“Do you understand what I just told you?” Now it was Quill who was having trouble keeping his voice even.

“Mmmm,” she replied. True, Gabby didn’t have the faintest idea what it meant to be forthright in the bed, but she didn’t feel like fussing about it. She brought her hands up to his neck and let them slide down his chest again. Little shudders followed in her wake. Daringly, she leaned forward and kissed the heated skin her hands had just caressed.

Quill cleared his throat. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep up this civil air. He was throbbing so hard that his trousers might not even be able to slide down his hips. “The rest of my clothes, Gabby?”

In fact, he’d lost his urbane tone and his voice burst with hungry violence.

But she fumbled with his trouser buttons, and in the end he shucked the remainder of his clothing himself.

In a lightning-quick lunge, he grabbed her and fell backward onto the bed, pulling Gabby on top of him. Her eyes were dreamy, cheeks flushed as she straddled him. Then her eyes widened with shock and a glimmer of understanding came into them.

“Do you think?”

Quill didn’t, couldn’t, answer. In reply he clasped her hips and lifted her into position.

Gabby choked and instinctively pressed forward.

“Yes!” Quill whispered fiercely. “Come to me.”

Gabby trembled, caught on a wave of embarrassment so acute she couldn’t move. She was poised above him unclothed. She quivered with mortification. Naked in the open. It was depraved! At least before she had been hidden underneath him.

But then she looked down and there was Quill—his beautiful gray-green eyes asking desperately for something only she could give. She forgot her exposed flesh and leaned forward, kissing him gently as she nudged downward against his heat and demand.

He groaned against her lips and forced them open, possessing her sigh with his mouth, taking her breath into his lungs.

“You’re making me forget,” Gabby whispered when his lips moved from her mouth to her neck, leaving a scorching trail behind. Hands tightened on her hips as if he was about to pull her down.

“Gabby …” His voice was a plea.

Despite herself, a little squeak broke from her lips as she pushed down again. And pulled back. And fell downward again—deeper and sweeter. The breath was burning in her chest. She tried again, and again. Deeper each time. Quill’s face was agonized.

“Gabby!” he said roughly, and she knew that in a moment his self-control would break and he would pull her hard onto his body.

“Yes?” she whispered sweetly, and sank down until they were joined together like puzzle pieces made by a master.

A harsh cry broke from Quill’s lips and he arched his hips off the bed, holding her hips tightly against him.