He shivered. “Give me a minute, okay?”
“For what?”
Bark! Ruff! Ruff! Yip! Meow.
“I can’t feel my feet no more,” he said. Then he leaned down and whispered, “And my towel just fell off.”
SHANNON
____________________________
I pressed a hand to my nervous stomach as I stood in the doorway. Trace slipped a CD into the player and sat at the edge of his bed. He wore white OBVIOUSLY boxer briefs and nothing else. I’d never seen underwear like them. The crotch had an anatomical pouch that was quite…large, giving his sex room to…er…hang.
He looked up, dragging his smoldering gaze from my knees to my face in one sinuous slide. “It’s not Christmas yet, but I’m afraid I’m gonna have to unwrap you early.” His Adam’s apple climbed his neck, then shuddered down. “My robe never looked that good on me. C’mere.”
My heart kicked into overdrive. I padded to the bed and stood between his legs. He hugged me as I cocked my head to listen to the amazing song he’d put on. “Who is this? The melody sounds so familiar.”
“Richard Marx.”
“Didn’t he do this song in English?”
“Yeah, ‘Now and Forever.’ He wrote it for his wife.” Trace smiled. “But this is ‘Ahora y Siempre,’ his Spanish version.”
I closed my eyes and smiled. “It’s so beautiful.”
“No. You’re beautiful.” Trace stood and took me into his arms, leading me in a slow dance. “I still can’t believe you’re here. Like this. With me.”
I cupped his jaw. “There’s no other place I’d rather be.”
“I didn’t think you’d ever get out of the shower,” he said with a nervous laugh.
“I just needed to clear my head.”
He stared at me with concerned eyes. “You sure you want to do this?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
We stayed like that for a while, just swaying to the music. He squeezed me in intermittent doses and told me how I completed him. I combed my fingers through his hair and told him how I’d wanted him since forever.
Together, we acknowledged the import of what we were about to do…how it would change us. How it would take our relationship to another level.
When we separated, he untied the robe with reverence. I sucked in a breath, feeling his gentle hands tour my body. He told me that I was beautiful and not to be afraid. He said he’d take his time, that we were in no hurry.
Meanwhile, I berated myself for blushing, but when the belt fell to the floor, I knew that this night, this man was my destiny.
And that I was loved.
He parted the garment and his hungry gaze rested on my breasts. He’d kissed and sucked them, but that was in the heat of passion. We were both calm now, and would enter this loving clear-eyed. Since I barely filled a B-cup, I was insecure, especially when I thought about his busty brunette friend.
My silly insecurities vanished when I saw his arousal. What used to be a non-threatening bulge, now tented his boxers with such blatant violence I stifled a gasp.
His eyes were fixed on the dark blonde tangle of silk between my legs. Up and down his chest pumped. I could hear the air rush from his flared nostrils. He was happy to see me—very happy. But self-consciousness returned, and a blush flamed my body. It compelled me to pull the robe around myself.
Trace gave his head a slow shake. “Naw. Let me look my fill.”
He brought my arms down to my sides, pushed the robe off one shoulder and moved in to capture a nipple. The ache between my legs was swift and powerful while he drew it into his mouth and sucked.
He anchored one palm at the small of my back. The other hand, he pressed against my belly, and used two fingers to stroke the place he’d stared at. The pleasure was so exquisite I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
His lips made a smacking sound when he released my nipple. It glistened beneath the light. Easing me on the bed, he fit our bodies together, side by side, and crushed his mouth to mine. As our lips did battle, he positioned me astride him. My damp hair framed his cheeks like twin curtains, while my necklace rested against his Adam’s apple. He broke the kiss, swept my hair to one side and gazed into my eyes. A muscle along his jaw trembled.
I shot him an anxious smile. “What?”
“Nothin’,” he said, husky and deep. “Just that I want to get inside you so bad my nuts ache.”
Laughter exploded from my throat and giggles spilled out of me like bubbly. Just like that, my nervous tension evaporated. After the monstrous day I’d endured, this was just what the doctor ordered.
I snuggled his neck. “Oh, my goodness,” I wheezed. “I needed that.”
“But it’s the truth,” he said in an all too quiet voice.
I raised my head, my body still shuddering with laughter. When I bent to kiss him in between giggles, he turned his face away. I blinked, stared down at him, and my laughter died. He wasn’t smiling.
“Trace? What’s wrong?”
He hesitated, his throat working. “It’s your first time. I don’t wanna screw it up.”
“How could you possibly do that?”
He ran his palms beneath the robe, over my bare bottom, and squeezed. “It’s just that…well, being near you makes me want to come.”
I swallowed, licked my lips.
“I don’t know how long I can make it last,” he said. “Understand?”
I nodded in earnest, and offered a logical solution. “Ever heard the phrase, ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again’? And again, and again….”
Trace’s eyes softened and he shook his head as if I was being naughty. His smile was a slow presentation of white teeth against a backdrop of tanned flesh and dimples. “Oh, yeah,” he whispered. “That’ll work.”
He tugged my robe off, tossed it on the floor then pulled a blanket over us. Suddenly, I was on my back and Trace was on top, nudging my legs apart. He kissed his way down my stomach to the place that ached the most.
“Trace,” I gasped.
With his thumbs, he parted my folds and exposed me to his smoldering stare. I knew what he saw—wet, hot, swollen, pink flesh.
He smiled. “You got no idea how much I been aching for another taste.”
Before I knew it, he’d shoved his hands under my derrière and tugged me closer. Then he found me, throbbing and desperately hot for him. He attacked the nub his fingers had roused, drew it into his mouth like one would a straw. He was ruthless.
On and on, it went, with him taking me higher and higher, until I was close to kissing the sun. But right before I was about to burn he stopped to slowly circle his tongue around my clitoris, forcing me back down to earth.
A sob spilled out of me. “Please….”
“Soon,” he promised, drawing me back into his mouth.
Soon was another ten minutes of sweet agony. Endless minutes of him kissing, licking, and sucking—a torturous eternity that pushed my body to the very edge. Only after much begging, did he finally grant me mercy, and this time, he didn’t stop. He kept the suction going while I hovered over a precipice, waiting to fly or fall.
I circled my hips to the rhythm he set, fisted his hair, and cried his name the moment I exploded into a thousand shards. Tremors reverberated throughout my body until I wilted into the mattress, dead to the world.
Trace flicked his tongue over me one last time before he kissed his way back up my stomach to suckle my lips, soft and slow. Then he left the bed and the rocking motion stirred me from the daze I was in. My eyes drifted open, and the first thing I saw was the enormous erection straining his boxers.