When she’d lost weight, she’d had a reawakening of herself as a woman, but the attention of men had been too much. Now she realized it was the wrong men who had been paying attention to her. Because in Steven’s embrace she felt that she was where she was meant to be.
He whispered hot, dark words against her skin, which just served to inflame her. She reached for his shoulders, tried to draw him closer to her, but he pulled back.
“Do not touch me until I tell you to,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because I said so,” he said.
She dropped her hands to her sides, but had no idea what to do with them. Letting him touch her while she couldn’t touch him was exciting. She felt like this moment was all about her pleasure and all he’d done was kiss her. The wind blew down the street chilly and damp, and she realized they were standing on the side of the road.
Until that instant all she’d been focused on was his kiss. A kiss she still hadn’t tasted.
“Let’s get inside the car,” she said.
“Not until I get my kiss,” Steven said.
She started to argue but then felt his mouth against her collarbone. He’d brushed the fabric of her shirt out of his way, as he tasted her with short kisses. His mouth was warm and started a fire that raged all the way to her core.
She had the uncomfortable feeling that she might not be able to deny him anything. His moved his mouth up the other side of her blouse and then at the base of her neck he suckled her. She shivered and moaned as an ache started at her center.
She couldn’t believe that he’d turned her into a mass of needing and wanting and she didn’t care. She wanted more of him. She reached up to touch him, but he lifted one eyebrow at her and she knew that if she touched him he’d stop. She moaned and put her hands back down beside her hips.
He smiled at her. “Good girl. You get a reward for that.”
She smiled back at him. “Do I get to choose it?”
He shook his head and brought his mouth down on hers. His kiss was as intense as she’d expected it to be. His mouth was hard on hers and demanded everything she had to give.
His hands circled her waist and drew her against his body. She felt the hard wall of his chest against her breasts and the hot pressure of his tongue as it penetrated her mouth. She shifted in his arms, trying to get closer to him, but she could only touch him where he let her.
Her powerlessness—to her own passion and to Steven’s control—was the headiest feeling she’d ever had. His mouth was delicious. His taste was addicting. She wanted so much more than this.
Everything in her called for her to be with him. She caught his lower lip in between her teeth as he drew his mouth back from hers. He moaned and then changed the embrace so that her lips were caught between his teeth. He sucked her lower lip deeper into his mouth.
One of his big hands moved up her back to the center, right between her shoulder blades, and he held her with just that one hand and his mouth on hers.
She was completely his prisoner. Nothing mattered to her except that this moment didn’t end. That his mouth stayed on hers.
And that frightened her. This embrace scared her. She was successful because she didn’t let men or relationships of any kind interfere with her job. And that had always been easy for her, because no man she’d met had threatened that resolve.
Part of it she imagined was simply because no other man had felt right—the way that Steven did. He’d been the one to change her with that one overheard comment. And she’d realized that even though her parents had always told her they loved her and she was beautiful the way she was, that men saw that differently. That a chubby woman was almost invisible to most men—or rather to men like Steven.
She had to be careful, because the way she felt right now, she knew she could easily lose herself to him. In him. And the really scary part was that she wouldn’t mind. She drew back from him and he slowly released her mouth.
She put her fingers over her lower lip, which was still tingling. She wasn’t herself. This was surreal.
“That was…”
“Incredible?”
She shook her head. There was a lightness to his tone that she wanted to embrace but she sensed the steel underneath. “Intense.”
“Surely a woman like you has been well-kissed before.”
She started to shake her head but she didn’t want Steven to remember the chubby girl no man had been interested in. That was part of her past, she thought. His kiss had made her vulnerable enough. She didn’t want to show him that kind of emotional vulnerability.
“Nothing like that,” she said at last. She couldn’t lie to him about that. She wasn’t a very sophisticated woman when it came to bedroom matters. She might be able to hold her own with temperamental photographers and celebrities, but with this man she couldn’t. And she wasn’t going to pretend that this was an everyday occurrence, even if that would have been better for her.