Into the Fire - Leslie Kelly [15]
"Good start," she conceded as she stretched out to lie beside him. "What else would you ban in your kingdom?"
"Bow ties. Tuxedos."
"I think tuxedos are very sexy," she murmured. Nate glanced over to find her staring innocently at the ceiling, as if she hadn't just said something blatantly flirtatious. Or perhaps she hadn't. Maybe he'd misread her.
He hoped not.
"Can you ban control-top panty hose, too? And size-one cover models who make the rest of us look fat?"
"You got it. And self-help books. No Mars and Venus crap allowed in the libraries on my island."
"You don't care for relationship books?"
He turned to look at her, waiting until she met his eye to answer. "The right couple involved in the right relationship has no need for books. When it's there, when it's real, you know it. And if it isn't, no book is going to make it work."
She held his stare, her eyes wide, glittering in the low lighting of the room. "Is it there for you? Have you found your perfect partner?"
Nate was unable to resist the slow smile that curled across his lips. He reached over, tucking a nearly dry blond curl behind her ear. "Ask me tomorrow," he whispered.
Her eyes widened as she caught his meaning.
He knew it was crazy, given their brief relationship, but something was happening between them. They were in sync. They spoke with the same rhythm, laughed with the same sense of natural joy … looked at each other with the same sense of intrigue.
It was more than physical, more than titillating or exciting, more than a delightful interlude.
"Something's happening here, isn't it? Something amazing." He didn't move toward her, letting his words and his voice be the only indicators of the depth of his interest in her. The next move was hers.
She made it. When her eyes narrowed slightly, zoning in on his mouth, he knew she wanted to kiss him. She leaned closer, tentatively, and he didn't move, knowing somehow that she had to do this, had to be the initiator
Then, with a soft sigh, she brushed her lips against his Focusing all his thoughts on the sensation, he remained still, letting himself be kissed by this woman whose name he didn't yet know. Letting her move closer, move over him, cup one side of his face with her soft, cool palm.
She tilted her head, parted her lips slightly. When her tongue slid out tentatively to taste him, Nate's restraint began to skid away. He groaned and finally moved his arms to pull her on top of him.
The kiss deepened. Emboldened by his response, she increased the tempo, driving him crazy with each caress, each stroke of her sweet, wet tongue. He met her every move, anticipated and joined her when she turned her head for deeper access. Somehow, some way, she slid off him, falling to her back on the bouncy surface of the trampoline, pulling him over her. Or perhaps he pushed her. He didn't know. Thought was gone, replaced entirely by sensation.
Nate waited for the voice in his head to tell him to stop, to insist it was insane to be making out with a woman he'd known an hour. But he couldn't think, couldn't focus on anything but the way she tasted—like sweet, intoxicating wine. The way she smelled—of roses and springtime. The way she made him feel-on fire and nearly out of control.
The gentle give-and-take of their bodies moving together on the springy surface filled his mind with images of making love to her. Right here. Right now. While a party continued in another part of the house, while his boss looked for him and his tuxedo lay wet on the bathroom floor. All he wanted was to toss away their robes and roll over her, onto her, into her, on this little fabric island. To see if this sense of rightness between them extended to the physical as well as the emotional.
It would. He knew it would. Knew it the way he knew the roads leading to his family home, the way he knew the right words to use in a story, the way he knew his own nature.
This beautiful blond stranger with the laughing eyes and the smiling lips could be the person he'd waited for all his life. He knew.
"Can something