She wanted to ask if he meant it, but her voice was caught in her throat and her thoughts burned away in the flare of heat in his gaze.
His hands shifted, barely moved really, but the easing of his thumbs at the front of her hip bones and the subtle pressure of his fingertips against the swells over her butt urged her to lean forward.
She started to set her hands on his shoulders, realized she still held her half glass of champagne and put it on the edge. Then she set her hands against the tense muscles of his neck and kissed him.
She kissed him the way he had kissed her, with long slides of her mouth across his, lips parted so they could taste one another. He was delicious. Better than champagne. And the way he kissed her back was pure magic. She wanted to do this forever, mouth catching at mouth, easing away then sinking back to be devoured by him.
She couldn’t get close enough. She shifted, arched under the slide of his hands up her back and—
Oh. She knew what that pressure was, startlingly hard against the tender flesh between her legs. She tensed in surprise, rising slightly as her thighs tried to close.
He didn’t disguise the hunger in his expression, didn’t flinch from the fact she knew he was aroused. He only quirked a brow in silent query. A tug between her shoulder blades released the tension of the tie behind her neck and relaxed the fabric across her breasts.
She instinctively caught at it, saw the passion in his eyes dim slightly at her reflexive modesty. He swallowed, nodded slightly.
She slowly let her hands drop, taking the front of her top with her.
Her breasts sat partially submerged, nipples thrusting in dark coral peaks above the surface.
For long moments, he simply stared, breath unsteady. Then he said, “I want to taste that.”
His voice was a spell, drawing her to dig her fingers into the tendons across his shoulders and lift on her knees, glorying in the way his hands slid all the way to the backs of her thighs and steadied her. Encouraged her to arch and offer herself in a way that had always made her wonder if it could really be all that—
His mouth enclosed the tip in heat and she opened her mouth in a soundless scream. He wasn’t gentle as he threw her into the inferno. He was scorching and greedy, filling her with the pound of her own heart so she rocked there gently in the water, hammered by pleasure as he sucked at her. Caught in a net of live wires that pulsed sensations into her loins.
Just when she thought she couldn’t take any more, he moved to the other breast.
She speared her fingers through his damp hair, encouraged him to draw harder, only distantly aware that the noises she heard weren’t from a jungle animal, but from the one inside her. She was pushing her backside into the hands that squeezed and roamed, and began to sink back down so she could feel that fierce pressure of him between her legs again.
“More?” he asked against her mouth.
“Yes,” she moaned, and kissed him with flagrant passion, twining her arms around his neck and tilting her head for maximum submission to his kiss. She wanted him to know what he was doing to her and to keep doing it.
His arms hardened. He lifted her as he stood in a sluice of water, surprising her into gasping. He turned and sat her on the edge.
“How much more? Lie back and let me taste the rest of you?”
Wicked tingles raced from her face to her breasts and deep into the flesh protected by the shorts he began to peel off her hip. She didn’t have it in her to be quite so blatant, but he helped her, leaning over and licking at her nipples again so she eased back and let him have his fill.
He picked up the part of the top that covered her stomach and lifted it, kissed her quivering abdomen while his other hand continued easing the shorts off her hips. By the time she had to pick up her hips so he could get them right off, she was screaming with anticipation.
She let her eyes drift shut then, “Oh!”
He poured the cool champagne across the tops of her legs, chuckling at the way she jumped before he leaned down to take a long and luscious taste into the crease of her thigh.
“Still with me?” he asked, sipping from her navel and petting the backs of his knuckles over the fine hairs protecting her most sensitive flesh.
If she could form words, she would tell him he could do whatever he wanted to her. She was a virgin at the dragon’s mercy, trapped in his private lair, feeling the heat of his breath.
“Yes,” she hissed.
“You’re beautiful. So beautiful,” he said huskily, wafting the words across her mound. He shifted her thigh onto his shoulder and gently spread the slippery dampness of her response against the petals of her sex.
She made a noise of agony and tried to muffle it with the back of her wrist.
“Let me know you like it,” he ordered.
“I do,” she moaned, ready to beg if he didn’t quit teasing.
His fingertip circled, knowing exactly what he was doing because he chuckled softly and said, “You do.” Then the heat of the most intimate kiss arrived. He crooked her knee outward and took his time feasting on her, letting her bask in the sheer magnificence of the experience.
This, she thought, staring up at the star-speckled sky, feeling the hot night breeze sensually caressing her everywhere that he couldn’t reach—this was luxury. She never wanted or needed anything else in the world except this.
His finger lightly probed, making her clench in reaction and intensifying the sensations.
“Hurt?” He withdrew.
“No. Please.” She was panting and had to lick her lips.
His touch returned, making her throw her arm across her eyes and lift her hips as she groaned jaggedly. It was so good, so good, and he kept pleasuring her with unhurried caresses until she thought she would liquefy and disappear.
His intrusion deepened slightly, did something that made the pleasure sharpen and redouble. She bit down on her lip as he focused on delivering her past what she could bear and into a profound climax. She sobbed with abandonment as her stomach muscles contracted and her thighs quivered, the whole of her convulsing in glorious release.
Slowly he withdrew his touch and planted two gentle kisses on each of her inner thighs before he rose to kiss her still-trembling abdomen.
“I have to go shower. Now.” His voice grated with strain. “Before I forget my good intentions and take this too far.”
She rolled her head on the hard tiles beneath her, still filled with lassitude. “I’d like to touch you. Help.”
“Do you realize what’s going to happen if you do?”
“In theory.” She smiled with her newfound womanly experience. “That’s why I want to do it.”
He made a noise that was both strangled laughter and defeat. In a lithe move, he settled beside her on the tiles and covered her mouth, kissing her with all the passion in him that had yet to be satisfied.
It made her hungry again and she kissed him with abandon until he growled with suffering. She cupped his jaw, urging him to back off a little so she could see.
His tiny bathing suit was too small to contain his arousal. Fascinated, she started to reach out, glanced at him.
“Be my guest.”
“Show me,” she whispered.
He did, wrapping her hand around him and teaching her what he liked. They kissed again as she caressed him. Kissed until the hand he’d tangled in her hair stung and his body shuddered and his feral cries spilled across her lips.
*