The first time with someone new was always strange. Vulnerable was probably a better word. I’d felt vulnerable, except for my drunken one-night stand with Austin, which I barely remembered. This … this with Thane, though, I’d remember forever. I wasn’t vulnerable at all. I was relieved. That I’d found him.
This beautiful, kind, funny, sexy, sometimes irritating, emotionally suppressed Scotsman whose love for his children only made me adore him more.
I loved him, I admitted to myself as he stroked my cheek with his thumb.
And if all he wanted from me was this, then I’d take it. I’d take these memories we were about to make, and they’d just have to last me a lifetime.
Emotion choked me, and I could feel the tickle of oncoming tears, so I reached up and kissed him hard before I fell apart in his arms. Thane groaned and pressed me back down onto the mattress to take control of the kiss, and I happily allowed it. I loved the taste of him on my tongue, loved the way his beard was soft, not scratchy, and the feel on my skin was sexual and arousing. I hoped I’d get to feel it between my thighs.
As if Thane heard the thought, his lips broke away from my mouth to kiss a path down my body. When he reached the rise of my breasts and discovered I’d put on a bra that clipped open in the front, he looked up at me with amusement glittering in those beautiful, desire-filled eyes.
I bit my lip to stop a stupid, goofy grin, and suddenly Thane was over me again, crushing my mouth beneath his as he stole hungry, deep kisses. I was a little dizzy and breathless as he released my mouth to return to my bra. He removed it with quick efficiency, and I pulled the straps down my arms. The inexpensive but sexy, lacy number flew across the room. Then his hot mouth covered my right nipple and he sucked.
My back bowed as I cried out at the sharp pleasure that echoed between my thighs. Lost in his loving, I could only writhe beneath him as he moved between each breast, sucking, laving, until I was swollen and aching. And then his lips followed that invisible path down my stomach, while his big hands stayed at my breasts, caressing and squeezing until I thought I’d go mad with the need to release.
Finally, Thane reached the apex of my thighs, and his hands left my breasts, but only to push my legs open wider. He looked up at me, his features taut with hunger. And as he stared into my eyes, his thumbs met in the middle over the lace of my underwear. I gasped as he pressed down.
My hips arched off the bed into his touch, but he only rubbed his thumbs over me once more before he stopped. I lifted my head to complain, but the feral look on Thane’s face as he gazed up my body halted me. No man had ever looked at me like that. Like he’d lose his mind if he didn’t have me. I experienced a squeeze deep in my lower belly, and my stomach shook with it.
Thane’s eyes dropped, catching the movement. Something snapped inside him. His fingers brushed my lower belly, curling into my underwear. He wrenched them down my legs, and I whimpered with excitement.
I heard Thane’s grunt of satisfaction seconds before the tickle of his beard on my inner thighs and the touch of his tongue at my apex.
Need slammed through me, and my hips pushed into his mouth. Thane gripped them, pressing them back to the mattress and then he devastated me in the best way possible.
Oh my God, so this is what it feels like—I arched into him—when a man knows what he’s doing.
He studied my body, my reactions, and just when I was about to reach blinding satisfaction, he’d pull back a little, torturing me. “Thane,” I pleaded, reaching for him. My fingers slid through his thick hair and tightened. Thane grunted at the slight pull, and then his tongue returned. I shuddered, but it still wasn’t enough. Again, the damn mind reader sensed it, and two thick fingers pushed gently into me.
That was it.
It was all I needed.
I cried out his name as I came, wonder flooding through me as the powerful release swept over my body.
Shaking my head on the pillow, I couldn’t believe it.
“Never,” I whispered, touching a hand to my forehead. “Never, ever,” had it been so good.
Suddenly I felt the heat of Thane’s body, the hair on his legs tickling mine, his stomach brushing across my belly as he moved upward. His harsh need made the pulsing inside me quicken again as he wrapped his hands around my wrists to pin my arms above my head. When I tried to move them, I couldn’t. He held me captive.