Making a sleepy sound, she tunneled one hand into his hair, holding him to her as he slid his own hand up over her thigh and to her hip, pushing up the satiny fabric of her short nightgown at the same time. He’d experienced sensation, so many layers of it since leaving the Net, but each time he touched Lara, he found there was more to feel, to explore.

Kisses along her throat, her pulse thudding against his tongue, her breast taut and perfect in his palm.

“Oh.” A hitch in her breath, followed by a husky, “Don’t stop.”

He ran his thumb over her nipple. “Before,” he murmured against her mouth, “I comprehended the mechanics of this act, but I never understood.” That it could be lighthearted or intense, smoldering or wild…any of a thousand different moods, playing off his own and hers to create a new alchemy of pleasure every single time.

Today, it was slow, lazy, a touch playful.

Fisting her hand in his hair, she brushed her lips, soft and lush, across his cheekbone. “You know what I find sexy? These pajama bottoms you wear to bed.” She ran her foot over the fine blue cotton striped with black.

He knew when he was being teased, nipped at her lower lip in sensual punishment. “Those,” he said, her unrepentant laugh tangling him up, “are so as not to shock our youngest child if she walks in after a bad dream.” Unlike after they first defected, Marlee rarely had nightmares these days, but she wasn’t totally free of the scars the PsyNet had left on her psyche. When the dreams did hit, she still ran immediately for Walker. Which was why their bedroom door stayed unlocked at night—except if he flipped the remote switch as he’d done a few minutes ago.

Lara suckled kisses along his neck, spreading her thighs to better cradle his body. “She’s growing up in a changeling pack.” A graze of teeth. “I bet you it wouldn’t faze her.”

He had the feeling she was right. Changelings were very respectful of one another’s personal space, never assuming even casual skin privileges with people they didn’t know, but nakedness was accepted as a natural state of being, a logical outcome of the fact that every changeling young and old, came out of the shift naked.

“Well,” he muttered, “it’d faze me.”

Lara laughed, breath hot against his skin. “So shy, my poor darling.”

Tugging her up from his throat to claim her mouth, drink of her laughter, he moved his hand down past her navel to cup her over the lace of her panties, kissing her slow and deep until she grew damp against his palm, the scent of her an invitation. In no hurry, he continued the lazy seduction until she began to move restlessly against him, her delicate flesh plump against the lace.