The love Dana felt for Jared increased tenfold. She loved him with all her heart. Tonight she wanted to physically connect with the man she loved. Deciding he had talked enough, she tugged on his hands and they tumbled down into the bed.
Jared’s body ended up on top of hers and he glanced down at her, feeling the heat of flesh touching flesh, and framed her face with his palms. He studied her features as if implanting them in his memory.
And then he kissed her. Hungrily. Devouringly. And he couldn’t stop. He wanted her with a vengeance, a deep-rooted passion that he couldn’t understand. He heard the gentle moan of passion that escaped her lips, and felt the warmth of her fingers caress his naked skin as his tongue continued to ravage the sweetness of her mouth. Finally, the need to breathe and to shield her from pregnancy made him pull away. “I have to protect you,” he said with hot desire running rampant in his voice.
He slowly stood, crossed back over the room for his pants. He fished through his pocket, pulling out her underwear instead of his wallet. He glanced over at her and smiled. “Nice color.”
She gave him a short laugh brushed with embarrassment. “Glad you like it.”
Tossing them aside he then checked his other pocket for his wallet, pulled it out and retrieved a condom packet. Several. He knew she was watching as he put it on, and was overwhelmed by the sensations that rammed through him as he prepared to bury himself in her softness.
After he finished the task he glanced up and met her gaze. “What do you think?”
He saw the heated desire in her eyes, saw the slight shivering of her body. “I think,” she said softly, “that more than anything, I want you inside of me, Jared.”
Jared inhaled sharply as he felt a tightening coil in his lower region. He should have known she would say or do something to endear her to him that much more. He wanted to fight it but couldn’t. And he knew what he was feeling had nothing to do with the length of time it had been since he’d had a woman. It had everything to do with this particular woman.
He slowly walked over to the bed, slid in and pulled her into his arms. Emotions he’d never felt before took their toll and he kissed her while giving in to his overheated senses. He then moved from her lips to her breasts, determined to top what he’d done to them the other day. The lips and tongue torturing her now were those of a man who wanted to make his woman as wet as she could get. Torture was too mild a word to use for what he was doing. He took his time reacquainting himself with the taste of her skin, the feel of her flesh, liking the way her nipples hardened in his mouth as he feasted on them greedily.
When her scent became intoxicating and way too potent, his hand moved in slow precision and reached downward to touch the most intimate part of her, finding her not just wet but completely drenched. He vividly remembered a scene from one of his dreams that he longed to act out. He shifted his body and moved away from her breasts, began tracing a path down her chest to her navel with his mouth, glorying in the sensual taste of her naked skin.
He continued to trail kisses all over her. Rolling her on her stomach, placed kisses all over her spine, the center of her back and all over her shoulders. He then gently rolled her back over and met her gaze. By the look in her eyes he knew she was trying to contemplate his next move. He leaned back and without saying a word, his hand traveled between her legs, parting them just seconds before he lowered his mouth to her with hungry intensity.
Of their own accord, her hips lifted to him and to make sure they stayed there, he grabbed hold of them, held them as he greedily devoured her in this very intimate way. He heard her moan with every insistent stroke of his tongue. He tasted her heat, her fire and her passion. Passion he was both creating and satisfying.
“Jared!”
He quickly pulled back and covered her body with his, interlocking their limbs. He took her mouth at the same time he entered her, sliding inside of her in one smooth thrust as she welcomed him into her body. The same heat consuming her was eating him alive. He began moving as sensations, too overpowering to be real, clamored through him, making his strokes harder, stronger and deeper, robbing him of any logical thought but one. Don’t hold back. Share everything with her and deal with the consequences later.
And when her body exploded into what seemed like a billion pieces beneath him and carried her to a spiraling climax, he broke their kiss and buried his face in her neck. Kissed her there. Marked her. He continued to take her over the edge with steady thrusts of possession.
That same explosion, the finality of every physical sensation he could think of, overtook him. He hollered out her name as his body shook with the magnitude of an earthquake, the force of a hurricane and the electrifying power of a thunderstorm. What he had found in her arms, inside her body was intense pleasure, too magnificent to measure and too rapturous to describe.
And he knew as the earth slowly ceased spinning and his body relaxed, utterly consumed and feeling like a lifeless weight floating on shafts of air, that this was an experience he’d never shared with any woman before. He was bombarded with the need to hold her and make love to her all through the night.
At that very moment, Jared had to concede that when the time came, walking away from her would be the hardest thing he’d ever had to do.
Shortly after midnight, Jared stood barefoot on the balcony and leaned against the railing. The incessant pounding of the waves beating against the shore matched the raggedness of his breathing and the distinctive hammering of his heart.
Emotions that he had never dealt with before were coming at him from all directions, different angles, crowding in on him. He released a long deep breath as he tried to fight them. But it was useless. Dana had touched him tonight in a way no other woman had, and it hadn’t been all physical.
It seemed that after making love to her that first time, an undeniable urge to do so again and again had taken over, and so they had all through the night. He had shared more than just his body with her. He had also shared his soul. It seemed as if she had somehow eased inside his heart and was still snuggled there.
After making love to her the last time he had lain awake while she drifted off to sleep beside him. Sighs of satisfaction had continued to flow through his body long afterward. When he’d glanced over at her, he had been touched by how peaceful she looked. Struggling with feelings that were foreign to him, he had slid out of bed and slipped into his pants. Before he had left the room he had glanced back, lingering in the doorway. The moonlight shining in through the window focused on Dana curled in his bed, her naked body barely covered while she slept. Her bare breasts, firm and full, had tempted him to taste them again.
Bringing his thoughts back to the present, Jared pulled in a broken breath, knowing that no matter how many women he’d slept with before Dana and no matter how many he would sleep with after, he would only find total, complete and satisfying release in her arms. Only hers.
Jared turned slowly, sensing Dana’s presence immediately. A lump thickened in his throat when he saw she was wearing his shirt, a shirt that barely covered her.
Their eyes met. Held. And then she said softly, “I woke up and decided that it was lonely in bed without you.”
Jared didn’t want to tell her the reason he’d left was that he had needed distance from her; he’d been driven to have a few moments alone to get his head back on straight. Making love to her had literally blown him away. Instead he told her part of the truth. “I wanted to hear the sound of the ocean and see the moon and all the stars.”
He drew in a deep breath of air, not able to think beyond the need she aroused in him, and then added slowly. “But do you know what I want now more than anything?”
Dana shook her head. “No. What?”
“To make love to you again.” A part of him wished he could have mustered enough strength to have said that for the remainder of the night they needed to sleep in separate beds; they were getting into something neither had counted on, something he definitely didn’t want. But as she slowly began taking steps, crossing the balcony to him, the only thing he could do was open his arms.
The moment she came close, he gathered her to him, needing to hold her. He felt the willpower he had tried to regain slip away. She pressed against him, needing to be held. She wrapped her arms around his neck and they stood that way for a long moment, body to body, soul to soul. Slow warmth spread from her to him and it seemed that her every curve was molded against his firm muscled length.
And then he swooped her up into his arms and with hurried steps carried her back into the bedroom and placed her on the bed. He leaned down and caught her lips in a kiss that was deep, sensual and demanded full surrender. The sounds of pleasure emitting from her made him want her that much more and his stomach clenched with profound need.
He released her to pull the shirt from over her head, and then proceeded to remove his pants. After taking the time to put on protection, he joined her in bed. She whispered his name and the only thing Jared could think about was demonstrating with his body just what she did to him and how much he wanted her.
The knowledge that she wanted him as much as he wanted her sent his desire skyrocketing in all directions. He intended to spend the rest of the night sharing intense passion with the one woman whose name was more than a whisper on his lips. It was a name that was finding a way to his very soul.