Satin Pleasures (18 page)

The laughter in his eyes melted her insides.
“Oh, and would you hurry up and kiss me?”

He tugged her head down and whispered her own words against her lips. “Sweet mercy, but I love a bossy woman.”

His mouth consumed her lips, as her heart consumed the sentiment. It was ridiculous. But she desperately wanted to believe that he loved her, not bossy women in general. Then, she lost her power to think in the pleasurable task of kissing him back.

She opened her mouth and tentatively rimmed his lips with her tongue. He tasted so deliciously wicked she went back for more. She dipped inside. Their tongues mated.

Dan captured her lower lip between his teeth. His hands roamed her spine. When they reached her bottom, he ground her into his rock hard length. “Feel what you do to me, Tess.”

With a moan, she rubbed the ache at her center against him. Excitement zinged along sensitive nerve endings until she thought she’d go crazy if she didn’t touch his bare skin. Her hand dipped between them to release the buttons on his shirt. She brushed the silk aside and leaned down to drop random kisses over his broad chest.

Something cold and wet and stinky pushed between her lips and Dan’s hot skin.

“Colby!
Stop that!” Dan tried to push his dog’s muzzle away but didn’t have much success. The shepherd had planted his front paws on the edge of the lounge chair and was proceeding to lick Tess’s face. “Colby,” Dan warned again. “You’re going to end up back at the pound if you don’t stop kissing my woman.”

Tess couldn’t help but laugh. “Don’t get mad at him, Dan. He’s had you to himself for a long time.”

“It’s about time he learned to share.”

She giggled. “Well, I think it’s kind of cute!”

“I’ll show you cute.” He shoved the dog away and rolled to his feet. Without a word, he helped Tess to stand and tugged her toward the glass doors leading inside.

He led her through the darkening house, Colby racing at their heels, barking and yipping at this new game. When they reached Dan’s bedroom, he nudged Tess inside. Then, he slammed the double doors in Colby’s face.

The dog must have been startled because he stopped barking.

The silence was almost palpable as Dan slowly approached Tess. His admiring gaze slid over her. “Now,” he said, his husky voice reverberating through her, “where were we?”

With each touch of Dan’s searing gaze, a tiny wildfire bloomed under her skin. By the time he stopped in front of her, she was desperate to put all the fires out, one by one. “I think,” she ran her palms beneath the lapels of his shirt and slipped it from his shoulders, “we were about here.”

Dan glanced at the pile of material on the floor. “That looks like a good place to start.”

He reached out to unbutton her blouse. “Have I told you how much I like the color you’re wearing?” he murmured. “It reminds me of that bustier you bought for your birthday.”

Tess knew there was a reason for her choice of clothing when she redressed this morning. “You liked it, huh?”

He nodded, and then scowled. “I can’t say I was thrilled about your lover, Anthony, seeing it though.”

She threaded her fingers through the crisp hairs on Dan’s chest, watched his eyes darken. “No one’s seen it, but you. In fact, it’s never been taken out of the box.”

He grinned. “Good.”

“Until today.”

His grin slipped. He opened his mouth and closed it again. With one amazingly unsteady finger, he nudged the collar of her blouse aside. When he saw what she wore beneath it, he groaned and closed his eyes.

“Dan?”

His green eyes blazed at her. Without warning, he scooped her up and carried her to the huge four-poster bed that dominated the room. Only when they stood next to it did he allow her
to slide down his length. “I’ve dreamed of seeing you in my bed,” he growled, “ever since you walked out of my store with that damned box.”

Climbing on the bed, Tess tucked her fingertips in the waistband of his khakis and pulled him after her. “Like this? Is this how you saw me?”

“This wasn’t in my dream.” Dan plucked at her blouse.

She quickly began to tug material out of her waistband, but slowed when she saw his breathing falter. Easing it off took forever, but she finally tossed it to the floor.
“How’s that?”

His gaze fixed on her scarlet bustier. He swallowed audibly. “I...the pants—”

Tess was so intrigued by the reckless hunger that flickered across his face she didn’t wait for him to finish the broken thought. She unbuttoned and unzipped her pants. “I think I’ll need help.”

A second invitation wasn’t necessary. Peeling the linen down, he laid her back on the bed and pulled the pants completely off. When he finished, he leaned back on his heels and traced his palm over her bare skin from ankle to thigh. “Since the first time I saw you, I’ve wanted your luscious legs wrapped around me.”

Goose flesh raced in delightful waves over her body but Dan didn’t give her time to feel chilled. Working his way upward, he dragged a callused finger over the
bustier’s
lace panels. “I wondered where these fell.” He leaned over her to tug one aching nipple into the smoldering heat of his mouth.

Tess jerked on the bed and sucked in a breath of air. It was the last full breath she took for some time.

Dan suckled one breast, then the other. With one fingertip under each thin strap, he eased them off her shoulders, down, down, until she was bared to the waist.

She moaned when he pulled away. “Don’t stop!”

He leaned over to kiss her. It was fast and hot and immensely satisfying, but then he groaned and rolled off the bed. “Honey, I’ll be right back,” he said, walking across the room to his dresser.

When he returned, a foil packet in his hand, Tess was kneeling on the bed, the scarlet bustier draped open to her waist, waiting for him. With clumsy fingers that bumped several times over the hard ridge of his sex, she unbuttoned the fly of his khakis.

Before she could unzip them, though, Dan’s hand closed over hers and pulled her away from the bulge. “I...I’d better do that or this will be over before it’s begun.”

Dan kicked off his pants and briefs. He stood in front of her, masculine and proud, with an incredible need in his eyes that rivaled her own. Unable to help herself, Tess reached out to caress his broad chest, his flat stomach. Her body clenched when his did. She sighed with him.
Gasped.
His eyes closed and his jaw tightened when her hands wandered further afield, but he didn’t stop her exploration.

They were both breathing hard, when his eyes snapped open. “It’s begun,” he said urgently nudging her over on to her back. He tumbled into the bed after her.

“I love this bustier,” he said, finally stripping it off her and tossing it over his shoulder along with the matching lace panties. Kneeling between her legs, he traced fiery circles on her tender skin. “But,” he murmured, his breath warm against her soft breast, “I love this more.”

His mouth on her pushed every last coherent thought out of her head. Sensations ran over her. Simmering heat skimmed her skin beneath his cooler touch. Trembling need weakened her legs and arms, opening her to him. Insatiable desire made her pull Dan up to her for a hot, wet kiss in anticipation of their completion.

The howl of the approaching storm beat at the bedroom door and smote her ears, a relentless roar. Unconsciously identifying the ascending sound, she murmured against Dan’s lips. “Colby’s howling at the door.”

He lifted his head, poised over her, passion glazing his eyes to a dark green sheen. “What?”

“Colby’s howling at the door. He wants to come in.”

His face taut with desire, Dan smiled crookedly. “I know the feeling,” he whispered. He slipped his hands beneath her bottom and, with one quick thrust of his hips, pressed into her moist heat.

Dan peered into the grayish light illuminating his bedroom and listened to the sound of nature’s fury raging outside. The storm had slammed into the coast during the night, and then stalled there, gaining intensity with each passing hour as if it needed to store energy for a full-scale inland assault.

Fierce winds tore at the corners of the house, trying to rip the solid foundation off the cliff. Windows rattled in protest. A river of rain sluiced down the pair of slanted skylights overhead. But the tempest outside was a squall compared to the storm that had built inside him throughout his sleepless night.

The last time he’d felt such gut wrenching upheaval was a year ago, when he painfully acknowledged he had to make serious changes in his life or lose his soul altogether. Buried deep in Tess last night, he’d known he’d lost more than his soul this time.

Why hadn’t he run while he had the chance? His brains might as well be used for fish bait for all the good they’d done him since he first spotted Tess on the bridge in the middle of the bay. His instincts had alerted him to what she was...a delectable smorgasbord for a man too long on a deprivation diet...unadulterated trouble on spiked heels.

He should have driven off that bridge and burned rubber away from her. One call and he’d have been off the hook at
A Touch of Silk & Satin
, sailing the Pacific with overworked businessmen learning how to enjoy the good life. But no, he had to follow Tess, tethered to her car bumper like a sucker fish.

How could he have fallen so completely, irrevocably, under her spell? Her willful stubbornness frustrated him beyond belief. Her relentless drive worried him sick. She carried the world on her shoulders, refusing to share her burdens with anyone, which drove him absolutely crazy.

A small, sane voice that sounded remarkably like his aunt piped up at the back of his mind.
But, Danny Boy, isn’t it her strength and purpose and independence that appeals to you most? You’re two peas in a pod...no matter how far you think you’ve come in the past year.

Which was the real problem.
Tess was too much like he was, or like he used to be, and had the disturbing ability to draw him back down paths he’d allowed to grow over. In truth, he’d spent the past twelve months too afraid to clear the debris to see what he’d left behind.

He’d torn deeper into that dark territory than he’d like since meeting Tess. She’d become his bane...his temptation...his lover.

He glanced down at her, tucked in his embrace where she’d fallen asleep exhausted after their tumultuous lovemaking. Her soft, rhythmic breathing brushed the fine hairs on his chest. Her slim fingers curled against his stomach, while one long leg sprawled over the top of his thighs. The sheet, twisted around her waist, revealed one rounded breast and an unsettling amount of smooth, silky skin demanding his touch.

The impulse to turn and slide home once again inside her warm, welcoming body stirred him, hardened him to the point of pain. But it was the hunger that transcended his lust and wrapped around his insides that threatened to consume him. He groaned...afraid his longing to hold Tess close, to make her smile, to slay her dragons was now as insatiable as his need to make love to her.

Tess’s hand moved on his belly and wrapped around him, unerringly giving his body what it craved. Her slow, languid caress stoked the fire in his groin to match the one roaring in his heart, burning away his restlessness.

Sucking oxygen into his lungs, he gave himself up to the lure of the rosy nipple that had tormented him for far too long. He wasn’t satisfied until it beaded into a hard knot between his fingers.

Arching into his hand, Tess murmured his name. She shifted and straddled his throbbing sex. His hands traced her ribs to her back, downward to the gentle curve of her bottom. Squeezing her buttocks, he thrust against her in a mock mating dance.

Her moan vibrated alongside the thrumming pulse at the base of his neck, dragging him closer to the edge of sanity. Closing his eyes, he guided her head up for an explosive kiss.

Her mouth was hot and sweet, soft, searching. Desire spiraled low in his belly, drawing tighter until he thought he’d explode with the wanting. But then, wanting turned over into having. Tess’s tongue plunged into his mouth at the same time her velvety heat slipped over his shaft. In an instant, Tess was all around him...inside him...in that place where differences didn’t count and they were one.

Drowning in the endless sensations, his eyes opened to watch the flush of pleasure sweep her face cradled in his trembling hands. He wanted to capture the passion in her cinnamon eyes, but they were closed.

A part of him was content to linger in the gentle, caressing movements that tore his pulse ever higher. But the desire to see Tess’s emotions as he loved her wouldn’t be denied. He stopped breathing, stopped moving within her, and waited for her to look down at him.

A sigh parted her lips...not the response he expected. She nuzzled her face into his hand and murmured something unintelligible.

Still not the expected response.
Why didn’t she look at him?

He cursed, low and virulently, when he answered his own question. “Tess? Sweetheart, wake up.”

Her sultry eyes, laced with a lethal dose of innocent sleepiness and naked desire, drifted open. “
Mmmm
,” she purred, “I was having the most delicious
dre
—”