Page 131 of The Trouble with Tigers
She freed one hand, bringing it to his lips to press two fingers there. “I only want to touch you.” She pressed a kiss to his chest. “And kiss you.”
Blood rushed like liquid fire through his veins, aiming south. “This was not a good idea.”
He gritted his teeth. If he had any chance of stopping this runaway carriage, he had better remove himself from her bed this instant.
He stayed put, damn his own eyes.
Her fingers trailed down his center, not pausing 'til she’d reached the waistline of his trousers.
His erection jerked against the restraining fabric, and he nearly came. Damn it, he was like an untried youth. Wasn’t she supposed to be the innocent here? Time to take control.
He grasped her shoulders and rolled her onto her back, then threw a leg over her to straddle her. He rose up to his knees and ripped his unbuttoned shirt off, flinging it across the room.
His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and he saw feverish anticipation burning in hers, saw her chest rising and falling with each inhalation as she panted for air.
“You want to play?” he asked on a hoarse whisper.
She slid her silky palms up his chest. When her fingertips grazed his nipples, she traced their edges with painstaking care, her lower lip caught between her teeth.
Jesus. He groaned and dropped his hands to the neckline of her prim gown. He fumbled with the row of tiny, seemingly endless buttons. Emitting a low growl, he gave up, tearing the thin material apart, surprising himself, and, going by Kitty’s gasp, her as well.
“I’ll buy you a new one.”
She reached for him, urging him down to her. “I don’t care. I want…please…” She lifted her face for his kiss.
“Not so fast.” Gently now, he rent her shift to her waistline. He sighed. “You’re still wearing your chemise. Well, then. Let’s see it.”
He rolled onto his hip and with one swipe yanked the remaining bedcovers from between them. He palmed her ribcage and eased his hand up to cup the underside of one breast.
She made an urgent little sound at his touch, sending his pulse soaring. “You’re making me crazy. You know that, don’t you?”
She didn’t answer, just shifted and shimmied on the bed, her body calling to his. He grasped the two sides of her ruined nightgown and helped free her of the garment, leaving her clothed in only her sheer chemise.
In the moonlight he could clearly make out her shape, and the hint of dark at her apex. Mouth watering, he lowered his head, his mouth seeking and finding one hard nipple.
He drew on it with greedy pulls while his hands roamed. One found her other breast. Squeezed. The other grasped the hem of her chemise and tugged upward. One of his knees speared between her legs, parting them. She opened them with no resistance.
His loins screamed with the need to melt into hers. But he held back. First he had to touch her. To make her as hot and desperate for him as he was for her. He traced his fingertips up the inside of her silky thighs, not pausing until he found her curls. He parted her, discovering slick, swollen flesh.
It was too much. He laid his cheek against her chest and sucked in air, while his palm cupped her sex.
The first time, when he thought she’d agreed to marry him, it had been easy to convince himself bedding her wasn’t wrong. He’d assumed it would be only a matter of days or weeks between that night of sheer pleasure and their weddingceremony. But now he didn’t know if or when she’d become his wife.
He wanted her—and not only in the physical sense. He wanted to marry her with an intensity that scared the living hell out of him. But he didn’t want her coming to him because she had to. Because she was pregnant.
He would laugh at the irony if he weren’t in such delicious agony. Because wasn’t that the pretense under which he was here? To see if she was pregnant and claim her as his wife?
He should stop this madness, but he ached to bury himself inside her and show her she was his, to claim her so she would never, could never, accept another’s touch.
“Zeke?” She spoke his name tentatively. Her fingertips trailed over his low abdomen to his waistband. She rand one finger along the length of the band and he shuddered.
“Kitty—”
“I want you to make love to me, Zeke.”
“You’ll let me have you, but you won’t marry me, is that it?” He muttered a curse. “I don’t understand you.”
She reached down, covering the hand that still cupped her at her apex. She pressed one of his fingers between her petals. “But you understand this?” she asked in a soft whisper.
