Dahlia raced up the side of the wall until she was upside down, hanging from the ceiling. It took a great deal of concentration. Her mind was not sufficiently following the process and she fell like a rag doll, hitting the bed and bouncing slightly, the breath slammed from her lungs at the jolt.
“What the hell are you doing?” Nicolas stood in the door looking disheveled and shaken from his usual calm. “Are you out of your mind?”
Dahlia sucked in air, enough to allow a smooth somersault that brought her upright and sitting tailor-fashion in the middle of the bed. She shook back her hair and looked at him. “I missed something important.”
He couldn’t help staring at her. Drinking her in. Dahlia wasn’t shy or vain, or even modest. She didn’t seem to notice her personal appearance. She sat on the bed, the covers rumpled, in a tank top that bared her shoulders and midriff and a loose pair of cotton drawstring pants. With her hair tumbling around her and pooling on the sheets she looked mysterious and feminine and all too sexy when she clearly wasn’t trying.
A frown slipped across her face. “Quit fixating on my breasts. You cannot do whatever it is you’re thinking right through my shirt, thank you very much. For heaven’s sake, do you ever think of anything besides sex?”
“Apparently not,” he admitted wryly. “I’ve never had the problem before I met you.” He was damned if he’d be embarrassed. He could see the darker outline of her nipples through the thin white tank top, an intriguing shadow that tempted and beckoned and begged to be suckled. It wasn’t his fault the woman never wore adequate clothing.
“What were you doing? People don’t walk on ceilings.”
Dahlia studied his face. His long black hair cascaded to his shoulders and looked as if he’d rubbed his hands through it over and over until he was completely rumpled. He wore a thin pair of sweats and nothing else. Heat radiated off of him, nearly shimmered in the air so that the temperature in the room rose several degrees. He was so beautiful he took her breath away. She stared at him, dazzled. Starry eyed. Idiotic.
Dahlia pressed her lips together. She was no better than he was at controlling the sexual awareness leaping between them. The moment they were together, it spread until it enveloped them and burned them up. She tilted her head. “Why is it that you emit such incredibly low energy, even in the most violent circumstances, but when you’re with me the energy becomes a tidal wave?”
“You don’t censor, do you, Dahlia?”
She shrugged her shoulders, drawing his eye to the line of her neck. He could plant little kisses right along her neck. Take small bites to the curve of her breasts.
Dahlia pressed her hands to the aching swell of her breasts and heaved a sigh. “You just aren’t going to stop, are you?” She frowned. “Should I be censoring? I don’t have a lot of experience in conversing like this. Do you want me to censor the things I say? Milly told me once that I was too outspoken.”
Nicolas rubbed at his pounding temples. There was a strange roaring in his head. He always wondered what the proverbial walking hard-on meant and decided it was a person… him. No matter how much he meditated, the moment he went to sleep, he dreamt of Dahlia. Erotic, sexy dreams of her soft skin rubbing against his. Of her mouth sliding over his chest, his belly, edging lower until he thought he’d go out of his mind. Her hand wrapped around his erection, fingers slipping over him, dancing and teasing and stroking long silken caresses. As hard as he tried to control his wayward thoughts, she crept into his mind. He transferred his hand to the back of his neck, rubbing hard to ease the tension. “This is worse than basic training ever was, Dahlia, and no, I don’t want you to censor.”
“What’s worse than basic training?”
“Wanting you. I even want you in my sleep. What the hell is that? I am completely disciplined at all times. What have you done to me?”