“I take that as a challenge.” To demonstrate, she shoved up her sleeves, which fell right back down again. “Are you man enough to agree not to touch me until I say you can?”

He lifted a brow, wondering just what the lady had in mind. “Your loss, sugar.”

“I don’t think so, ultimately. No hands,” she murmured and pressed his to his sides. “Except mine.”

She lowered her lips to his, brushed, teased, nibbled. “Margo said you had a very tasty mouth.” She smiled when he winced. “She was right. I think I’ll stay right here a while.”

She lingered on his mouth, changing the angle, the depth, the tone of the kiss. Light one moment, intense and urgent the next, then sultry, smoky.

His fingers, aching, curled into the carpet. “Not bad for a beginner,” he managed in a voice rusty with need.

“And I learn fast. Your heart’s pounding, Michael.” She nipped at the pulse in his throat, cruised over dampening flesh. Then she gripped his shirt at the shoulder, pulled. When the seam stayed fast, he chuckled from both humor and frustration.

“Want me to do that for you?”

“I can handle it.” She eased back, kept her eyes on his as she yanked hard. The seam ripped, exposing muscle and skin. She pounced on it like a starving cat. “Oh, your body,” she whispered, then crossed her hands, taking hold of his shirt and sending cloth and buttons flying. “You have such a body. Tough and scarred and tight. I want it.”

Her mouth streaked down his shoulder, over his chest. Quick, greedy bites and sucks, feathering openmouthed kisses and flicks of tongue. But when his hands came up to grip her hips, she shoved them away with a single word.

“Mine.”

Rising up, she shrugged off the shirt, then once more bent to her task.

She was destroying him in a way he hadn’t known he could be destroyed. Slowly, inevitably. She was taking him in a way he hadn’t known he could be taken. Greedily, intently. His breath thickened, caught, released on a groan when she laved her tongue low on his belly. Every muscle quivered, taut wires close to snapping.

Thoughts filled and emptied from his mind so rapidly that he couldn’t gain hold. Sensation rammed violently into sensation like two clenched fists. The scent of her, elegant as royalty, the sheen of her skin, glossy as a damp rose, and the stroke of her hands, restless as lust.

Giddy on her own power, she tugged open the button of his jeans, felt his body tense like a runner on the mark. She lowered her mouth, tasting there, just there where denim and flesh met. And heard him choke out her name.