He was tearing at his jeans as he took his mouth on a sprinting journey up her torso, over her heaving breasts and back to her trembling lips.

She arched urgently against him, then her legs scissored to clamp hard around him. He shook his head, not in denial, but to clear his hazed vision. He wanted to see her, and for her to see him.

“Look at me,” he demanded, fighting to expel each word over the heart that pounded thick in his throat. “Damn it, look at me now.”

She opened her eyes. Her focus wavered, then sharpened until all she could see was his face.

“I love you.” He said it fiercely, his eyes lancing into hers. “Do you hear me?”

“Yes.” She gripped his hair. “Yes.”

Then she cried out in triumph as he drove himself hard and deep into her. The orgasm rolled through her like a wave of lava, leaving her shaken and scorched. As her eyes closed again he savaged her mouth while his body tirelessly plunged.

Mindlessly she matched his pace, leaping heedlessly into the storm they brewed between them. She thought she heard thunder roll, and lightning flare its wicked fingers across the sky. Her body exploded, shattered, then went glowingly limp.

Her hands slid bonelessly from his back. She heard him say her name, felt him coil, then shudder, then drop his weight onto her.

He let himself wallow in her hair, kept his face buried there while his system vibrated. She was trembling again, or still, little bursts he knew were the aftershocks of good sex. He’d have stroked her to soothe—if he could have moved.

“I’ll get off you in a minute,” he murmured.

“Don’t you dare.”

He smiled and rubbed his face in her hair. “At least I can keep you warm this way.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be cold again.” On a little purr of pleasure, she curled her arms around him. “You’re probably going to get all smug when I tell you this, but I don’t think I can mind. No one’s ever made me feel like this before.”

It wasn’t smugness he felt, but joy. “There’s been no one before you.”

She cuddled and laughed. “You’re entirely too good at this, Murphy. I imagine there are a lot of women—”

“They were all just practice,” he interrupted and made the effort to shift to his elbows so he could look at her. The way she was smiling made him grin. “Now, I can’t say there wasn’t a time or two I enjoyed the practicing.”

“Remind me to punch you later.” She laughed when he rolled her over, and over again until they were at the edge of the blanket with her cradled against his chest. “I’m going to have to paint you,” she mused, tracing her finger from biceps to pectorals. “I haven’t done a nude since art school, but—”

“Darling, when you get me naked, you’ll be much too busy for your brushes.”