With his free hand, he nudged the jacket from her shoulder. She wore a sheer pastel blouse underneath that made him think of summer teas and formal garden parties. While his mouth roamed over her face and throat, he traced his fingers over the sheer cloth and the lace beneath.

Her body was already quivering. She thought it ridiculous that he held her arms captive, that she allowed it. But there was a dreamy excitement at having him touch her this way, slowly, experimentally, thoroughly.

She felt his breath against her flesh as he opened her blouse, and the moist warmth of his tongue cruising over the tops of her breast just above, then just beneath, the chemise. She knew she was still standing, her feet on the floor, her legs pressed back against the bed, but it felt like floating. Floating, while he lazily savored her as if she were a banquet to be sampled at his whim.

Her skirt slithered down her legs. His hand trailed up. Her murmur of approval was low and long as his fingers toyed seductively with the hook of her garter.

“So unexpected, Mary Ellen.” With one expert flick, he unsnapped the front.

“Practical,” she said on a gasp as his fingers skimmed up toward the heat. “Cheaper this way, because I’m always … running them.”

“Delightfully practical.”

Struggling against the need to rush, he laid her back on the bed. In the name of Finn, how could he have known that the sight of that strong, angular body in bits of lace would rip his self-control to shreds?

He wanted to devour, to conquer, to possess.

But he had promised her some tenderness.

He knelt over her, lowered his mouth to hers, and kept his word.

And he was right. In mere moments she understood he was so very right. It was easy to think of nothing but him. To feel nothing but him. To want nothing but him.

She was rocked in the cradle of his gentleness, her body as alive as it had been the night before, certainly as desired as it had been but with the added aspect of being treasured for a femininity she so often forgot.

He savored her, and sent her gliding. He explored and showed her new secrets of herself. All the rush and fury they had indulged in the night before had shifted focus. Now the world was slow, the air was soft, and passion was languid.

And when she felt his heart thudding wildly against hers, when his murmurs became urgent, breathless, she understood that he was as seduced as she by what they made together.

She opened for him, drawing him in, heat to heat, pulse to pulse. When his body shuddered, it was she who cradled him.

Chapter 9

“We’re wasting time.”