She wanted him in all those places, too.
“You’re nervous,” he said, his voice gentle despite the heat that remained. “Tell me why.”
She was continually surprised by how much Dylan saw, and how deeply. After meeting his mother, his father, his siblings, she knew she shouldn’t be so surprised. But he was just so different from any other man she’d been with.
And still…instead of truly being able to appreciate it, and him, she found herself always holding her breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Which was why it was more than just the physical aspect of their lovemaking that had her insides spinning. Tonight had to be about total honesty between her and Dylan. Honesty might have been only one of the many things that had been absent between her and her ex, but it had been the most important.
“
This
is what I swore to myself I would never let happen again.
This
is what I’ve fought so hard against for the past year and a half.” She swallowed hard. “But instead of keeping strong, I just asked you to stay the night with me. I just begged you to make love to me. And the worst part of all is that if you were to leave right now, I’d feel emptier and more alone than I ever have before.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised her, and the answering relief that swept through her made her knees nearly as weak as his kisses had. “You are the strongest person I’ve ever met, Grace. I know what a risk you’re taking on me tonight after the way you’ve been hurt. I know you would never give yourself to a man if you didn’t trust him. To know I’ve earned even a little of your trust, even if I don’t have nearly all of it...” He smiled down at her as he brushed the backs of his knuckles across her cheek. “I’m nervous, too.”
His confession stole what was left of her breath, especially because she knew he wasn’t just saying it to try to make her feel more at ease by putting them in the same boat.
“Why?” She covered his hand with hers and drew it down so that his palm rested flat over her heart. “Why would
you
be nervous?”
“Do you really want to know?”
She would have said a quick and easy
yes
were it not for the fact that he was looking at her in a way that no other man ever had. She’d thought she was nervous about sleeping with him, but now she was a thousand times more nervous about his answer.
And yet, just as she couldn’t have pushed out of his arms and asked him to leave, there was no way for her to pretend she didn’t want to know his
why.
“Tell me,” she whispered.
His mouth curved up, just enough for his eyes to crinkle at the sides. “I’m in love with you, Grace.”
Hadn’t she known it was what he was going to say? Hadn’t she read the truth of it in the way he looked at her? In the way he touched and kissed her? In the way he treated her son as though he was the most precious child in the entire world?
But that didn’t make the impact of his words of love any less forceful.
The only way she could keep her legs from giving out beneath her was to grip his hand still pressed over her heart, while his other hand on her hip held the rest of her steady. She knew he could see how much he’d just rocked her world, even more than he’d already rocked it by simply existing. And yet, just as he’d always gently pushed her to let him into her life since the day they’d met, he didn’t let her retreat from what he’d said now, either.
“I’m so in love with you that in one week, you and Mason have already become everything to me.” He leaned in so that his cheek pressed against hers and his lips were at her ear. “That’s why I’m nervous—because I want tonight to be perfect. Completely perfect.”
His breath was warm on her sensitive skin, but she shivered at the beautiful things he was saying to her.
Beautiful, but so incredibly overwhelming.
Could she trust that what she felt really was love this time? Or was it just a deeper physical hunger than she’d ever thought to feel? And when would she stop being so frightened of making another mistake?
Grace had never been more grateful for anything in her life than she was for her son, but at the same time, she’d never withstand the kind of heartbreak she’d been through with his father again.
“I didn’t tell you I’m in love with you so that you’d feel you had to say it back. I know I’ve pushed you to date me since the moment we met, and I can’t regret doing that when I really do believe that you and I and Mason belong together. But I would never push you to give me your heart before you’re ready, just as I would never push you to make love with me if you’re not ready.”
She wanted to tell him that he had her heart, wished she could just leap without being afraid of crashing and breaking into so many pieces this time that she’d never be whole again. But for tonight, there was only one thing she was one hundred percent sure about.
“I want to make love with you, Dylan. More than I can remember ever wanting anything else.”
The final word had barely fallen from her lips when his mouth came down on hers, hot and borderline desperate.
“You can’t want it more than I do.” His lips rained a sizzling and heated path from her mouth to her jaw. “When does Mason wake up in the morning?”
She couldn’t get her head around his question for a few seconds, not in the wake of the sensual pleasure of having his mouth and hands roving hungrily over her. Finally, she managed, “Six.”
“How am I going to fit everything I want to do with you into nine hours?”
A rush of need hit her then, so potent that she went a little crazy. Crazier, even, than she’d already been for Dylan. Now that she’d decided to make love with him, to finally give in to the soul-deep craving that she’d been working so hard to fight these past weeks, need clawed at her. And she couldn’t wait another second
.
Grace reached for his shirt, her fingers fumbling and desperate as she tried to get it off him. “I need you to take me. Now. Right now.”
She barely had his shirt halfway up when he put a hand over hers. “We may only have nine hours, but a little foreplay and a handful of orgasms aren’t going to kill you.”
A handful of orgasms before he finally took her?
She’d never survive it.
“You know I haven’t had sex in forever, that I haven’t ever had it with a man who makes me feel the way you always do. Don’t make me wait. We can just do it once to take the edge off and then—”
His mouth on hers cut her off, and though his hand fisted in her hair, the slow, sweet way his tongue stroked over hers until she had no choice but to match his rhythm told her more clearly than any words would have that he was most definitely going to make her wait.
And that she was going to love every single second of it.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Dylan wanted to rip off the pretty dress that had been giving him little glimpses of cleavage and leg all night as she moved. He wanted to devour her in one big greedy gulp. He wanted to claim her and make her his own and never let her go. But even as desire raced through his veins so hot and fast that it nearly stole away his sense of right and wrong, he knew he couldn’t let himself do any of that tonight.
Tonight wasn’t about speed. It wasn’t about taking.
It was about giving Grace endless pleasure.
Pleasure that would make her head spin so fast, she’d have no choice but to hold on tight to him…and never let go.
He slid his hand down to cup the nape of her neck. “Do you have any idea how much I want you? How many times I’ve dreamed about being inside of you in the past week?”
“Please,” she begged again, “stop talking to me like that. You’re only making it worse.”
“Better,” he promised. “I’m going to make tonight better than anything you’ve ever imagined.”
He moved his hands so that he could slowly brush both thumbs over the slim straps of her dress on each shoulder, touching both fabric and skin. Though she was so hot to the touch that he felt scalded by her, she shivered.
“Your skin,” he said as he lowered his mouth to press a kiss to one shoulder, “it’s so soft. So sensitive. And so damned sweet.”
He brushed aside the pretty braided fabric so that he could close his mouth over her collarbone. He loved the way she arched into him to give even more of herself than he was already taking. He’d meant it when he said he was going to kiss every inch of her that he uncovered. And as he made his way to her other shoulder and had to stop to lick into the hollow of her throat, her taste was so intoxicating that it was going to take everything in him to hold on to his self-control tonight.
“
Dylan.
” He could feel her nipples beading hard against his chest through her dress as she pressed herself tightly against him while working to take in a ragged breath.
He gave her more of what she clearly wanted by tasting the upper swell of her breast on the way to her other collarbone. She didn’t say his name again, just made sexy little sounds of need and desire as she arched into him and silently begged him to take more of her.
All of her.
That was what he wanted. Every perfect curve. Every beautiful, shuddering breath. Every sweet moan of desire. And even after they were temporarily sated from their lovemaking, he knew he’d want even more.
Everything.
But for tonight, he’d have to be happy to take only what she offered. A few perfect hours with her naked and soft in his arms. A night he’d yearned for since the first moment he’d set eyes on her.
He lifted his mouth from her skin and made himself shift back. Just enough for her dress to slide even lower down her chest. “This picture,” he said in a voice that was already raw with need, “of you standing here in front of me with your dress coming away, knowing you’re going to be all mine soon—I’m going to replay it inside my head forever and ever.”
She inhaled a shaky breath, one that shook her rib cage so that her dress slid even lower. “I will, too. The way you’re looking at me, as though I’m...”
He lifted his gaze to her face. “
Beautiful
. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
He slid his hands back into her hair and pulled her flush against him so that he could devour her. She matched his passion with her own, quickly taking them closer to the edge than he’d meant to go.
“God, you tempt me,” he said when he finally managed to draw back. “Do you have any idea how hard it’s been to think straight around you when you’re asking me your interview questions? If I’ve sounded like an idiot, now you know why.”
“You’ve never sounded like an idiot.” For a moment she looked a little nervous again, but then she slowly smiled. Such a sexy smile that he couldn’t drag his gaze from the upturn of her lips as she said, “But since I love knowing that I’ve been tempting you all this time accidentally, how about I tempt you some more on purpose?”
His synapses tried to fire, tried to connect the dots of what she’d just said, what she’d asked. But before any of her words could string together inside his brain, she was taking a step back and shimmying so that the top of her dress finally slipped all the way off to pool at her waist. Leaving her clad only in an extremely translucent lace bra, pink with white trim.
Every muscle in his body tightened as he fought the urge to pounce. To rip her bra and dress off the rest of the way. To drag her down onto the rug so that he could claim her again and again and again until he had taken at least the edge off his desperation.
Though he’d sailed through plenty of storms with steady nerves, when he reached behind her to undo her bra clasp, his hands were shaking slightly and it took him more than one try to actually get it unhooked. It didn’t matter how many times he saw Grace naked, he simply wasn’t prepared for her mind-blowing beauty.
She sucked in a breath when he cupped her bare flesh. “The way your big, tanned hands look over me...” She shuddered in his hands, her eyes closing as he slid his thumbs over the taut peaks. “You know that handful of orgasms you said you were going to give me tonight?” He brought his hands down more firmly over her so that her nipples were rubbing against his palms. “I can’t believe it, but I’m almost there already just from this,” she confessed in a breathless voice.
But he could damn well believe it because he’d seen, again and again, just how naturally sensual she was, the most innately sexy woman he’d ever known. The way simply brushing a fingertip across her lower lip or rubbing his thumb inside her palm could make her pupils dilate, her skin flush, and her breath come faster. He hadn’t missed one single sign since the day he’d met her, even if she’d mistakenly thought that her libido had died when her last relationship had gone so horribly awry.
He didn’t give her any warning as he lowered his mouth to one breast. Her eyes flew open and her hands clutched the back of his head as if to keep him right where he was until she was ready to let him go. But she needn’t have worried about him going anywhere, not when he could easily have spent the rest of the night worshipping her breasts.
He swirled his tongue over the tight bud of rose-colored skin and groaned his pleasure when he moved to lave her other nipple the same way. But it wasn’t enough to go from one to the other—he needed to have more, to taste as much of her as he could have at the same time. Cupping her breasts in his hands, he pressed them together so that every kiss, every scrape of his teeth across her nipples, came right on the heels of the one before it.
They were still standing, but as he took her closer and closer to release with nothing more than his hands and mouth on her breasts, he could feel her grow less steady in her sexy high-heeled sandals. Intending to carry her over to the couch, Dylan swept her up into his arms, but she felt so good there that he couldn’t bear to move just yet. Her lower lip was slightly swollen from where she must have been biting it when he’d been teasing her breasts, and her mouth drew his like the strongest magnet ever made.
When her hands wound around his neck while he kissed her, it meant everything to him that she was trusting him to make love with her tonight. Especially when he knew it was so much more than she’d ever intended to trust him, or anyone else, with.