Page 83 of The Runaway Bride of Blossom Branch

“Are you mocking me, brat?”

“Maybe a little.” She felt her heart turn over in her chest. A wave of something warm and sweet and yet wildly passionate roared through her veins and kindled a blaze of longing deep in the core of her femininity. “I adore your funny side, Harry. I’ve never met anyone like you. Grumpy and sweet. Masculine and yet so gentle when you need to be. I want you so much it scares me.”

“Ditto,” he growled. He stripped her camisole over her head and moved half on top of her, capturing her mouth in a hungry kiss. When he cupped one breast in his hand and plucked at the nipple, her hips came off the bed.

They had barely done anything yet, and she was so close to an orgasm, it was embarrassing.

Her arms went around his neck. She kissed him back frantically, as if they were the last two people on the planet and the world was in danger of exploding.Herbodyexploded withfeelings, so many feelings.

Harry put a hand between her thighs and found her damp and ready. He used the center strip of her undies to tease her. “Don’t regret this, Cate.”

It was an odd thing to say, but she barely processed his words. She was far more interested in the way he stroked her. “Wait,” she said, trying to claim control of a situation that was rapidly igniting and spreading a wildfire of insanity.

But Harry was diabolical. He knew exactly what she wanted, and he gave it to her. When she hit the peak and cried out, he held her close, stroking her hair as she trembled and slid down the other side.

Embarrassment found a chink in her mellow afterglow and set up housekeeping. Cate stiffened in his arms. “I don’t like leaving you behind,” she said, feeling exposed and awkward.

“Relax, Cate. We’re just getting started. We have all night.” He nuzzled her nose with his. “You’re sexy when you come.”

“I don’t want totalkabout it,” she said, burying her face in his shoulder. His body radiated heat. His size and solid presence were reassuring and arousing at the same time.

“You’re a prude, aren’t you?”

“I amnot,” she insisted. “But you didn’t even turn out the lights.”

Harry laughed, his body shaking. “And I don’t intend to.” He ran his hand from her shoulder down between her breasts to her navel. Then he palmed the slight curve of her belly. His face was close to hers, his eyes gray pools that beckoned her into the deep end. “I want to see every inch of you, Cate,” he said huskily. “I want to wallow in your soft, sexy body and lose myself in your screams.”

Cate literally went limp. She shuddered. His words conjured imagery that was all too real. If he was going to demand that of her, she would torment him in return. She wrapped her fingers around his erection. “Help yourself, big guy. But don’t be surprised if I do some wallowing of my own.”

Her first climax turned into three...in quick succession. Every time she tried to return the favor, Harry let her touch him for a few moments and then dragged her hand to his mouth. The way he sucked on her pinky finger was probably illegal in the state of Georgia.

Cate didn’t care. She had fallen down a rabbit hole of hidden desires stripped bare and yearning need coaxed to the surface and set on fire.

When she tried once again to pleasure him with her hand, he shook his head. “It’s been months for me, Cate. I want to come inside you this first time.”

“First time?” she said, the words breathless.

“We’ll lose count, I swear. Are you on the pill?”

“Yes.”

He was looking at her as if she was the culmination of all his wicked fantasies.

He removed her undies and settled between her thighs. “I haven’t had risky sex.”

She had known that, but his reassurance was sweet. Harry had a streak of honor a mile wide. He hid it beneath a veneer of faux self-indulgence.

Maybe she did see more of the ninety percent than she realized.

When he positioned the head of his sex at her entrance, he hesitated. She had instinctively closed her eyes, but now they shot open as she wondered what was going on inside his head.

“What is it, Harry?” she asked softly. She could almost feel his ambivalence. Or maybe it was something else.

He rested his forehead against hers for a moment. “Will you look at me,” he said, “when I take you?”

For the first time since she entered his bedroom, his eyes did that opaque thing she knew so well.

“Of course I will,” she promised.

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