They were dark and hot.
The silence of the night gathered them in.
Nick whispered her name. He watched her lips curve in a smile as old as time, a smile that said everything a man could want to hear.
He bent his head. Brushed his mouth over hers, once, twice, and she sighed, turned in his arms, caught the collar of his sheepskin jacket in her hands and lifted herself to him, sighed again as he held her closer and deepened the kiss.
“Please,” she whispered.
Please. The most wonderful word anyone had ever spoken to him.
Another shooting star blazed across the night sky as Nick took Lissa’s hand and led her into the dark house.
CHAPTER TEN
Nick’s bedroom was a shadowy oasis of ivory moon and black night.
He kissed her as they entered it, kissed her again as he closed the door. Brutus, who had followed them up the stairs, gave a plaintive woof.
“He’ll be fine,” Nick said softly. “It’s just that I’ve never closed him out of this room before.”
“Never?” Lissa said.
Nick shrugged off his jacket, unbuttoned hers and tossed them both aside.
“There’s been nobody in this room except Brutus and me.”
“Nobody?”
She was wearing a sweater with buttons over a cotton T-shirt. His hands shook a little as he undid the buttons, got rid of the top sweater, then drew the T-shirt over her head. He’d needed her help to do it last night; this time, he didn’t.
The fact registered on his brain.
Surely it was a good sign.
“Nobody,” he said, cupping her breasts in a pink lace bra that was, mercifully, like the white one, meaning that it, too, had a front clasp.
Lissa gave a little moan as his thumbs brushed over her nipples.
“All these months?” she whispered.
He nodded and undid the bra clasp. Her breasts tumbled into his waiting hands.
“All these months,” he said, and he bent his head and took first one dusty-rose nipple and then the other into the heat of his mouth.
She gasped; her head fell back and she dug her fingers into the thick silky hair at the nape of his neck.
“Do you like that?”
“Yes. Oh yes. The feel of your mouth…”
He cupped her breasts again, worked his fingers over her nipples as he kissed her, a long, deep kiss that had her clinging to him.
“And your hands,” she said, “oh, your hands…”
“Boots,” he commanded.
She toed them off.