“Kyle…”

“Sh,” he murmured, propping up on an elbow as he pulled her closer. “Number five is kiss me. I’ve been waiting a long time to have you in my arms like this, and I’m ready to take full advantage.”

With his tempting lips only a hairsbreadth away, and the beautiful blue of his eyes twinkling warmly in the candlelight, she was mesmerized and too tired to fight it anymore. She edged forward the fraction needed to meet his.

“That’s my girl,” he murmured, then touched his mouth to hers. Caressing softly atfirst, the taste of him kindled the wanting inside her. His response was just as quick, and the kiss turned smoldering all at once. His arms enfolded her and crushed her to his chest as he rolled her first on top of him, then he flipped her so that she lay beneath him. His big, hard body pressed her down into her lumpy mattress right over the spring that she tried desperately at night to avoid. Half of her wanted to shift to a different spot, but the other half—the part molded to his front—was in heaven and she opened to him, inviting his searching tongue inside. His hand remained around her neck, holding her still for his possession as he fed greedily from her mouth and she loved every minute of it.

She’d had schoolgirl dreams of kissing him for two years, then when she thought he was a douche like his friend, those dreams had changed. He’d become the bad boy who fulfilled all her naughty fantasies, rather than the gentle, sweet lover of her naïve youth. And she’d be damned if reality wasn’t better than fantasy, because the intensity of his demanding kisses took her breath away. As did the long sweep of his hand up her thigh where her robe had come open as he’d rolled her beneath him.

It skimmed higher, to her hip and around to her bottom. She gasped as his fingers rubbed over her skin, reminding her she wasn’t wearing a stitch under her robe.

“Easy,” he murmured against her lips when she tried to twist her head and protest. “I’ve waited forever for you, Dixie, let me kiss you for a few moments more. Then, if you want, we’ll stop.”

“Promise?”

“Always. In this one thing, you always have control.”

She stiffened. Only one thing? What did that mean?

“Don’t think, feel.”

His mouth returned to take fiery possession, his tongue delving inside again to steal her breath along with her sound judgement. Her body responded to his as it called to her, and she answered, as she had long dreamed, with everything she had to give.

Fingers at the knot of her robe broke through her lust-numbed mind. “Dixie?”

She knew what he wanted. “Yes,” she breathed.

“You want more?”

“More.”

A slight tug and her robe parted, his palm gliding flat over her belly and up her ribs, to curl beneath one breast. He paused again. “Pretty soon we’ll be past the point of no return for me. Say so now and we’ll stop.”

“You wouldn’t stop later?”

He growled. “I would, darlin’, but it won’t be easy.”

“Don’t stop, please. I’ve wanted you forever, too.”

“Thank fuck,” he growled as his thumb arced up and over her nipple, which pebbledtightly at his touch. She arched, pressing her breast more fully into his palm as his tongue licked into the warm recesses of her mouth and his hard thigh found its place between her own. The rough denim abrading the tender skin of her inner thighs had her fingers curling into the thick muscles of his shoulders, as she hung on.

His thumb and forefinger rolling her nipple as he ground his thigh against her mound was almost too much. “Kyle,” she called as desire bubbled up and out of her.

Sliding from his shoulders down his back, her hands fisted in his shirt, tugging to get it off, needing to feel his skin. He moved suddenly, clasping her wrists with his strong fingers and pressing them into her pillow on either side of her head. Her eyes flew up to meet his.

“I’m hanging on by a thread, baby. No touching or this will be over much too soon.”

“But…”

“Keep your hands where I put them. Tonight, this is about you.”

“I can’t touch you?”

“Not now, unless you want to get off with my tongue this first time, instead of my cock. I feel like the eager kid you knew in school. I’m not proud of it, but I’ve wanted you too damn long and when I get inside you, I can’t guarantee slow. So what’s it to be? Touch me and get my tongue, or be a good girl, do as I say, and get my cock?”

“Your cock,” she whispered.

“Say again?”