Page 74 of Bride Under Contract

‘What is it?’

‘Sunset colours. Sunrise, maybe. I don’t know... But it’s not neutral...’ He actually gritted his jaw. ‘You’re more vibrant...a bit...’

Careful Carter, he thought.

‘Dishevelled...’

‘I was dishevelled when we met because I’d been travelling and was asleep. Then the jungle...’

‘I like your curls,’ he said. ‘And how your top falls off your shoulder. Always...’ he stuck with his chosen word ‘...dishevelled.’

‘Slatternly, as my mother would say.’

He liked her soft laugh.

‘Though not any more. Even my underwear is sensible.’

He frowned, pulling at her cami, stretching his hand around her back.

‘It’s a bandeau,’ she said. ‘No hooks.’

He pulled her up onto his stomach, took off her cami and looked at the little strip of material, and her dark nipples all squashed by the fabric.

‘Like a bank robber,’ he said, and they laughed. ‘I like these,’ he said of the glossy knickers. He could see the darkness of her triangle of hair and tried to unfocus his eyes. ‘You look naked.’

‘I thought you’d be more into velvet and lace.’

‘You so have the wrong impression of me,’ he said. ‘I am not really bothered by underwear...’ He was almost too tired to speak now, so his words were sort of a drawl. ‘More what’s under the underwear.’ Then he pushed her breasts together and changed his mind. ‘You have the best breasts...’

He moved down to her invisible knickers and dusted her thighs with his hands. And then he pulled her head down.

He had never expected a kiss like this when they’d walked through the door. Certainly, he had not expected for all the tension that had built through the day to be erased by deep and real conversation. Nor, as he’d led her angrily from the restaurant, had he envisaged this slow intimate kiss. Their mouths were too tired to talk, their bodies almost too tired to move, but somehow he was in deep discovery, because his hands were peeling down the knickers she loathed.

‘I hate them too,’ he said, for they refused to tear.

There was something so inherently pleasurable watching her sensual nature emerge. ‘I was worried they’d get rid of this,’ he told her as he stroked her triangle of hair through the flimsy fabric.

‘They suggested it...’ She blushed so deeply the colour speckled her neck. ‘I refused.’

‘Good.’

‘Get what you want, Grace...’

‘I want this.’

Perhaps he heard the urgent note, because Carter tried again to tear at the fabric, but they were better designed than that, and Grace didn’t want to get off his sexy hot body.

He lifted her bottom, brought her towards him and raised his head, and she held the bedhead as he tore the fabric with his teeth.

It was the sexiest thing she’d ever felt...his head on her stomach, his hand on her bottom and the tearing of her knickers.

‘There,’ he said.

It was a very slow start, because he’d managed only to rip the fabric to the edge of her thigh, then it was back up again for another nibble from his teeth.

He slid them down one thigh and didn’t go back down. He slipped a little lower and tasted her. It was something she had never thought she could enjoy. In truth, as she closed her eyes, she was too tense to know if she actually did.

‘Grace...’ He probed and he licked and he relished, and she felt herself pressing down a little for more of the bliss. ‘Give me a little climax...’

---