Always, she had been the good girl. The one that men treated like either a friend or a nun. Even her ex-husband had never really wanted her. But tonight, Lucas was changing all of that. Until him, no one had ever made her feel so sensual. So desired. Her dreams of Lucas from so long ago were now splintered beneath the reality. His hands slid down her neck, over her shoulders and around to stroke frantically up and down her back as if he couldn’t touch her enough. She shivered with pleasure, yet wanted more. She wanted to feel his hands on her skin. Feel the hard brush of his palms against her na**d flesh.
Crazy, her mind whispered.
Quiet, her body answered.
He tore his mouth from hers and lowered his head to nibble at the line of her throat. Rose arched her neck to one side to give him easier access. A second later, he groaned, lifted the hem of her shirt and pulled it up and over her head. She raised her arms to help, needing to feel his body against hers.
She didn’t care that this was all happening too fast for her to think her way out of it. She didn’t want to stop and be rational. For once in her life, Rose simply wanted to surrender to the thing she craved.
“I need you, Rose,” he whispered, shifting his hands to cup her lace-covered br**sts. His thumbs and fore fingers toyed with her sensitive ni**les and even through her bra, the sensations were almost too much to bear.
He couldn’t have said anything more perfect, she thought. Rose opened her eyes, looked up into his and said, “Yes, Lucas. I need you, too. Now.”
“Good. That’s good.” He kissed her, hard, fast. A half smile curved his mouth briefly before intensity filled his gaze and he said, “Be sure, Rose. Once we start, neither one of us is going to want to stop.”
“Nobody’s stopping,” she promised him, reaching out to stroke her hands over his chest.
He sucked in a gulp of air, gritted his teeth and said, “Thank God.”
Reaching behind her, he unhooked her bra in a smooth, practiced move and then pushed it down and off her arms. He took a long look at her then and Rose felt his gaze as surely as she would have a touch.
“You, too,” she said, tugging at his T-shirt. He nodded, yanked it off and tossed it to the floor behind him.
Rose sighed and enjoyed the view briefly before Lucas grabbed her and pulled her in close.
Skin to skin.
The friction was almost unbearable. He dropped his head to her shoulder and then pulled her head to one side so he could kiss and lick and nibble at her throat again. Rose couldn’t breathe. With his hands on her, his mouth moving over her, she couldn’t find any air and, oddly enough, she didn’t care. Nothing mattered beyond the next kiss. The next caress. Time slipped away. The world disappeared.
All that existed was this moment.
This man.
Her mind went blessedly blank under the furious assault of too many sensations to keep track of.
“You feel so good,” he murmured, splaying his hands against her back before letting them drop to the curve of her behind. He pulled her in close, aligning her body along his until she felt his hard length pressing against her abdomen and knew he was swamped by the same desperate need as she was.
“Not in the damn kitchen,” he muttered.
Rose didn’t care where they were. They could have been outside under the streetlights with neighbors sitting on their front porches watching and she wouldn’t have cared. She just wanted his hands on her. His body moving inside hers. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Yeah, it does. Upstairs,” he ordered, grabbing one of her hands and pulling her behind him as he headed for the hallway and the stairs.
Half-dressed, wild with desire, Rose kept up with him, but just barely. His long legs covered a lot more territory than she could. She stumbled, and wasn’t surprised since her knees felt wobbly enough to collapse on her at any moment.
“Slow down,” she finally said.
“Not an option,” he groaned and whirled around to face her. “I already feel like I’ve been waiting years for this. No slowing down,” he told her, jaw clenched. “No rethinking. No backing out.”
His gaze was blue fire. Burning, glittering with more heat than she had ever seen before and everything in her roared to the surface to meet it.
She shook her head and said only, “You’re walking too fast, I can’t keep up.”
He flashed her a quick smile that was born and gone again in an instant. “Why didn’t you say so?”
He picked her up and swung her into the cradle of his arms, and Rose was absolutely romanced down to her soul.
He took the stairs two at a time, reaching the landing in a few long strides. Held close to his chest, Rose glanced briefly at his face as he stalked down the hall to the closed door at the far end. Even in her sexual haze, she noted her surroundings as they passed. Cream-colored walls, cherry-wood crown molding and a gleaming wood floor, covered by a deep red floor runner that muffled Lucas’s steps as he relentlessly headed for their destination.
“Almost there,” he murmured and Rose nodded, lifting one hand to smooth it over the sculpted muscles of his chest.
This wasn’t a man born to wear a suit, she thought idly, while her fingertips moved across his skin, smoothing through the thatch of dark hair. His skin was bronzed as if he’d spent years in the sun and she could only imagine that the hard, chiseled planes of his chest had been born working on construction sites.
Her thumb moved over one flat nipple and he hissed in a breath as he kicked the bedroom door open, sending it slamming into the wall behind.
“Do that again and this is going to be over a lot sooner than either one of us wants it to be,” he warned as his arms tightened around her like bands of iron.
That promise sent even more heat to her center, and she squirmed in his arms at the sudden discomfort of her jeans. She wanted. Needed. She took a breath and looked around. The huge room was darkened but for the moonlight pouring through the wide windows onto a gigantic bed. She didn’t notice anything else.
Her gaze shifted to him and locked there as he stopped at the side of the bed, reached down and threw back the black duvet to reveal crisp white sheets. Mounds of pillows banked against the headboard and when he dropped her onto the mattress, Rose bounced a couple of times, still never taking her eyes from his.
Her entire body was sizzling. She swallowed hard at the look in his eyes. She felt like a banquet laid out before a starving man and heaven help her, she couldn’t wait for him to take his first bite.
Desire pumped through her, making every nerve ending feel as though it was on fire.