Her mouth opened, her tongue accepting his. They kissed for a long time, and whatever tension had gripped her let go. Their bodies nudged closer together, his thigh parting her legs and her hand finding his hip to tug him closer. He memorized the weight of her breast with his free hand, the way her breath caught when he thumbed her nipple.
“I’m sure,” she said against his lips.
He believed her.
Unbuttoning a shirt one-handed wasn’t easy, but he could take an M9 apart, clean it, and put it back together blindfolded. He had talented fingers—always had. And he didn’t want to let go of her hand yet.
He rolled onto his back, sat up, and shrugged out of the shirt, releasing her grip for a second so he could pull the sleeve off and toss the whole thing on the floor. When he looked over at her again, she was staring at his torso and breathing through her mouth, her eyes unfocused.
Maybe there had been a point to all those sit-ups and push-ups and ten-mile runs at five a.m. after all.
“Want me to take off anything else?”
She blinked. Shook her head sharply once as if to clear it. Blinked again. And smiled.
Something about that smile knocked him flat. This woman. He couldn’t wrap his head around it, but he felt it just the same. This woman was his. She was for him, in a way no other woman had ever been. She cut the legs out from under him.
He wanted her, and he was going to have her, and he was going to keep her.
“Take it all off, soldier.” Her smile turned sassy. “Make it snappy.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, and kissed her again.
Chapter Thirteen
Oh, man, Caleb could kiss. He could really, really kiss. He could kiss like kissing was the only thing on his agenda, and honestly, if you could kiss like this, why put anything else in the day planner? She’d be happy to lie here kissing Caleb for the next twelve to twenty-four hours.
Well, mostly happy. A number of her erogenous zones were clamoring for a greater share of his attention. Her breasts were tight and tingling, and some sort of nuclear meltdown had occurred between her legs, because everything down there was wet and hot and swollen and needy. Very needy.
But for the moment, kissing was grand. His kiss was wet, but not too wet. It was hot but controlled, passion banked in favor of a slow exploration of her mouth with his tongue. He was tasting her, testing her, investigating her. He was teasing her. Arousing her. Claiming her.
How anyone could do all that with one kiss, she didn’t know. She didn’t really care, either. Though it did make a girl wonder what he could do with the rest of his fine self if he ever got around to undressing.
“Clark,” she said between kisses. “For God’s sake, get your pants off.”
He smiled, teeth bright in the dim room. “In a minute.”
“Then get my pants off.”
That smirk. “Those are not pants. They’re barely even shorts.”
He took them off, though. Took off her panties, too, with an appreciative languor that made her squirmy with lust. But also, unfortunately, rather nervous, because she hadn’t given a lot of thought to how exposed she’d be in this whole scenario. How much he’d see.
Caleb dipped his tongue into her navel, running his big, warm hands up the sides of her body to spread over her rib cage. Delicious. Incredible. Unfortunately, a loudspeaker in her head wouldn’t stop reminding her she had a pasty white post-baby stomach, and it was totally unfit for this kind of thing.
“Don’t do that,” she whispered. The request might have been more effective if she hadn’t been running restless fingers over his shoulders and basically holding him in place.
He licked a path upward toward her breasts. “Why not?”
“It’s not … That’s not my best area,” she said, wincing internally at how lame that sounded, and how hopelessly out of her league she was with this guy. She’d nearly passed out when he took his shirt off. He was about fourteen acres of sculpted male perfection, taut and toned, exactly the right amount of muscular to tell you he could get the job done—any job—but not so much to make you fear he spent his spare time in a weight room pumping iron and watching his muscles glisten in the mirror.
And she was a mom. With a mom belly.
She’d been trying to brazen it out, playing the bold, sensual seductress he made her feel like, but she was skating a pretty fine line here between lust on the one side and incredulity on the other. And fear. Yeah, there was a little fear, too. He’d seen it, called her on it, and she’d nearly botched the whole thing.
But he’d assumed she was afraid of him, and that wasn’t it at all. She felt 100 percent safe with Caleb. Her body, anyway. No doubt he’d broken some hearts, and he would break hers if she let him. She wouldn’t let him. She’d already made up her mind—her heart was staying out of this.
What she was afraid of was the inevitable moment when she would disappoint him. She wasn’t experienced enough to play with a guy like Caleb. Not young enough or tight enough anywhere. He could bounce quarters off his abs. He’d be used to women who did body shots and owned fur-lined handcuffs and had lingerie rather than underpants.