“Cade, I can’t—”
“Just watch,” he said, and his deep baritone seemed to send a vibration all the way through her. “I don’t give a damn about the dress. I’d tear it to pieces to get at what’s underneath. Without you, that dress does nothing for me. But on you? The way it revealed just enough to leave me dying to slip my hands underneath and feel your perfect ass…”
The intensity in his eyes bordered on overwhelming. His free hand moved between his splayed legs and cupped his balls, drawing them down.
“Open your robe.” His words hovered on the line between a command and a plea. “Let me see you.”
She dropped the tie from his robe to the floor, and then she drew her robe back, exposing her breasts and widening the V-shaped opening to her waist. The belt remained snug around her stomach, hiding the parts of her body that left her second-guessing why a man like him would want her.
“You’re fucking gorgeous.”
She let his eyes linger on her, soaking up his desire. What was he thinking about her while he looked at her? While he touched himself? “What about you? What are your fantasies?”
He sat up. “I look at your breasts and I want to bury my cock between them. Let’s call that fantasy number one.”
The blatant appreciation in his green eyes spoke to the part of her body silently pleading with her to join him on the bed. “And number two?” she murmured.
“Reach down, below the belt, and open your robe.”
She drew in a deep breath and pulled back the fabric. Her thighs had never been fantasy material. But the groan coming from the Navy SEAL on the bed told a different story.
The sound reignited the bold feelings she’d carried into the restaurant with her. She drew the robe wide open.
And his hand froze midstroke.
“Cade?” she whispered.
“If I keep going, I’m going to explode.” Deep, dark desire shined in his eyes, the kind that turned a tuxedo-clad superhero into an animal. “When I look at you, the things I want to do—hell, I’ll need more than one Post-it note.”
“Tell me,” she demanded.
“Fantasy number two,” he said. He wasn’t touching himself anymore, but his cock rose back to attention anyway, irrefutable proof this man wanted her. “I’m dying to slide inside. I’d settle for straight-up missionary. But since this is my Post-it list, I’d lay you down, your breasts pressing into the bed. I’d take you with my hands on the ass I’ve been admiring all night.”
His words were like a drug, and the intoxicating sound of his voice doused her doubts in a haze of longing.
“Number three,” he said with a playful smile. “I’d like to revisit the scene at the nightclub.”
“The people below,” she said. “They turned you on?”
“You did. Tasting you drove me wild. I don’t give a damn about the setting. I’ll make you come with my mouth buried between your legs any damn place you choose. Give me a day and I’ll prove it. I’ll go down on you in bed, at a club, by the pool, in a closet—any location that turns you on and leaves you wet, I’m game.”
His gaze shifted up her body to her face. Instinct demanded she turn her damaged cheek away.
“Lucia, look at me.” His words were filled with a deep wanting. Not a hint of a threat. And she turned back to him. “I meant what I said by the fountain. My number-four fantasy lines up with yours. I look at your mouth and I fantasize about your lips.”
When she looked in the mirror, the woman who stared back at her, haunted by the past—she wasn’t fantasy
material. But maybe if she narrowed her focus to her mouth and her breasts, if she concentrated on the pieces of herself that turned him on, she could slip into the illusion for a few more hours.
Cade patted the bed. “Come here, gorgeous, and let me kiss you.”
As she bent over the bed, her breasts spilled out of the robe’s wide opening.
Look at me, touch me, lick me.
The words spun on the tip of her tongue. She glanced up at him and reached for the discarded belt from his robe.
“Do it,” he said. The gleam in his eyes bordered on feral. “Pick up the tie and bind my wrists before I come just from looking at you.”