Page 82 of Out of the Cold

“That would be great.”

She kept glancing at him and then away again, as if she were being caught out. He’d had a dark-haired girlfriend who dyed her hair blonde one day without warning him, and she’d seemed like a different person. Maybe that’s what was happening with Lucy.

He poured her coffee, setting it on the table along with the milk and sugar.

“You look younger,” she said, those soft brown eyes taking him in. “I think that’s part of it.”

“How old did you think I was?”

“I don’t know. Thirty-nine or forty.”

“Thirty-four.”

She nodded, taking this in. Adjusting to it. “I feel a little bit like I don’t know you.”

He cupped her face in his hands. “I’m the same guy. I can act like an ass if that’ll help.”

Her smile was wry and a little relieved. “It might.”

He kissed her then, harder and hungrier than he meant to. She responded instantly, pressing her body to his. He stroked into her mouth, swallowing the sound of her moan, drinking her in.

“Your bed,” she said, pulling him into the other room.

They tumbled onto the mattress together, mouths locked, hands reaching. He already knew the things that made her moan and sigh, how she rose into him when he ran a hand under her back or parted her thighs. But there was more.

He wanted to unravel her endlessly.

Kissing her, he tasted her sweetness and compassion, her quirky humor, her uncertainty and hunger. He wanted it all. He kissed her with all the intensity of the first time, but with his own desire banked enough that he could pay attention to what her body told him.

He kissed her until they were both breathless before moving to the warm column of her throat with its musky scent and salty tang. Lower to the hollow of her collarbone, the pale curve of her breast and its tight little bud begging for his mouth. He took his time there, methodical even as she began to writhe beneath him and pull his hair.

He moved lower still, kissing his way down her stomach until he was settled between her legs.

“Gabriel,” she whimpered. A plea and a demand.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured.

She was hot to the touch and so wet and ready, he could have taken her then. He breathed deeply, inhaling her scent, and licked into her. She rose up to meet him, quaking and panting, and as desperately as he wanted her, he wanted to make it last as long as possible. She pulsed against his tongue, and he took her higher.

Then he let her fly.

He slid into her while she was still quaking. She was spent and pliant for the first few strokes, and then she moaned and tightened around him. He growled when she came again, the feel of her around him sending him to his own release.

She stroked her thumb along his jaw. “It almost hurts to look at you.”

He was starting to doze off. “Hmm?”

“Nothing,” she whispered. “It’s probably best you don’t know.”

He fell asleep before he could ask what she meant, waking a little while later when she stirred.

“You bought my book?”

He sat up, scrubbing his face, and saw she was holding her book. His face heated like he’d been caught at something. “I bought it at the book signing.”

“That’s so sweet.”

He cleared his throat. “I read it, too.”

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