Just a Taste Page 12

  Even when that first swell of fever abated and the mating of their mouths turned less frantic, less carnal, she could not stop kissing him. She nibbled at his lips, along the whiskery harshness of his jaw and dipped down to the vulnerable spot at the base of his throat where life beat hard and fast.

  No shyness now, when she nuzzled the hair-rough texture of his chest and licked one hardened nipple. His hands fisted in her hair and he muttered a caution about slowing down, something that urged her to, yes, slow it down and savor every moment before it slipped away. She slid her hands up and inside the sleeves of his shirt, peeling away each side until she could curl her fingers around the smooth, hot skin of his biceps.

  A work of art, those muscles, to be explored and appreciated by hands and mouth and tongue.

  Vaguely, his gravelly sound of frustration registered and she knew that his fastened cuffs had caught on his hands, holding him captive to his own shirt and her exploring mouth. Empowered, she smiled against his skin and carried on…until a loud bump and a low curse and the clink of glass against glass brought her head up.

  Blinking, she realized the blindfold was gone—when had that happened?—and that he’d backed into the table. In another time, another mood, the situation might have struck a funny note, but now the only chords twanging were off-tune and awkward and terrifyingly serious.

  Terrifying enough to rock her back on her new two-inch ruby-red heels as she broke an intense moment of eye contact. She waved a hand at his predicament. “Here, let me help.”

  Surprisingly, he accepted, and she managed to fumble the cuffs undone and his hands free and it struck her hard—fist in chest, hard—exactly what she’d been doing.

  Tasting him, undressing him, seducing him.

  And now what?

  They faced each other, hotly aware that the next step had to be taken, honestly, without the camouflage of darkness and the teasing game of tasting. Jillian’s heart pounded. Her tongue, she feared, had fused to the roof of her mouth and her knees started to wobble. She sank down onto the leather sofa and picked up the glass that had rolled to the floor—the empty one, thankfully—and sat it back on the table. Next to the open bottle of ninety-nine Casinelli pinot noir.

  That she picked up, too, a solid prop for her nervous hands and a topic to get her tongue unstuck and working again. “So, I did get the ninety-nine right.”

  “Was there any doubt?”

  “No.”

  Her heart bounded when his black pants moved into her line of vision. Right in front on her. He reached down, took the bottle from her hand and carefully placed it on the table. “Now it’s my turn.”

  She looked up and her eyes snagged first on his thighs. Because they were so close and broad and imposing. Because she didn’t want to stare higher, where those pants jutted with his arousal.

  Okay, so she had looked. She had noticed. How could she not?

  Heat flushed her cheeks, her breasts, between her thighs. “Your turn?” she managed to ask.

  “To taste you.”

  Her gaze rose all the way to his face, and she knew that he knew exactly where she’d been looking. Even before he added, “Unless you hadn’t finished.”

  Was he inviting her to continue tasting him? As she’d done with his chest and his mouth?

  Hazed with heat, her gaze dropped back to his pants. Her hands itched and her whole body surged with illicit excitement, but Lord, no, she couldn’t. Not now that the blindfold was gone. And she knew this was her moment of truth, honesty time. He wanted to taste her, like he’d told her that day at the cottage.

  “It was easy in the dark, but now I’m trembling inside.” She pressed a hand to her churning belly. “All those things you said you wanted to do…”

  “I didn’t mean to scare—”

  “No, that’s not why I’m trembling.”

  “Then, what?”

  She inhaled, slow and deep. “I’m afraid that I won’t be what you’re expecting. I’m afraid that I’ll disappoint you.”

  That I’ll be caught short again, inadequate, not brave enough, strong enough or smart enough.

  For a long drawn-out time he just stared at her. Then, with a low sound—frustration? denial? disgust?—he reached down and pulled her to her feet. “That’s not about to happen, sweetheart.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “I know,” he said, straight and direct. “You just had a straight view of your effect on me. You should know, too.”

  Oh, yes. She’d seen. And now she looked into his eyes and saw the honesty, the rawness, the restraint, and the nervous fluttering of her belly steadied. A little. “Yes, I know.”

  “And?”

  “Okay,” she said on a long breath. “Are we going upstairs? To your bedroom?”

  “You’re sure?”

  No. Her heart pounded. She moistened her lips. “Yes.”

  Fire sparked in his eyes, caught in her blood. Towing her by the hand, he started toward the stairs. Then, with a low sound of impatience, turned and doubled back.

  “What?” she asked, her head spinning with the enormity of what was about to happen and with the speed of his turnabout.

  He picked up the bottle of wine. The opened ninety-nine. “This,” he said in answer to her question. “You said you couldn’t stand waste.”

  Ten

  I n that moment of uncertainty, she’d handed Seth the perfect out. The opportunity to put a clamp on his body’s demands, to listen instead to his instincts, to his gut, to every cautionary inner voice that urged him to take a giant step back. To say, I don’t believe you are sure, so let’s rethink this whole sex thing and the risks involved.

  He thought about it for a split second, but he couldn’t do it.

  The passion had him by the throat long before she turned him hard and wanting with her tasting game. And then she went and looked at him with all that insecurity quavering in her big green eyes. Damn her for blindsiding him with the power of his need—not for physical release, not to fulfill his fantasies, but to obliterate that vulnerability from her face and her soul.

  And damn himself for not having the strength to say no.

  As he shouldered open the door to his bedroom, his grip on the bottle tightened. The wine, his reminder that this was about the sensual experience. About driving her as wild as she had driven him downstairs. Only more so.

  Because she thought she might disappoint him.

  Yeah, right, and tomorrow hell might freeze over.

  Seth led her right over by his bed before he let go of her hand. He deposited the wine on his bedside table, turned on the lamp, and kicked himself for ignoring an earlier compulsion to buy candles. He hadn’t because…well, it had felt too cocky, too contrived, too much like a planned seduction scene.

  “You didn’t bring glasses,” she pointed out.

  He turned around and the visual of her in his bedroom slammed through his body. Forget the candles. She might find the darkness easier, but he wanted to see every shift in her expression, to watch every shudder of her body when he proved she was no letdown.

  Forget the candles, and forget the glasses—

  “We don’t need them.”

  “Oh? Then, how…what…?” She stopped, swallowed, flapped a hand toward the wine. “You said you weren’t going to waste it.”

  “I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to taste it. On your body.”

  Oh, yeah, that’s why he wanted light. To see those big eyes widen and that mouth soften and the sweep of her tongue as she wet her lips. To watch her nipples press hard against the silky red fabric, as if her imagination had been let loose in a very erotic playground.

  “I told you it was my turn,” he said softly, as he moved toward her. “My turn to tease you and to taste you.”

  “Payback?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  A pulse beat in her throat, like the nervous flutter of wings.

  “Downstairs you said it was easier in the dark. Would yo
u like the blindfold again?”

  Her nostrils flared as she drew a breath. “I…no. I want to see you.”

  Deep in her eyes Seth saw the knowledge of all she wanted to see, the heat, the excitement, the directness. His body bucked in reaction as he thought about her watching him, watching his hands on her naked skin, his mouth on her body as it arched beneath him. Him burying himself deep in her body.

  “Good.” Low and gruff, almost a bark. He touched her hair, threaded a silken curl behind her ear, needing the softness to soothe the savage edge to his need. “I want you to know it’s me.”

  “I would know you, Seth, even in the dark.”

  Too intense, too much, too soon. He needed to remember that this could only be about satisfaction, about pleasure—that’s all it could be, this one time, this one night. Not the tightness in his chest, the urge to bury his face in her throat and hold her close against his pounding heart.

  Hell, but he needed to lighten the mood, to get back to that teasing of downstairs. He stroked his thumb across her cheek, touched her bottom lip. “Ahh, but then you’re the master taster who picks any wine blind.”

  “Not any,” she whispered, her breath warm against his hand. “Only distinctive ones.”

  “You never did get back to me on whether I’m a distinctive pinot or a rough red.”

  She almost smiled. “Maybe you’re one of a kind.”

  “Seth Bennedict. Vintage sixty-seven.” He tapped a couple of fingertips to his bare chest and that was a bad move, teasing-wise. The smile fled as her gaze dropped and touched his bare chest with the same velvet stroke as her tongue.

  Hot, wet, arousing all over again.

  And then she was looking into his eyes and everything she’d done, every way she’d touched him, ached in his groin. So much for light, so much for teasing. Raw primal desire gripped him so hard he could barely breathe.

  “Please, can you kiss me?” she asked, and his mouth was on hers before she stopped asking. He struggled to contain the kiss, especially when she parted her lips and welcomed his mouth with a throaty moan that fed the fierceness in his blood.

  Quick and desperate, her hands slid around his neck and tangled in his hair. His hands slid down the warmth of her bare back to cup her buttocks and pull her in close. Soft against hard, need against need, she moved against him in the same rhythm as the kiss.

  Lust billowed as he gathered the silky folds of her dress in one hand, dragging it higher at the back, all the way up until his hands were on bare flesh. Curved around warm, tight bare buttocks. That ended the hungry kiss and drove the gathering tension from his lungs in a gust of stunned surprise.

  Either she’d elected to go commando—unlikely—or the lady wore a thong.

  “Who would have thought?” His voice thickened with arousal as he traced the midline of her underwear with his thumb. “Do you wear these under those riding pants? The ones you spray paint on?”

  She laughed low in her throat, the sound of silky skin and sexy underwear and pure, raw, howling stimulation. “When I’m out riding I’m not worried about visible panty lines,” she told him. “Usually.”

  Okay, she was killing him.

  Seth eased away, let the dress flow back over her bare skin, indulged himself by touching her back, her shoulders, the elegant arc of her collarbone. He needed to slow down, get a grip. He’d promised no disappointment; he’d promised payback; he intended to deliver on both counts.

  Which meant that he had to intercept her hands when they reached for him. He held them trapped in his, squeezed them a little when she struggled to free herself. “Oh, no. This is where I get my revenge.”

  “There’s no need for—”

  “Yeah, there is. You have no idea how much pain you caused me downstairs.” He put her hands away, arranged them primly by her sides. “Turnabout is fair.”

  “For it to be fair—” her voice hitched as he unfastened the first of two buttons at her shoulder “—you would need to be blindfolded.”

  “Not going to happen.” The second button slid free and she grabbed for the dress and held it to her breasts. “I want to see you.” His eyes held hers as he coaxed her fingers from the dress, as he slowly enticed her arms away and the dress slithered to the floor and pooled around her feet like a silken spill of pinot noir. “I want to see all of you, Jillian.”

  He waited. He didn’t look—much—not until acquiescence glimmered in her eyes. Pink traced her cheekbones with shyness but she lifted her chin and when he asked her to turn around—his voice nothing but a husky, parched rasp—she did.

  And, God, she was even more magnificent than he’d imagined. A proud, slender, straight-spined goddess, standing there in her pool of ruby satin wearing nothing but a thong and a blush. He stood statue still, needing to fill his eyes and his mind with the image, but she started to tremble—he saw it in the arms she still held extended at her sides—and that earlier note of vulnerability, of uncertainty, sucker punched his memory.

  “Hey.” He moved in close and folded her in his arms, her back against his front, and held her until the trembling eased. He wanted to tell her how beautiful she was, to tell her anything more meaningful than “hey,” but voice and words were lost in the sensations rushing through him, too many and too swift to pin down and name.

  Too many and too swift and too troubling to name.

  So he kissed her temple, her brow, the bridge of her nose, but when he nuzzled her cheek and the side of her neck, she made a low, achy sound in her throat and moved against him, restlessly, reflexively.

  Maybe he’d read that deep shudder all wrong. Maybe he’d read that flush of pink in her cheeks wrong, too. Maybe they weren’t signs of nervousness but of intense, female arousal.

  Again, she made that throaty purring noise and it shot straight to his sex. The weird, tender sensation in his chest hardened too, releasing him, relieving him, reassuring him that this would be all right.

  Gently he nipped at her earlobe and she stretched her neck and rolled her head to the side, giving him better access to that sexy bite-me neck. What could he do when she asked, silently, but ever so nicely? He sucked her skin against his teeth, marking her with primitive possessiveness and not caring. Not when she arched her back and pressed the swell of her naked breasts against his arms. Not when she rolled her hips and stirred him to steel-hard pain.

  Who was supposed to be torturing whom, here?

  Slowly, deliberately, he unfolded his arms. Ran his hands all the way down her arms as he set them at her sides again.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice as husky-edged as his mood.

  “Kissing you.” And he did, starting at the back of her neck and moving all the way down her spine, dropping to his knees when he had to, kissing all the way over the firm curve of her bottom and down the backs of her thighs. “Kissing you and tasting you.”

  With hands wrapped around her thighs, he held her steady when she trembled and threatened to buckle, shushed her when she tried to object.

  “I’ve wanted to do this for so long.” To run his hands the length of those mile-long legs, to press his mouth to the backs of her knees, to ease her legs apart and nuzzle the soft yielding flesh of her inner thighs. “And this.”

  The sound of his breathing, of his need, raged in his ears as he turned her in his hands and peeled away the skimpy panties. Naked. He had her naked as the day she was born and he couldn’t stop looking. Even when her hand shifted in an attempt to cover herself.

  Those long, elegant fingers hovered over the core of her femininity, and that was about the most erotic thing he’d ever seen. That and his hand, his fingers, touching hers, and—with the gentlest pressure—easing their conjoined touch lower, deeper, dipping between her legs.

  It was unbelievably erotic, the doing, the watching, the soft hiss of breath dragged between her teeth. It was too little, too much, not enough.

  “I want to taste you,” he rasped, and she started to tremble, so deep, so
strongly, her legs gave way. His bed caught her fall, his hands eased the drop, and she was there laid out before him, open and vulnerable and beautiful.

  “Please,” she breathed, and that was enough for Seth. Her fingers clutched at his sheets as he touched her, stroking the soft skin of her thighs, the slick swollen flesh between, while the blood roared through his veins and hunger took hold.

  He touched her with the tip of his tongue, heard the reactionary grab in her breathing, then he tasted her, long and slow and deep, until her whole body trembled and her back arched to press herself against him, seeking, questing, driving him to increase the pressure, the speed, the intensity until she exploded against his mouth in the hot rush of her release.

  He wanted to keep touching her, prolonging her pleasure, but her taste exploded in his blood, headier than any wine, more intoxicating, more addictive, and he had to roll away, to slam his eyes shut and grit his teeth to control this maelstrom of sensations that clamored at his restraint.

  “That was…” she said after a second, a minute, who knew? Her voice trailed off and he felt the flutter of her fingers against his arm. A weak, whispery contrast to the hard pulse of need in his body.

  “Too long coming.”

  “Yes. That and…” Her hand shifted restlessly again, as if grasping for description. “I haven’t—I’ve never…”

  Again she couldn’t finish, but her part-answer caught at Seth’s consciousness. He rolled onto his side and the look on her face, the almost puzzled look of wonder, caused his heartbeat to stall.

  “Haven’t, what?”

  Her gaze skittered. The flush in her cheeks deepened. Seth came up onto one elbow, took her face in his hand. “You’ve never what, Jillian?”

  “Orgasmed like that. With—” she paused, moistened her lips “—with oral sex.”

  “You were married—” He stopped himself short. God, what was he doing? Inviting Jason into bed with them?