"Oh, yeah." It gave her palpitations just thinking about it. "All that's missing is Josh Turner crooning from the stereo." At his baffled look, she sang in the lowest register she could manage:
"Baby, lock the door and turn the lights down low. Put some music on that's soft and slow."
In her conversational voice she admitted, "'Course, it's not quite the same when I sing it. He's got that wonderful deep voice going for him. And okay, it's a couple of years old. But ever since the first time I heard it playing on the radio I've thought of it as the ultimate makeout song."
"Well then, baby, lock the door and turn the lights down low."
Laughing, she disentangled her fingers from his grasp to cup the back of his head and pull him back down for another kiss. One touch of his lips, however, and her laughter faded as jangled nerve endings that had temporarily settled down jitter-danced back to life. He'd lowered his head to comply with her unspoken demand for his mouth, but a space of several inches still separated their upper torsos. Finding the distance unacceptable, she moaned and lifted to press her breasts against his chest.
As if someone had kicked the slats out from under him, he collapsed on her, thrusting the hands he'd been using to prop himself up into her hair. His sudden weight drove the breath from her lungs, but she didn't care. Breathing was overrated. His mouth was savage, passionate, and, loving it, P.J. dove headfirst into the madness.
For several long minutes she burned out of control. Her skin felt hot and tight, her pulse pounded in her throat, her wrists, her nipples and deep between her legs, and her only thought was that she wanted to tear Jared's clothes off and rub her body all over his. She'd been turned on a few times in her life. Never, however, had she experienced anything close to this level of unrestrained need. She felt as if she'd literally die if she didn't get naked with the man soon.
Jared seemed every bit as crazed. His fierce kiss pushed her head into the mattress, his hands gripped rather than seduced and he breathed like a bull maddened by a matador's cape.
Then he suddenly raised his head and pushed up on his palms. Breath sawing in and out of his lungs, he hung his head and stared down at her. After a moment he cleared his throat. "We've gotta slow down or in about four minutes there'll be nothing left but a pile of ashes."
Notslowing down seemed like a better plan to her. She'd never been the recipient of a burning-out-of-control-until-there's-nothing-left-but-the-ashes kind of passion. It sounded exciting. "And this would be bad because:?"
"Because our first time ought to last more than a couple of minutes."
She was marshalling an argument for a longer, slower second time when he lowered his head and kissed the side of her neck. "Because I wanna watch you come undone," he murmured into her ear, his voice a harsh growl that raised a fine wash of goose bumps down her entire left side. Moving a little lower, he used his lips, his tongue, to even more devastating effect. "But I can't do that if I'm racing to the finish line, can I?" he demanded. "And I'm dying to watch you come, P.J.-at least once, maybe two or three times-before I really cut loose."
Okay, it was official, she was about to have an orgasm from his words alone. She would have sworn that wasn't possible but his firm, I'm-in-charge mouth that was lightly sucking, licking, biting its way down her throat was almost redundant.
Well, maybe not.
She clenched her thigh muscles to keep from squirming and cleared her throat even as she tipped her head back to give him more room to maneuver. "Hearing a lot of words here, Hamilton. Where's the action that goes with it?"
Oh, thank you, thank you, Jesus, for not letting my voice crack.It was bad enough she had the chest of a fourteen-year-old boy without sounding like one as well just when she most needed to sound like a woman.
"You want action, honey? I can give you that." Jared's hands left a wash of heat the length of her throat and across the expanse of her chest, which was bared by the wide peasant neckline of her red dress. He stroked its gathered edge. "Did I tell you how much I like this dress?" he murmured. Long fingers lazily brushed back and forth, back and forth, from the crest of her nearly bared shoulders to the spot where his fingertips met at the bow between the slight rise of her breasts. Then they glided back up her to shoulders and his eyelids drooped and his head lowered, allowing his lips to follow the trail his hands had forged.
Pushing up on her elbows, P.J. watched his fingertips pinch the drawstrings that held the bodice together between her breasts.
"I've wanted to do this all day," he said. And, his gaze on the slender cords of fabric in his hands, he pulled the ends, slowly untying the bow as if he were about to unveil a great work of art instead of a barely there set of boobs.
The neckline widened in a V down to the smocking that hugged her midsection from beneath her breasts to her hips, where the skirt, which under ordinary circumstances would have fallen to calf length in three tiered flounces, was bunched above her knees. Only her nipples preserved her modesty-and that by the barest of margins. Distended with arousal, they hooked the bodice in place. She watched Jared gaze at them as if weighing the merits of scooping the soft red fabric to the far side of the thrusting points. Apparently deciding to leave her covered, he rolled off her onto his side.
Propping himself up on one elbow, he reached out to smooth his free hand up her thigh. Slowly he bent his head over the cotton that covered her left nipple. Almost before she had time to register his mouth's amazing warmth and dampness, he looked up, met her gaze, and sucked. Hard.
It was like being hotwired to lightning and, breath exploding from her lungs, she arched into his mouth. Unharnessed power shot straight through her from the nipple he worked with such craft and skill to the tight, wet, aching spot deep between her legs.
Elbows melting out from under her, she found herself flat on her back once again, thighs sprawling wide until her right knee nudged up against his hard stomach. It occurred to her then that she was just lying here accepting everything he did as if it were her due. Thinking to offer a little reciprocal attention, she tried rolling to face him.
"No." His hands, gentle but firm, held her in place and his lips upped the suction on the damp fabric rapidly turning transparent over her nipple.
Omigawd, Omigawd.It took everything she had to pull herself back from the edge long enough to pant, "But you're doing all the work."
He mumbled something she didn't catch. "What?"
Raising his head, he shot her a wry smile. "Sorry. Talking with my mouth full. I said I'll get mine in due time. But if all those prep schools I got bounced out of taught me nothing else, they at least drummed one rule into my head. Ladies first."
He bent his head over her again, but this time he tugged on the little cap sleeves until they slid off her shoulders. "Well, look at this," he said, gazing down at her breasts, which had escaped their tenuous imprisonment, and at her arms pinioned to her side by the narrow sleeves he'd pulled midway down. "A two-fer. Your breasts all bare and pink, and a little light bondage allowing me do whatever I want with them." His gaze flashed up, pinned her in place. "With you."
Blushing, she tried to free her arms. The neckline with its loosened drawstring gave her some leeway, but still she could only widen the distance between her arms and her torso an inch or two before the material held firm. She began plucking at the midriff smocking in an attempt to tug the bodice to a point where she had a prayer of shedding it.
Rising onto his knees, Jared threw a leg over her hips to straddle her, effectively pinning the dress in place. "You claustrophobic, baby?"
"No."
Easing down to make room for himself between her legs, he lapped her shallow cleavage, gazing up at her as he did so. "Then why not just go with the flow?"