When he returned to the blanket, Rafe tossed the three condoms to the side and feasted for a moment on the sight of Helen waiting for him. She lay on her back, her arms thrown over her head in abandon, her nude body — her gloriously nude, beautiful body — waiting for him. To make love.
I’m going to make love with Helen. After all these years and all the dreams, I’m going to make love with Helen.
Helen felt as if she was standing outside her own body. This writhing creature couldn’t be her. This was a woman with no modesty, no inhibitions. Her skin glowed with arousal. Her bruised lips parted. Her breasts ached with a sweet yearning to be laved. Hot liquid pooled at her center, inviting. No, this must be a fantasy.
But Rafe wasn’t an illusion. No, the man standing above her, gazing at her like the answer to his dreams, was flesh and bone and pure turned-on male. She saw his desire for her. Not just in his erection, but in the fire of his blue eyes, his heaving chest, and his fists, which kept clenching and unclenching.
I have the power to do this to him. She was delighted. She didn’t understand any of the sexual force that wrapped itself about them, but, for once in her life, she didn’t care about explanations.
Reaching up her arms, she drew him down to her. She reveled in the delicious agony of his crisp chest hairs abrading her sensitized breasts, the nip of his teeth against the curve of her shoulder, the intrusion of his thigh between her legs. She wanted to isolate each sensation, to savor each nuance, but everything was happening too quickly. One caress blended into another. Pleasures like none she’d ever experienced before slingshotted all over her body, wherever he touched.
It was too much, and not nearly enough.
“I want you so much,” he whispered as he brushed her hair off her face and took one earlobe between his teeth, tugging.
“Then take me,” she started to say, but his tongue was doing erotic things to the inner whorls of her ear. The wet tip traced its path, then plunged in as far as it could go. Over and over, he repeated the pattern. Ear sex, Helen thought, and would have giggled if her body weren’t responding to the carnal rhythm. Oh, my! Without thinking, she parted her legs and moved against his thigh. “I want…” she mewled.
“I know, sweetheart. Soon,” Rafe promised and propped himself on one elbow, admiring her body.
She turned her face away, suddenly ill-at-ease, having him see how much she craved his sex. He tipped her chin back, forcing her to look at him. “Don’t turn away, Helen. Show me what excites you.”
“Everything excites me, you fool.”
He grinned. “Really? Like this?” His fingertips traced a circular pattern around one breast, getting closer and closer to the peak. When he finally strummed it back and forth with a thumb, she bowed her back and keened with want.
“What?”
“It’s… not… enough,” she ground out.
A glint of understanding flashed in his eyes and he lowered his head. He laved the nipple with his tongue till it was wet, then began to suckle in earnest. Soft at first, then harder, and faster. Her breasts swelled and throbbed with every excruciating draw of his mouth. And each pull on her nipple brought an echoing thrum between her legs.
He lifted his head once to study the breast he’d been ministering to and she hissed, “Don’t you dare stop.”
With a husky male sound of satisfaction, he answered, “Not on your life!” and attended to the other breast, flicking it with his tongue, grazing it with his teeth, then suckling deep.
“Oh… oh…oh, yes!”
Meanwhile, his hand moved lower, over her flat stomach. His fingers parted her, exploring her slickness, finding the swollen treasure. She screamed when he touched her there.
He jerked back. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.” She felt mortified at the extent of her arousal.
“Then what?”
“I want you too much,” she admitted.
His smile was boyishly triumphant as he reached for one of the condoms. “Oh, Helen, you could never want me too much. And, believe me, it’s not half as much as I want you.”