Page 540 of Summer Heat
He caught her hands. “No, let me touch you.” His hair fell forward around his face as he reached for the buttons on her shirt. Tamara, sensing his need, dug her fingers into the comforter, grabbing fistfuls so she could remain still.
He took his time. One button at time, with no hurry, until they were all open, and she felt a slice of air touch her stomach and chest. With a single gesture of both hands, he pushed the fabric away.
She watched him as he touched her stomach lightly, putting his palm against her belly. The expression on his face made her remember the night he’d kissed her outside the bar, as if he was truly seeing her, making himself slow down enough to be truly present in that very moment.
But it was not easy to simply lie there, her hands to her sides, as he knelt above her looking windblown and glorious with his tousled hair and broad shoulders and thick, powerful thighs holding her own immobile.
It was not easy to remain still when he reached for the front clasp of her bra and unhooked it, and then let the fabric lie there, as if he prepared himself for some greatly anticipated wish. She closed her eyes in a torrent of pleasure when he slid his hands under that scrap of fabric, brushing her aching nipples lightly, and pushed the bra away.
For long moments, only air and his gaze touched her, both swirling over flesh unused to such attention. She clutched huge handfuls of the comforter in her fists, and opened her eyes, afraid of what she would see.
“I wanted to see you like this, in the light,” he said raggedly. “And touch you.” To illustrate, he stroked each risen nipple with the tips of his index fingers. “I wanted to see your face when I did it,” he said.
She met his gaze with effort, that blue, burning, hungry gaze. And all at once, she was fiercely glad to be with him like this, to see him shredded with desire for her. She reached for his thighs and curled her hands around them. “Lance,” she whispered, “please—”
He bent over and kissed her, and his open shirt billowed out, letting his chest meet hers in an erotic brush of hair and masculine heat against soft female skin. He moved down her neck, to her breasts. “You’re all I’ve thought about,” he said. “For days. I can’t sleep.”
She clasped him to her,
so overwhelmed with desire she wanted the clothes out of their way. “Please, Lance, I want to be naked with you. Take off these clothes.”
He lifted himself up, still straddling her, and took off his shirt. Tamara touched his smooth, hard stomach. “You are the beautiful one,” she whispered. And wickedly, she smiled and let her hands fall lower, to stroke his rigid member through his jeans. He made a low sound, and his eyes closed, and she drank in the way his face looked now, sensually hazed and extraordinarily beautiful.
He caught her hands and bent forward, pinning her completely, her hands on either side of her head, his legs firmly trapping hers, and kissed her. His chest rubbed her breasts, and she arched a little against him, needed more. He kissed her chin, and her throat, her collarbone and her chest.
And at last he opened his mouth on her breast, hot and wet and wild. The sensation was so fierce, Tamara cried out softly. She freed her arms and he cupped her breasts, lifting them to his tantalizing tongue and lips, to the swirl and suckle and gentle nip of his mouth. His blond hair fell around his face and touched her flesh, and Tamara thought she could gladly die, right then and there.
The urgency in her grew, and she could not bear to go so slowly. She reached for the button of his jeans. “Let’s take off the rest of our clothes,” she said.
“Oh, yeah.” With a quick movement, he stood up and stripped off his jeans so fast, Tamara had barely shed her shirt and tangled bra before he was finished.
And then she couldn’t move because she forgot what she was doing when he stood in front of her, splendidly nude. She could only stare.
“Oh, my,” she whispered. He looked like a painting. Yellow lamplight caught on his exquisitely carved shoulders, and flowed down his torso, glinting against the golden hair scattered in an artful dusting on his chest. He was as golden as a god, made of sunlight and an exotic grace that seemed born of mountain winds. The sight of his arousal, rising from a thick nest of hair, full and slightly foolish and erotic all at once, only added to the almost painful impact of his beauty.
Her heart ached with it, and she felt she could not breathe, unless it was to breathe in Lance. The ache grew when she saw he stood there a little shyly, not proud and cocky as she might have expected. He waited, limbs loose, for her reaction, as if he were not sure she would be pleased.
She raised her eyes to his face, and let her wicked thoughts show on her face. “I don’t suppose you’d consider just standing there so I could admire you awhile, would you?”
He smiled, his eyes lighting with that sweet brightness that was boyish and freeing and so alive. He dived toward her, tumbling her backward in his naked embrace, covering her with his long, warm body. “I bet we can think of something better to do than that.”
Tamara wanted to burst then, burst with the feeling of him all around her, his hair against her cheek, his lips skating over her jaw and her neck, his hands restless, stroking her arms and her back and her stomach. She clasped him close to her, inhaling the scent of his warm skin, touching his hair and his strong back and the erotic round of his forearm, hot and threaded with a thick, pulsing vein.
“I need you, Tamara,” he said in a rough voice, his fingers on the waistband of her jeans. “I want to see you, feel all of you.”
“Oh, yes,” she whispered.
Deftly, he stripped her of her jeans and panties. When she was as bare as he, Lance paused, moving his hand up her bare thigh, over her hipbone and waist. He lowered his sun-gilded head and kissed her breasts. “You’re so beautiful,” he said quietly, and lifted his head to look at her. There was a great solemnity in his gaze. “I wish I knew some poetry right now.”
Tamara’s heart caught. She opened her hand on his hard cheek. “You’re poetry enough.”
He kissed her, deeply, passionately, with that same hungry need that had inflamed her earlier. He caught her body close to his, tangling his legs and hers, wrapping her in his arms. Any play that there had been between them fell away, leaving only raw need, pure and intimate and overwhelming. Tamara let herself flow toward him, let her heart and mind and soul become enmeshed in the fierceness of his need, of her need.
When he moved over her, sliding his legs between her thighs, there came a quiet between them. Bracing himself on his elbows, he kissed her very gently, and plucked a condom from the pillow where he’d put it. “Will you do the honors?”
“Yes.” There was a fine trembling in his limbs. She took the condom from his hands. He sat up to allow her to adorn him, and for one devastating moment, Tamara was overcome with him—with the feeling of him so close, and the expanse of his heated chest so close to her face, and the vulnerable trembling she felt all through him. She swayed forward and kissed his ribs, right over his heart. “Come home, Lance,” she whispered, and drew him down with her, opening herself to him.
And she realized then that she was shaking, too, as if she were afraid. She trembled with such violence and aching want, that for a moment, she wanted to weep with it. Then Lance was around her, over her, in her. He moved with exquisite control, sheathing himself to the hilt. And stopped.
