The Satin Sash

She gave him a weak smile.“You and I have our faults, but lying isn’t one of them.” She sought his jaw with her fingers and tenderly traced the faint shadow of stubble. “I’m sure it will go away.”

“No, it won’t go away. It will hang like a shadow over me. I’ll obsess whenever he calls and you answer, and wonder when I fuck you if you want me to be him.”

She gasped.“That would never happen! How can you say that?” She gave his jaw a firm, meaningful squeeze. “I’m crazy about you.”

He held her face between his hands and covered her lips with his. She had been kissed a thousand times by Grey, and a thousand times she had been caught up in the storm of his kiss. But this kiss . . .

Was a tempest.

Through the dark, rich taste of his morning coffee, his kiss carried his power, the simmering energy he kept inside him, every need he gave no vent to. His lips moved commandingly over hers, his tongue swirled, his heat seared her.

She was left quaking. And then he was squeezing her jaw, dragging his mouth roughly across her lips, pouring his words into her.

“I’ll give you everything you need, everything you want, Antonia Kearny, and when I’m done giving, you will think of no one else but Grey Richards.”

He stabbed her mouth with his tongue in a kiss that was almost painful in its intensity. She met his avid thrusts in kind and at last broke free to catch her breath, her lips achy and swollen.

“Grey—”

“Shh.” He rubbed his hands up her back, caressing her with every ridge inside his palm. “Quiet now.”

She swung a leg to his other side and straddled him. She had never known such a violent need to be close to him. She had never ached for such a wild, reckless reassurance of his love for her. Feeling his rigid sex between her legs suffused her with an odd sense of relief.

She moved anxiously on his lap, longing for a connection to him, proof that what they shared stood strong and stable. Did he love her? Did he care?

“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” she whispered. “I never meant to.”

His erection swelled under her, the distinct column pulsating like something breathing, living, reassuring her of his desire. His hunger.

Grey dropped his head to her chest, slipped his hands under her T-shirt, and kissed the valley between her breasts through the worn cotton fabric. “Suppose . . .”

He opened his mouth over one breast and gingerly licked once, twice.Wetness seeped through her shirt and into her puckered tip. Her other muscles quivered with envy.

“Suppose I fuck you.” The hot breath against her breast filtered through cotton to her skin. “Suppose he fucks you.” He raised his hand to cup the other globe and expertly thumbed the rigid nipple.“Suppose we both fuck you.You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

His words excited her, made her wonder if a woman existed who would not like that, but at the moment she couldn’t even attempt to make sense of what he said. Every pore was Grey’s and every one of them sang to his touch.

Inflamed from skin to bones, she rocked over him, delighting in the friction of his shaft under her wet cleft. Beneath her T-shirt she was nude, her sex and his hardness separated only by his pants. She could actually feel the heat of him as though there were nothing between them. That nearness, the awareness of how rigid he was—how ready to take her—made her pussy contract with need. He smelled of Dial soap and Grey, his hair a thick, luxuriant mane in her hands.

“Where did he touch you,Toni?” He spoke in a husky rasp, his eyes half-covered by his lids as he glanced up at her. “Here?” Both hands caressed her breasts.

Toni remembered Heath’s touch, the playfulness in his hands, and she couldn’t suppress a shudder.

Her breasts heaved in rapid pants as her hands sought support from his firm, square shoulders. “H-he grabbed my ass.”

“This ass? My ass?”

He palmed her ass, and a rumbling sound erupted from him. Her shirt had lifted as she changed position, bringing Grey’s hands in direct contact with her skin. He tugged the cheeks apart, then pressed them together.

“Oh, Grey.”

“Where else did Heath touch you?”

Ribbons of lust flittered inside her when she heard his name. “He . . . he rubbed his thigh against me.”

“Oh, really.” He brought one hand forward and slipped a finger between their bodies. She hissed and trembled as he rolled her clit in sharp little circles. “Did it feel like that?”

Her head fell back on a plea. “Yes.”