By Roxi Romano
Her bare shoulder with the thin camisole strap caught halfway to her elbow taunted Roman. He shouldn't have put his arm around her. He'd realized his mistake the minute she snuggled into the crook of his arm like the two of them had been hewn from the same board. Of course, that was impossible. A man like him and a woman like her were as different as pine and oak.She laid her cheek against his chest and her hand on his stomach just above the drawstring of his pajama bottoms. He covered her hand with his to keep it from venturing lower and discovering exactly how he wanted to comfort her.She shifted against him, her pebble-hard nipple imprinting his ribs. The muscles across his abdomen bunched painfully. She edged a leg over his, and that part of him most definitively male, that part hard-wired in antiquity to respond to the slightest call to procreate, jerked."You could come downstairs with me while I get that lantern," he said, fighting the urge to slide his hand down that long leg hooked over his, to explore the sensitive back of Tess Abbot's knee and close his fingers around her slim, tapering ankle."I could," she said, but didn't move."Princess..."She rose onto her knees, straddling his thigh, facing him with her hands on his chest. He twitched where she touched him ... on his chest ... between his legs. He caught her by the wrists, half expecting her to start swinging once she figured out what part of him bobbed against her leg.But she didn't swing. She didn't shrink away.She didn't laugh.She simply slipped one hand from his grip, reached down between them, and laid her hand lightly upon that part of him that nudged her knee--that part governed by the most basic of instincts.His cock jumped against her palm, and he murmured hoarsely, "This isn't a good idea.""No, it isn't," she whispered against the corner of his mouth a millisecond before slanting her lips across his.Weeks of restraint evaporated in the conflagration of that kiss--of tongue meeting tongue. His hands flew over her, scouting terrain he'd up until now dared only look upon--gauging the angle of her hips and breadth of her back. His fingers tripped across her ribs and climbed the laddered indentations of her spine.Her hands were like firebrands against his chest, his shoulders, the back of his neck. Her fingers as urgent in their exploration as his. Her need, poised over his thigh, as heady and musky as his. Her tongue as adept in its circling, thrusting duel as his.He brought his hands down over her hips, anchoring her against his rock hard need. She was hot and wet against his thigh. Ready.He rolled her to the floor beneath him, mouth to mouth, breast to chest, pelvis to pelvis. He swept a hand between them and across the slick second skin of the camisole. The hard nub of a nipple rose against his thumb.He tugged on that furled bud, making it grow, making it strain. Making her cry out against his mouth.Her hands caught hold of his head and, the next thing he knew, he was beneath her. She ground her pelvis into his. Pain. Pleasure. He groaned into her mouth.His fingers found the bottom edge of the camisole and slid beneath--slid across skin soft and hot as velvet fire. He cupped her breasts, filling his palms with her silky flesh and hard nipples. She was a perfect fit.Perfect.She reared back from him, breaking the hold of her mouth on his--of his hands on her. She gathered the camisole up her torso, the flashlight beam slanting from beneath the bed casting a long shadow from the gleaming ring piercing her belly button.The ring he had wanted to touch with his finger and his tongue ... that he still wanted to touch.He froze in mid-reach as she peeled the camisole up over her breasts. Heat lightning cut through the curtainless window and detailed her compact curves and knotted nipples, turned the tiny gold ring piercing her belly button silver, and burned her image across his nerve endings.He stopped breathing.Static electricity sparked from her hair as she tore the garment away and, when she touched his nipples, it felt as though sparks shot between them. Breath slammed into his lungs. Life-giving oxygen jolted through his body. Every muscle contracted.Yet, she didn't stop. She tweaked his naked nipples into tight, little balls--tweaked them until they ached--until he bucked against her--bucked and slipped his thumbs into the high-cut leg openings of her panties. Now it was her muscles tightening and spasming beneath his touch. Her gasps filling the fresh air. Her body swayed in the illumination of heat lightning.He went straight for her crotch. Her musk smelled sweet, inviting, far too tempting. And she tasted as sweet as she smelled.She groaned and arched against his mouth. He slipped his tongue between her cleft, rolled it around her hard clit. She bucked and he took her between his lips, working her until she shuddered.Almost immediately, she rose, tugged the happy-face pajama bottoms from him, and skidded the French cut panties down her legs ... her long, muscled runner's legs. He gazed up at her, framed by the artificial light escaping from under the bed ... and natural light flashing through the window from a not-so-distant horizon. He gazed up at the ring glinting from her belly button and at the dark triangular thatch at the apex of her legs. He gazed up at the promise of paradise.For one agonizing, eternal second, he thought it might all have been a dream ... her erotic caresses, her heady responses ... her hot, musky scent. Or maybe that it was all over--that she'd had her fun with him ... or her revenge. Until she redeposited herself astride his lap.That most sensitive of male flesh butted against that moistest of female parts. Hungrily, they took each other's mouths, touched each other's bodies, circled each other's desire. A little shift one way or the other by either of them and they'd begin the slippery slide to oblivion.He hitched one hip upward, and she broke from his mouth, panting, "Not without protection.""Protection?" he panted back against her rainwater-soft lips."Yeah," she breathed against the corner of his mouth. "You know. Rubbers. Condoms."He went still beneath her, poised on the brink of heaven, closed his eyes and croaked out, "I don't have any condoms.""What the hell kind of bachelor are you, you don't have condoms?"The next instant, she was on her feet, towering over him in all her naked glory. God, she was beautiful. He twitched painfully."What kind of liberated woman are you, that you don't have any?" he fired back at her from the floor."Hello," she sang, jamming her fists against her hips. "Did you see me arrive here with an evening bag? Everything I own is burned up or locked up in the charred ruin of my house."He closed his eyes and groaned. At least that voice deflated some of the pressure building in his groin."No raincoat, no shower," she sang. "No glove, no admission. No safety, no holster for your gun.""I get the picture," he growled, waving her aside and climbing to his feet."Where are you going?" she demanded as he opened the bedroom door."I'm going to get the price of admission."