Slowly, he tugs my top upward and tucks it into my bra strap so it stays up.

I’ve read the solar plexus is a powerful nerve cluster, but I’ve never experienced it before. He starts below my breasts, caressing upward, spreading me out on the couch so that he’s kissing me softly around my belly button. When I moan, he soothes and whispers, relaxing my body, my abs uncontracting so that all the blood heads to the part between my legs that’s on absolute fire. It burns and tingles at the prospect of being touched. He’s so close and at the same time so far away. He caresses up my ribs and down. Ducking his head, he uses his tongue around my navel, then dips it, hot and wet, into the tiny nook. A dozen erogenous zones awaken to him. Nerve endings never before stimulated like this tingle and scream, my hot zones alive. All of me. Alive. I’m excited mentally, physically, emotionally.

“You have no idea how much you excite me,” I hear myself admit as I caress his hair and he lifts his head, tugs my bra down off one swollen globe, curls his fingers around my breast, and gently suctions the tip of my nipple with a hungry sucking sound.

“I want you beneath me tonight, Rachel.” His lashes sweep upward and he looks up at me, the gold rim around the green of his eyes gleaming with intent. Every breath, every undulating move of my body under his as he suckles me, everything undoes me from the very core outward. “Writhing,” he says. “Panting. Wet.”

He takes the hardened, already sensitized nipple back into his mouth. I slide down the seat, part my legs, and try to pull him above me. Instead he lets his hand slip in between my legs. My arms wind around his shoulders tight enough that I can feel the muscles flexed and taut under my fingertips as he slowly tugs my panties aside with his thumb and slides one finger inside me.

The touch triggers a cascade of pleasure through my body. I arch, a tiny sound of need and ecstasy slipping through my lips. I can see the mask of control he always wears slipping as he watches me, his lips curling with a soft smile. “For me . . . Rachel. Let go for me.”

One rub of his thumb on my clit. One deft finger inside me. Those male eyes, glittering, watching. That voice, coaxing me. And I come, twisting with a soft cry, unable to stop it, unable to tell him that I wanted him to let go for me, too.

I gasp and pant for a while longer. He shifts his big body and watches me with that soft smile as he tugs my skirt back down and lets my top drop to cover me, using a hand to smooth it back in place as he whispers in my ear, “I’ve wanted to do that since the day you crashed my Ice Box party.”

He’s teasing me. I’ve gotten to know that tone now. So I tease him back. “I was dared by friends. Guess now I can say I met you and you were the heartless bastard everyone says you are.”

“Who’s everyone?”

“Your ex-girlfriends.”

“I don’t have girlfriends.”

“Ex-lovers, whatever.”

“I have something to say about that, too.”

“Oh really, what is it?”

“I’m innocent?” He smiles.

I laugh. I want to kiss him, kiss him real hard, and fuck him harder. Oh god, I want to give him what he just gave me, but then what? “Are you having fun with me?”

“That was me actually attempting to let the lady have fun with me.”

I put my hand on his thigh playfully. “You make my world spin a little faster.”

“I’d like to rock it even more,” he rumbles, and I laugh.

He looks at me, his grin, his eyes, all of him mischief to the tenth power. Mischief and sin.

“What’s your idea of rocking a girl’s world?”

“You tell me.” He trails his eyes down my body.

“Me?!” I cry. “What do I have to do with it?”

“I’ve never wanted to rock a woman’s world the way I want to rock yours.”

It seems my lungs just froze on an in breath.

He leans forward in his seat, and instead of doing the expected, which is teasing me because he shocked me, he looks absolutely sober. “You’ve got to know this about me,” he says as he cups my face in his warm palm. “I indulge in anything that I want. I’m not in the business of denying myself what I want. I’m not in the business of denying those around me of anything they want. I’m yours if you want me, Rachel.”

He gazes at me quietly.

“We don’t fit,” I say. “I just want to find a spot, warm not cold, with a nice view, everything I could want, and I want to stop moving and stay there—in that spot. And you will never stand still.”