“That nightgown of yours. Covering up what I knew was under there.” He shook his head against her body, trailing his tongue around the edges of her nipple before nibbling gently at its peaked tip. “Ugliest, most seductive thing I’ve ever seen.”
“I didn’t know,” she admitted, then arched up, pushing her breast into his mouth, silently asking, demanding more.
He gave it to her, sucking until she whimpered, while his hand swept down her lush body, sliding across jasmine-scented, soft, smooth skin, to the juncture of her thighs. He found her wet and hot for him and groaned himself as he cupped her, rubbing his hand over her center, loving how she lifted her h*ps into his touch.
“Hunter…”
Her breathy sigh filled the room and shuddered inside him. Hunter wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. He’d never known such need, such all-consuming desire. And he wanted more.
Reaching quickly to the bedside table, he pulled the drawer open, rummaged one-handed inside it and came out with a condom. Quickly, he tore it open, tossed the foil wrapper and sheathed his aching body. Then he looked down at her, losing himself in her eyes. Moonlight played on her skin, making her flesh seem to shimmer in the pale wash of silver.
“Never get rid of that nightgown,” he ordered, already imagining watching her wear it, knowing what was beneath it, being able to pull it off her, like unwrapping a much wanted present.
“Right. Never.”
He grinned and slid closer, moving his mouth down now, across her rib cage, down to her abdomen to flick his tongue at her belly button. And still his hand worked her core. Fingers stroking, thumb pressing against the heart of her while she quivered and trembled for him like a finely played musical instrument.
He was the master, but she was the treasure. He touched her; she responded.
Her hands smoothed over his shoulders, her fingernails drawing light lines of sensation across his skin until he felt as if each one of her fingertips was a lit match head, singeing him down to the bone.
She carefully maneuvered around the bandage low on his hip and whispered, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t,” he assured her, pausing for one kiss, then another. “I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?”
The concern in her eyes touched him even more deeply than the flash of desire he read there as well.
“Let me show you,” he murmured, and before she could speak, he had shifted position so that he kneeled before her, lifted her h*ps from the bed and covered her wet, slippery heat with his mouth.
He looked at her then, her green eyes wide with passion and dazzled with pleasure as she rocked into him, instinctively reaching for the release he didn’t plan on giving her just yet. He took her to the edge again and again, working her flesh, driving her higher and higher. Her whimpered pleas became groans, and those became demands and still he wouldn’t let her find satisfaction. He kept her on a razor’s edge, even though he tortured himself as well.
His body hard, aching and unable to wait another minute, Hunter laid her down, covered her body with his and pushed himself deep into her heat. She was tight and hot and-gasping in shock.
“I don’t believe it,” he managed to say on a groan.
A long moment passed as he held himself still inside her. He looked down into her eyes and saw pain melt into pleasure and forced himself to ask, “You’re a virgin?”
She grabbed at him, her hands exploring his body so thoroughly he quivered under her touch. “Not anymore,” she said.
“You should have told me.” He was poised on the brink. So close to exploding that beads of sweat broke out on his forehead as he used every ounce of his self-control.
“Sex now, talk later,” she told him firmly, then lifted her hips, taking him in deeper, farther, so that he had no choice but to lay final claim to her body. “I had no idea,” she whispered, squirming beneath him. “This feels…amazing.”
“It’s about to get better,” he said, damning himself. No way was he going to stop. Not when she so clearly wanted this as badly as he did. Besides, the damage was done. No going back now. But damned if he’d have her first time be so bloody quick. Easing back, he touched her center, where their bodies joined, and she jerked beneath him in surprise.
“That’s it,” he told her, watching as her eyes blurred, her mouth worked and her breath huffed in and out of straining lungs. Her h*ps moved beneath him and Hunter had to call on all of his discipline just to maintain. But he wanted her to explode first. He wanted to see it, to know that he’d touched her as deeply as she’d touched him.
He touched her, rubbed that one, most sensitive spot, with excruciatingly tender strokes, and when she at last surrendered to the power of her own cl**ax, he took his hand away, gave a few hard, fast thrusts and erupted into a cl**ax so powerful it left him shaking like a broken man.
When he collapsed atop her, he felt her arms come around him, cradling him to her. And wrapped in her tenderness, filled with her scent, Hunter dropped into a dreamless sleep.
“You should have told me,” he accused when the first slice of sunlight slanted into the room.
Margie slowly opened her eyes, stretched languorously and looked up at the man hovering over her. “What?”
“About being a virgin,” he ground out. “You should have told me.
Barely awake, her body still thrumming with the pleasures he’d shown her, Margie smiled. “Would you have made love to me if I had?”
He scowled at her. “No.”
“Well, then,” she told him, reaching to slide one hand across his broad, muscled chest, “I’m glad I didn’t.”
Of course she hadn’t told him she was a virgin. It wasn’t exactly something a twenty-nine-year-old woman would be eager to share. Especially since the reason she’d held on to it for so long was that she’d wanted to be in love when she had sex for the first time. Now there was something Hunter Cabot would have zero interest in knowing.
But it was enough for now that she knew. Margie was in love, despite the fact that there could be no happy ending in this for her. Her mind knew that she shouldn’t fall, but her heart had taken the leap anyway. And there was no going back now. The deed was done. In more ways than one, she thought with an inner smile.
She could still feel Hunter’s hands on her body, the smooth slide of his flesh joining hers. The taste of his mouth, the hard rush of his breath as he raced to join her in completion. It had all been so much more than she’d ever hoped. And well worth waiting for.