“That might raise a few eyebrows.”
“It would raise more than eyebrows!”
After kissing her again, he let her feet drop to the side of the bed. One arm still around her, he took hold of the comforter and sheets and threw them back in one swoop. That huge surface with its pristine taupe sheet said it all. They were going to make love there. She was going to make love there. Maybe soon she’d know what Jase felt, too. Maybe afterward, though their worlds would be different, they could find a way to make them overlap.
Jase’s fingers went to the buttons on her blouse. One by one he opened them, letting his finger drag along her skin as he did. He was creating excitement...and need...and longing for something she’d never had—a man who desired her as much as she desired him.
As Jase’s fingers fumbled a bit, she realized he wasn’t as cool as he pretended to be. He gave her a half smile and a shrug.
After he’d unfastened the last button, she reached out and touched the hair on his chest. She followed the swirls in a glide down to his navel and, to her delight, he sucked in a breath.
He shook his head. “It would take me about a minute to tear your clothes off you and ravish you on that bed. But I want to give us both more pleasure than that.”
“We have all night,” she said softly, and it was a promise.
Her words seemed to unwrap his control. He unfastened her bra, unhooked the clasp at her waist and stripped off her slacks.
“Too fast?” he asked, looking down at her, slipping his hands under the elastic of her panties and clasping her backside. When he pulled her flush against him, she was already wishing he was naked, too. “Not too fast. Not too slow. Just right.” She was trying to flirt with him, to keep up the banter, to hide the intensity of the love and passion swirling inside her.
He laughed, scooped her up again and laid her on the bed. Then he stripped quickly and joined her, as if he was afraid she’d disappear if he looked away too long.
“I want to do everything with you,” he said in a deep husky voice that thrilled her.
Her sex life with Conrad had been very traditional. She wasn’t sure what “everything” was, but she was looking forward to trying it with Jase. “What do you have in mind?” she asked, realizing that flirting with him was easy. So why was it so hard to tell him what she was feeling?
“Why don’t I start by kissing you all over?”
When he began at her forehead and tenderly stroked her hair, she felt ridiculously like crying. He trailed kisses down her cheek and took her mouth with a deeply erotic search without giving her a chance to even touch him. Stringing kisses to her earlobe, he teased it with his tongue until she restlessly moved on the sheets.
She did reach for him then, but he just chuckled, took both of her hands and held them above her head. “I’ll let you have some fun next time. Let me have mine now.”
Fun? He called this fun? He was sensually torturing her. And she loved every kiss, every stroke of his tongue, every brush of his fingers. He definitely knew how to please a woman, but she kicked that thought out of her head. She wouldn’t wander into his romantic past. Not tonight, when everything was just for the two of them.
As he held one hand on either side of her head and dipped lower to her breast, she felt more excited than she’d ever believed she could.
“I am going to touch you,” he warned. “All over.”
His gaze held hers and he could tell she enjoyed the idea of what he was proposing. Finally she let his hands go so he could move lower and lower and lower.
“Jase, you’re not—”
“I said all over.”
Yes, he had, and she knew what he was about to do would make her feel more vulnerable than she’d felt before. Could she trust him that much? Could she trust herself to believe in a future with him no matter where he wandered?
When he spread her thighs with his hands, she felt the roughened calluses. The sensation of rough against smooth had her reaching for his shoulders. His tongue swirled where she least expected to be kissed...where she felt more sensations than anyplace else on her body. As he teased and taunted, she dug her fingers into the thick and vibrantly silky hair that she loved touching.
“Jase, you’re going to make me come apart again.” She remembered the last time and how he had guarded not only his feelings but his physical needs. She took a deep breath and tried to gather her thoughts. “You can’t just shut down tonight. You can’t just tell me you want my pleasure. Not this time.”
A beat of silence filled the room until he agreed solemnly, “Not this time.”
Those words made her even wilder with wanting as his tongue circled her center, as he slid one finger inside of her, then two...as he found the spot that could unravel her.