“Why are you doing this?” He shouldn’t ask. It shouldn’t matter. But it did.
“Simple. I’ve wanted to kiss you since I was sixteen. I want to kiss you again. I don’t want to stop kissing you until sunrise.” Her hand slid lower into his pants, gripping him and breaking the dam of lust now flooding his body. “Why are you doing this?” she countered.
He blinked a few times, trying to pull enough words together to form a coherent sentence. She removed her hand from his pants and rested it against his chest and he regained his grasp of the English language. He’d also regained enough sagacity to know better than to answer her question.
“I’ll make you a deal,” he said. “You keep your promise to walk away when we reach the end of this list…”
She nodded. Cautiously.
“And I promise you can say or do anything in our time together and I won’t take it the wrong way.” He glided his hands down her arms, over her stomach, and to the undersides of her breasts. Her eyes had darkened. She was slipping into the hazy vicinity of lust. Just where he wanted her. But not until they were clear. He moved his hands to her back and pulled her against him, looking down into her depthless green eyes. “I don’t want you worrying over the right way to approach or talk to me. I want you to react naturally.” He leaned in and brushed her lips with his. “I want you to ask for what you want. Command me if you have to.”
“A safe space,” she concluded after he kissed her lightly.
“The safest. You are not in danger of hooking a husband, here.” Landon forced a smile. He had to make certain this was what she wanted. That there was no doubt in her mind as to his intentions. There was no other way to be sure other than just saying it. He returned his fingers to her breasts. She closed her eyes. “You said you need this,” he murmured, kissing her again. “What, specifically, do you need from me, Kimber?”
* * *
There was no need to weigh her words now. No reason to worry. He’d promised to take what she said at face value. He was a pragmatic thinker. He was reasonable, a man who led with his brain and not his heart. Completely capable of separating love from pleasure. Could she do the same? Well. She was sure going to try.
“I need to be cherished.” She met his gaze firmly. Despite his promise that she could say anything she wanted, she expected him to recoil. He didn’t. Instead, a veil of valiance slid over his face. The kind of determination worn by William Wallace before he charged into battle.
His chin dipped in a slight nod of agreement. “Then that,” he said, “is what you’ll have.”
He kissed his way down her body, pausing at her breasts for a few long, lingering kisses that made her mind melt. He kissed her ribs, her stomach, her belly button, and down to the drawstring on her shorts. His tongue ran along one hip bone, then over to the other before tugging the string on her shorts and releasing the bow. She’d been holding her breath for so long she started seeing spots in her vision.
“Still with me?” he asked when she sucked in a breath. He bunched the edges of her shorts in his fists.
She managed a short puff of air she hoped sounded like “uh huh.”
He must have taken her response for an affirmative because next he yanked the shorts down. Past her thighs, past her knees. His fingers grazed her body, his tongue and mouth following their path. One kiss here, another there.
Soft, barely there kisses meant to cherish.
She stepped out of her discarded shorts, and he caught her foot in his palm and rested it on his leg. Knelt in front of her, he kissed the inside of her knee, drew his tongue along the back of it, and tracked kisses up her inner thigh. All she could do was brace herself against the door and endure the prickling, shivering sensations echoing through her body as he continued his torturous ascension. At the edge of her panties, he abandoned her right leg and switched to the left. And, wow, the man was thorough. By the time his mouth reached her opposite thigh, she was panting, her breaths short and tight.
“Landon.” She hadn’t meant to wail his name so desperately. But she was safe, she remembered. Safe to ask for what she wanted. “Please.”
He smiled, his cheek pressing against her inner thigh, and plucked her cotton underwear with his teeth. He let them go, and a sharp snap of elastic stung her skin. “That’s what I was waiting for,” he commented, his breath hot on her flesh.
Before she’d registered his thumbs hooking into the fabric, her panties were gone, swept down her legs and sailing over his head in the lamp-lit room.