“At a time? One.”
“And overall?” Three? Ten? Fifteen? Why did she feel like her heart was being wrung?
“Many,Toni.”
Many. Her lover had had—her lover had shared—many women with Heath. “Ten?” she ventured.
“I didn’t count.”
“At least ten,” Heath offered.
She didn’t turn, instead studied Grey with the same intensity with which he seemed to be gauging her reaction. In a quiet, cottony voice, she asked, “Did they like it?”
He reached for her mouth, this time running the pad of his thumb across the quivering flesh of her lower lip. “They loved it,” he said in a thick whisper.
The idea of Grey with those women, with anyone but her, had an unprecedented jealousy surging through her. Violent. Painful. She fisted one hand tightly on her lap. “Did you care for them?”
If he said yes . . .
Damn him if he said yes. . . .
A fierce, eerie light flashed in his eyes, and she thought he would say something about his feelings for her. Three full heartbeats passed.Then she realized it was too much to ask of Grey. He gave her anything. Everything. Except that.
“No, I didn’t care for them. And I was a boy, Toni. Now I’m a man.”
My man, she thought furiously.
She let go a shaky breath, but it was as though nothing could pull their gazes apart.
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And did you enjoy it?”
He nodded.
The gesture built a staggering, overwhelming desire in her to override all those many others from his mind, drive him out of control, out of his mind, as madly and deeply in love as she was. The words screamed in her head. Thrill him. Excite him. Surprise him. Make him love you.
Arousal swam in her veins . . . tantalizing thoughts of Grey loving her with his hands, his hungry mouth . . . Heath inside a moist, throbbing part of her . . .
Raising her free hand, she cupped the thick back of Grey’s neck and drew him forward. “Come here, baby,” she pleaded, amazed when he easily complied.Against a mouth that was opening to take hers, she sensually whispered, “I’m going to drive you wild, Grey Richards. So wild that you will think of nothing else, no one else, but Toni Kearny.”
He groaned into her mouth, not a groan of protest, but a gruff animal sound emitting his approval. And he closed the hairsbreadth between them and took her mouth voraciously.
Voyeurism had never been Heath’s thing. He was either an active participant or not interested. Not that a kiss could be considered voyeuristic. But then that was one hell of a sensual kiss.
From his seat across the table, he tightened his hold on Toni’s hand as she continued kissing Grey. No way in hell would he release it.
He wanted that sash, and she was holding it.
The restaurant continued to move in the slow, discreet way fancy places did. Waiters passed by the secluded booth. No one gawked or paused. But Heath could not drag his eyes away.
No wonder Grey didn’t want him to kiss her. The delectable Miss Kearny was eating Grey up with that killer mouth, and damn, Grey was worked up in a way Heath had never seen him. If that man opened his jaw a fraction more, it would crack.
His hands were guiding her face, tilting her this way and the other, and their kiss was so mouthwateringly sloppy it was painful to watch. If Heath were closer, he had a mind to push his head in there and find a spot for his own tongue somewhere deep in the recesses of Toni’s mouth.
The kiss tingled across his entire havoc-wreaked body. It made him ache in his seat. He’d never thought a man as unmoved, as impenetrable as Grey could ever be so hungry. Hell, he’d never thought he could be so hungry. For a kiss. A woman.
Toni. Kearny.
With that beguiling combination of innocence and sex, the sound of her name screamed in his head like a siren call. Damn, he was almost tempted to beg her to make that same husky vow to him, too.