Finding the Dream (Dream Trilogy 3)

"You could set your clock by it. Oh, Michael." She stretched her arms up, giving him tempting glimpses of soft white swells. "I thought it was me. I thought that was just the way it was, had to be. But it isn't, it wasn't, it doesn't."

She cupped her breasts in her hands, let her eyes close. "It's never predictable with you. I never know what you'll do, where you'll touch me next, or how. And it'

s never proper. It's so wonderfully improper. The things you do with your hands, with your mouth on me." She dropped her hands to his chest. "Do you have any idea what it's like to discover, at thirty, that you have a sex drive?"

"No." He couldn't help but smile at her. She was so beautifully drunk. "I found mine at sixteen and never lost sight of it."

She laughed, flinging her head back and making his teeth ache with the need to bite into that slim white throat. "Oh, but this is better. Has to be. It's like finding Seraphina's dowry. Somehow you know it's there, somewhere, or hope it is. And then when you find it, after all that time, all that wondering, it's so sweet."

"Since you found that elusive sex drive"—his hands slid up her torso—"why don't we put it to use?"

"I'm going to make you sweat." She eased down again, scraped her teeth over his jaw. "You might even beg."

"Now you're getting cocky."

"I take that as a challenge." To demonstrate, she shoved up her sleeves, which fell right back down again. "Are you man enough to agree not to touch me until I say you can?"

He lifted a brow, wondering just what the lady had in mind. "Your loss, sugar."

"I don't think so, ultimately. No hands," she murmured and pressed his to his sides. "Except mine."

She lowered her lips to his, brushed, teased, nibbled. "Margo said you had a very tasty mouth." She smiled when he winced. "She was right. I think I'll stay right here a while."

She lingered on his mouth, changing the angle, the depth, the tone of the kiss. Light one moment, intense and urgent the next, then sultry, smoky.

His fingers, aching, curled into the carpet. "Not bad for a beginner," he managed in a voice rusty with need.

"And I learn fast. Your heart's pounding, Michael." She nipped at the pulse in his throat, cruised over dampening flesh. Then she gripped his shirt at the shoulder, pulled. When the seam stayed fast, he chuckled from both humor and frustration.

"Want me to do that for you?"

"I can handle it." She eased back, kept her eyes on his as she yanked hard. The seam ripped, exposing muscle and skin. She pounced on it like a starving cat. "Oh, your body," she whispered, then crossed her hands, taking hold of his shirt and sending cloth and buttons flying. "You have such a body. Tough and scarred and tight. I want it."

Her mouth streaked down his shoulder, over his chest. Quick, greedy bites and sucks, feathering openmouthed kisses and flicks of tongue. But when his hands came up to grip her hips, she shoved them away with a single word.

"Mine."

Rising up, she shrugged off the shirt, then once more bent to her task.

She was destroying him in a way he hadn't known he could be destroyed. Slowly, inevitably. She was taking him in a way he hadn't known he could be taken. Greedily, intently. His breath thickened, caught, released on a groan when she laved her tongue low on his belly. Every muscle quivered, taut wires close to snapping.

Thoughts filled and emptied from his mind so rapidly that he couldn't gain hold. Sensation rammed violently into sensation like two clenched fists. The scent of her, elegant as royalty, the sheen of her skin, glossy as a damp rose, and the stroke of her hands, restless as lust.

Giddy on her own power, she tugged open the button of his jeans, felt his body tense like a runner on the mark. She lowered her mouth, tasting there, just there where denim and flesh met. And heard him choke out her name.

She could do this to him, she thought as she dipped her tongue under the denim to tease. She could create this desperation, and weakness, this violent need in a strong, vital man. She could make him want her to the point of madness, and she could take whatever she wanted from him.

She nudged the material down, closed her teeth over his hip. And heard the breath explode out of his lungs. He was helpless, she knew, lost in her. And she could make him ache.

She took him into her mouth, clamped him in a wet velvet vice and shot his system into chaos.

His hands fisted in her hair as his body bucked under her. When her mouth cruised up to his belly again, over quaking muscle, he was ready to kill to have her.

Still gripping her hair, he yanked her head back, reared up. She felt one shocking jolt at the dark burn of his eyes, then his mouth was clamped on hers.

"I didn't say you could touch me." She panted it out as his lips branded her throat, her shoulders, her breasts. "You didn't beg."

"I need you." He found her with his hand, shoved her over the peak he was still clinging to. "Now. Goddamn it, take me in."