Lovescenes

His mouth touched her closed eyelids.

Touched her lips.

One kiss, he’d said, one kiss, and then he would stop. And after that she could say, See? There was nothing to that. You can

leave now, Cade…

His lips were warm. Firm. They teased hers, urged her to open to him, to withhold nothing.

‘Don’t,’ she said, trying to twist her face away from his. ‘Please...’

‘I love you, Shannon,’ he whispered against her mouth.

‘You don’t,’ she said, ‘please…’

‘Please, what?’ he said, and all the weeks of denial were over.

She gave a soft cry and her mouth softened under his, heating under the sweet fire of his tongue.

Tentatively, her hands moved between them, to spread slowly on his shirt. The rapid thud of his heart was beneath her fingertips, telling her as well as any words ever could that she was not the only one who could no longer control their love scenes.

She murmured his name against his lips again and again until it sounded like a litany.

‘Yes,’ he said, his whisper a fierce song. ‘Yes, my love, my own...’

His mouth, his hard, demanding mouth, was stealing her breath away. The earth was tilting under her feet, just as she’d always feared it would if she let him do this. Cade was everything; he was the day and the night and the universe and—oh God, his hand was moving under her sweater, hot against her flesh, his guitar- roughened fingers playing along her ribs.

‘Kiss me, ‘ he said, ‘kiss me, don’t hold back, not this time, not tonight, not with me, love, not with me...’ She fell back against the wall, her body seared by the heat of his passion. His lips were against her throat, his hands on her skin. ‘Let me love you, Shannon,’ he whis­pered. ‘Say it. Tell me it’s what you want, too.’

She gasped as his hands closed over her breasts, the nipples hardening against his palms like the petals of moon flowers closing at the first burning touch of the sun.

‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘oh yes. Make love to me, Cade. I’ve wanted you for so long…’

The admission, so long denied, seemed to free her. Feverishly, she slid her hands under his shirt, her fingers travelling on his skin, through the rough, dark hair that curled upon his chest.

Together, in a confused tangle of hands and buttons, they pulled off her sweater and corduroy pants.

‘Beautiful love,’ Cade breathed, ‘Goddess of the sea, open your arms, give your love to me...’ She thought of all the times she’d heard him sing those opening lines from Sea Lover,, yet never with such passion in his voice. ‘Beautiful love,’ he whispered again, and she lifted her arms to him, but he caught her wrists and brought her hands to her sides. ‘Beautiful Shannon, my love, my own... ’

‘Cade,’ she murmured, ‘Cade...’

He freed her wrists and shrugged off his shirt. Her hands reached for him, investigating the soft hollows and hard planes of his torso. A feeling of triumph raced through her as he cried out at her touch; there was some­thing primal and exciting about knowing she could do that to him.

But the triumph was short-lived; Cade cupped her breasts in his hands and bent to taste her flesh, and it was she who gasped and cried out now. His hands were hot and rough against her skin as he slid the panties from her hips, and then he knelt before her, trailing kisses along the soft inner skin of her thighs.

‘So lovely,’ he said thickly, ‘so lovely...’

She cried out as his mouth branded her with his passion.

‘I love you, Cade,’ she sobbed, and even in the center of the whirlwind they rode she heard her words and knew they were true, that they would be true even if his were not, but it was too late to talk, too late to think.

He was naked against her, his hands cupping her buttocks, lifting her to him. Her legs folded around him and then he was in her and around her, each thrust driving her mind further from her straining body. And just when she thought she would die of a pleasure that transcended any she had ever imagined, she heard the hoarse whisper of her name as he drew her down to the floor and the world exploded around them.

CHAPTER TEN

It was like a child’s riddle, Shannon thought, trudging up the stairs to her apartment. What’s worse than Friday afternoon traffic in New York?

Friday afternoon traffic in New York in the midst of a snowstorm, that’s what, although that was stretching things a little.