drew her toward the door. “More.”

“Dev?” She dragged her feet behind him.