Into the Fire - Leslie Kelly [52]
Her blond hair curled loosely around her face. Her lips were pouty and full, her eyes … oh, her blue eyes … there was mystery in those depths. Mystery and desire and need.
"I need to please myself, Nate," she repeated. "And you, I think, are what I need to do that."
He almost reached for her. Then he stopped. He forced himself to stop. "Why? Why now?"
His own voice answered him. Confused, it took him a moment to realize Lacey was holding the new micro-cassette recorder he'd bought the day before to replace the one he'd ruined in the pool. He suddenly remembered exactly what he'd said while testing it the night before. He'd been lying in his bed late in the night, thinking about her, fantasizing about her, knowing he'd dream of her, wanting her so bad it made him shake. His voice now revealed every bit of that.
"What do women want? What do you want is the real question. How can a woman I barely know make me so crazy I can't sleep, can't think, can't work? You did it, Lacey. You've tapped into a part of me I didn't even know existed. How the hell I walked away from you Tuesday is beyond me."
Nate didn't move an inch as they both listened to his raging need for her. She remained just as still, watching him, waiting for his reaction to his own unthinking, late-night confession.
"Didn't you feel it? What a stupid question—of course you did. I watched your face as you felt every sensation, and all I could think was how beautiful you were. How much I wanted to be inside you, feeling you tighten around me at the moment you went over the edge. I wanted to fly off that cliff with you."
Heat rushed through Nate, his words sending sparks shooting through his body to settle with hot, pounding insistence at his sex. He got hard for her without a single touch, not even a kiss. She was standing across the damn room, but watching her listen to his voice—talking about what he wanted to do to her—made him hotter than he'd ever felt before.
She was apparently having the same reaction. Even from here he saw the color rise in her cheeks. Her mouth opened as she sucked in deeper breaths.
"All I could think about," the voice continued, "was laying you back on that table, naked, hungry. I wanted to bend down and feast on you, see if you tasted as sweet as you smelled. Put my mouth on you and make you scream. And then become part of you, bury myself deep inside you, let you take over my body the way you've taken over my brain since the minute we met."
"Oh," Lacey gasped, reaching for the back of a kitchen chair for support. "I didn't listen this far."
"Over and over again, Lacey. I want to know you inside and out, to brand myself on you so you'll feel the same insane need whenever you hear my name. To drive every other man in the world out of your realm of existence until you think of nothing but me. Of us. Hot, wet, sweaty, hard and frantic. Or sweet and slow. God knows I want you every way it's possible to have you."
She clicked off the tape. A long, heavy moment of silence hung in the air of the kitchen as the two of them stared at each other. She, looking dazed, sensuous, aroused. He, feeling the same—plus exposed and more open than he'd ever felt in his life.
Yet he also wondered what this meant. Her. Dressed like that. Looking at him like she wanted to eat him up.
"What's changed in the past ten minutes?" he finally asked, staying right where he was. If he took a step toward her he was going to be gone. Just gone. Until at least tomorrow. Or Monday. For the next twenty years. Or for a lifetime.
"It's not one-sided," she finally replied with shaky certainty. "There's nothing casual about this. I understand that now. Whatever this is between us, Nathan, I want to go further. I want more. For as long as I can have it. As much as you're willing to give."
Her eyes shifted down, her stare devouring him, darkening as she saw his obvious reaction to