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  “God,” he said hoarsely, coming down on top of her. “I’ve been dying for this. For you.” He speared his hands into her hair and held her in place while his mouth returned to ravage hers.

  Heat saturated her lips, her nipples, between her legs, until she couldn’t think. For just a second, with some hazy intention of locating her absent brain cells, she struggled to break to the surface of this churning pool of arousal. Then Jax’s chest rubbed more urgently against her breasts and his erection bumped the bundle of nerves hiding behind the crotch seam of her cutoffs—rocking her into a fine madness. And she gave up her already nebulous purpose without a second thought. Plunging her fingers into his hair to hold him in place exactly as he held her, she wrapped her ankles around his calves to keep him from pulling back.

  Apparently that wasn’t in his game plan, however, for with a very male sound of appreciation he opened his hard thighs between hers, spreading her legs wider. He settled deeper between them. Then he slid his right hand from her curls. Reaching to loosen her left hand from its grip in his hair, he linked their fingers and brought their joined hands down to the mattress next to her head. He repeated the action on the other side, then slid their clasped hands against the coverlet until their arms extended straight overhead. Her breasts arched into the hard press of his chest.

  Their lips slowly separated by increments, clinging together until the very last instant when he raised his mouth from hers and looked down at her with eyes that had darkened to midnight. “I’ve got you in my power now, me pretty,” he said in a voice so raspy it strummed nerve endings from her nape to her tailbone.

  But while his voice was like liquid foreplay to her ears his words roused unfamiliar emotions. Competitiveness surged to the surface. Perhaps she should demonstrate that she, too, possessed power. Being completely, carnally captivated for perhaps the first true time in her life didn’t mean she was without resources of her own.

  “In your power, huh? You think?” She rubbed the soles of her feet up his calves, to the backs of his knees, to his outer thighs. The action spread her own thighs wide, and tilted her pelvis up. That in turn caused the rigid length of his penis to settle hard between her legs.

  They both sucked in a simultaneous breath.

  “Maybe not,” he croaked. Eyes dreamy, as if he’d never felt anything so marvelous in his life, he oscillated his hips.

  “Omigawd.” Her newly birthed competitiveness died. “Oh. My. God.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he agreed fervently and lowered his mouth to kiss her jaw and the tender skin just beneath it. “My sentiments exactly.”

  She tugged her hands against the grip pinning them to the coverlet. “I want to hold you,” she panted when he didn’t immediately release her. She gave another tug. “Please.”

  He unlinked their fingers and trailed his down the inside of her forearms, along the vulnerable skin of her inner elbows, up her arms to her shoulders and inward to her neck. Then sliding his hands into her hair, he gripped her head and held it steady as he pressed kisses beneath her chin and down her throat.

  Treena stroked her fingers over his wide shoulders. Hard muscle gathered and bunched beneath her touch, and fine wool caressed her flesh as she stroked her hands down his back. Her palms itched to trace the shape of his butt, but between the disorienting sensations burning along every nerve and his jacket vents flapping in her way each time she attempted it, she couldn’t quite manage her goal. She plucked at the lush fabric. “You’ve got on way too many clothes.”

  Still kissing her neck, his hair softly brushing the underside of her jaw, Jax pushed up on his palms. She slid the jacket off his shoulders, but it would only go so far and no farther, and her feet flopped from his thighs onto the mattress in frustration. With a grunt, he reared back to kneel between her sprawled legs and whipped the coat off, tossing it toward the nightstand but clearly unfazed when it slid onto the floor. Color burned high across his cheekbones as he stared down at her, and his breathing was audible in the silence of the room.

  “Lose the shirt, too,” she commanded.

  He yanked the pristine white T-shirt off over his head. Treena stared at the view his action exposed and felt a blowtorch of lust consume every last drop of moisture in her mouth.

  Jeez, girl, she commanded herself, get a grip. It’s not as if you haven’t seen that chest, those abs, before. She had, of course, just the day before yesterday. Still, the impact didn’t lose a thing upon second viewing.

  Staring at his abdomen, she reached out and massaged her fingers over each individually defined muscle from his diaphragm to the belt of his jeans. She shivered at how much she wanted him. “How does a sedentary card player get such a nice body?”

  “Huh?” He’d hunched over to unbutton her top and, glancing up at her, he slowly blinked. “Oh. Gyms. Being a nerd as a kid made working out something of a religion.”

  “Hallelujah,” she murmured. For if one’s body was one’s temple, his was St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Sistine Chapel and Westminister Abbey all rolled into one. Beautifully crafted of muscle and bone, it lacked the Neanderthal bulk of the competitive bodybuilder. Rather, lean muscle and sinew formed sculpted planes across his chest, ridged his stomach, rounded the hard mounds of his shoulders and biceps. And he was smooth-skinned all over, with only a feathering of silky brown hair gracing his forearms, tufted in his armpits.

  She reached up with both hands and drew her fingertips across the blades of his collarbone, down the slight swell of his pectorals. She circled his flat nipples, rubbing her thumbs over the velvety copper-colored aureolas, flicking the minuscule nipples with her nails.

  When he swore and started fumbling to unfasten the buttons on her top faster, she laughed. For all her bravado of a moment ago, she’d never experienced anything as powerful as what she was feeling at this moment.

  Then he spread her top apart and said a reverent, “Oh, man,” as he stared down at the breasts he’d bared.

  She wasn’t overburdened with modesty—she couldn’t be and dance in the type of revue she did. Yet when other men had uncovered her breasts in the past, there had been a lewdness to their gaze that had made her feel exposed. She’d felt as if they were so busy congratulating themselves on bagging a showgirl that they couldn’t be bothered to share a tender moment with her.

  Jax looked at her and seemed to see her. So she wasn’t embarrassed that she hadn’t donned a bra today, didn’t feel the need to cover herself up. Because he looked at her breasts as if they were Mona Lisa’s smile.

  “You have got to have the prettiest tits I’ve ever seen,” he said.

  Okay, not exactly poetry.

  He seemed to realize it, too, for color washed up his throat. “Sorry. Breasts, I meant. You’ve got the most perfect breasts.”

  “Thanks. They’re on the small size, which is okay with me but almost got me scratched from the callback list when I auditioned for my job at la Stravaganza. The dancers there are more like Carly—a little bustier.”

  “But yours have got such gorgeous shape.”

  “Yeah. Which is why I squeaked by.” And she laughed, because over the past few years she’d come to think of her body as more a machine that needed maintaining in order to keep her employed than a sexual entity. But she felt sexy at the moment. She felt gorgeous, as well. The latter had far more to do with the way he stroked her, however, both in the physical and the mental sense, than anything she’d ever seen in a mirror.

  Eyes intent, he circled his fingers in ever narrowing lazy eights around her breasts, from the perimeter inward to the centers. A hot shot of electricity zinged straight to that sweet spot between her legs, but just as she was holding her breath, feeling his fingertips drifting nearer and nearer her nipples, which jutted up eagerly for his touch, his hand slid away and he rocked back on his heels between her legs.

  A soft moan of disappointment escaped her, but he appeared not to hear.

  “So pretty,” he murmured, stroking his forefinger d
own the middle of her forehead, along her nose to her lips, over her chin. He continued down her throat to her sternum and along her diaphragm and abdomen to the low-rise waistband of her cutoffs, pausing only long enough to tickle her navel with his fingertip. Then, as if he’d forgotten where he’d been heading, he took a moment to straighten the strings that comprised the straggly hem of her hacked-off jeans.

  He was slow and thorough as his fingers worked their way to her inner thighs, brushing up beneath the ragged hem to fish out errant strands of unraveled cotton. With meticulous precision, he tugged each one in a ruler-straight arrangement against her thigh before sliding his fingers beneath the hem once again to hook yet more tangled threads. He neatened both hems at once, and Treena moved her legs restively when his warm hands came in particular proximity to the sensitive creases where her legs joined her torso. She willed those maddeningly elusive hands higher—just a little bit higher—and eased her thighs farther apart to encourage him.

  He ignored the silent invitation.

  She glanced up at his face to see if he had any idea how aroused she was getting, but the fan of his lowered lashes hid his eyes as he stared down at his handiwork with apparent absorption. When his forefingers suddenly brushed the edges of her panties and she made a breathy yearning sound, however, a slight smile curved his lips. And she realized he knew exactly what he was doing to her.

  The idea that he was toying with her awakened her sleeping competitor.

  “So this is Date with a Geek, huh?” she asked, reaching up to slip the metal button at his waistband free of its buttonhole. “I like it. Who knew your tidy streak could be such a turn-on?” She unzipped his fly, purposefully brushing her fingers down the hard bulge beneath it as the metal teeth disengaged.

  He looked up, his eyes a blistering blue. “I’m a full-service kinda guy,” he said in a voice that was easy, almost amused. “Your smallest wish is my command.” But his hands, turning from soft and lazy to hard and gripping on her thighs, gave him away.

  Her mouth quirked. “So, are you as hot as I am?” And, oh, God, she burned, aroused far beyond what the nearly platonic touches he was presently bestowing upon her warranted.

  “Hotter.” He dove atop her, catching himself on his palms at the last second to avoid crushing her with his full weight. Lowering his head, he slammed his mouth down on hers.

  This kiss was hard, desperate, on the edge of control. Treena wrapped her arms around Jax’s neck and exerted steady pressure, wanting, needing, to feel his weight. He came down on her, more than two hundred pounds of aroused male, and she sighed in appreciation at the feel of skin on skin, scratching her nails down his smooth back.

  He growled deep in his throat and rolled them over.

  Finding herself suddenly on top, she sat up, her head dropping back when his big hands came up to cup her breasts. She rocked against his erection and abruptly found herself much closer to attaining satisfaction than she’d guessed. She shifted slightly and bit back a whimper. There. Oh, God, there. Her breath grew choppier.

  Then he was lifting her off of him and standing her on the floor, and she moaned her frustration.

  “I know, sweetheart, I know,” he said in a gravelly voice. “But I want you naked. Now.” And kicking off his shoes, he planted his heels and raised his hips to shove his own jeans and boxers down around his ankles. As Treena stripped off the rest of her clothing, he bicycled his feet to kick free of his pants. And suddenly there was almost six and a half feet of aroused, naked man on her feminine coverlet.

  She paused with her cutoffs halfway down her thighs to stare. He looked like some sultan surveying the harem girl he’d ordered bathed and sent to his tent as he lounged back against her bright pile of silk pillows, all wide shoulders, muscular limbs and potent thrusting sex.

  He wrapped his hand around the latter and stroked it slowly as he stared at her. “Get. Naked.” There was no mistaking the command in his voice.

  Unable to take her eyes off his tan hand and the long, thick penis it fondled, she pushed her shorts down the rest of the way and stepped out of them.

  “The panties, too.”

  She pulled the strings that tied the two triangles together at either hip and the scrap of lingerie fluttered to the floor.

  “Now come here.”

  It abruptly occurred to her that her much-coveted control was nowhere in sight at this moment. But for once she didn’t care. Excitement thrumming through her, she took the step that brought her back to the bedside.

  He crunched up off the pillows and reached out to grasp her wrist, yanking her onto the bed beside him. She stumbled forward on her knees and the room twirled as he caught her around the waist and rolled to lie her flat on her back. Before her head could quit spinning, he’d propped himself alongside her and was stroking the flat of his hand down her stomach toward the minute patch of her curls.

  “I only got to feel this before, didn’t get to see it.” His voice was a deep rasp that abraded her senses. “But I’ve thought about it, imagined it. And it’s even smoother, prettier than anything I conjured in my mind.” His fingers separated the plump lips of her sex and slipped up and down the slippery tissues. “Ah, God, so wet.” His gaze had been following his fingers, but now he looked up into her eyes. “This must be the Brazilian wax job I’ve heard so much about.”

  She nodded, beyond words as a long finger slowly entered her. She inhaled sharply and let her knees fall open wide. “Oh, Jax, please.”

  “You like that?” He eased the finger out, pressed it back in.

  “Yes. Please.” She could see by his face that he was prepared to tease her further, but she was no longer willing to lie still for it.

  Reaching out, she latched onto his penis.

  It was his turn to inhale sharply, and she rolled toward him to plant a kiss on his chest. As she marveled at how natural it felt to slide her hand up and down the rigid shaft in her grasp, he snatched up a condom he must have taken from his pants when he’d removed them. He ripped the package open with his teeth.

  “Gimme.” She thrust her free hand out and he slapped the rubber in her palm. They both watched as she rolled it down his length, then stared at her fingers, wrapped tightly around the base of his erection, once he was fully armored. She slid her hand up his shaft to the mushroom-shaped head then squeezed him through her fist back down to the base.

  And he broke. Rolling on top of her, he kneed her legs apart and kissed her with such hot intensity as he aligned himself with her opening that she feared there might be nothing left of her but an amorphous little puddle by the time he was done. He ripped his mouth free and stared down at her as he slowly pushed inside, and it was then, looking into his blue, blue eyes, that Treena realized she had feelings for him that she’d never in her life felt for another man. She hesitated to give those feelings a name, but she knew she couldn’t hold anything back from him.

  She had to give this thing between them everything she had.

  Then he was as deep inside of her as a man could go, and she had a feeling that, even without the new emotions boiling through her, it would have been impossible to hold back. One minute he was buried to the depths, hot, huge and hard, and the next, before she even had a chance to acclimate to the intrusion filling her, he was sliding out again. Then he eased back in.

  And out.

  And in.

  Friction set nerves afire and she raised her hips and pushed back against every forward thrust, grasping his hard buttocks and clinging when he withdrew inch by maddening inch. Her knees fell farther and farther apart as she began to feel a coiling tightness deep inside of her. “Oh, God, Jax. Oh, God.”

  He rose up onto his knees and began pushing harder, faster, his hands grasping the front of her thighs and pulling her into him. She made a high-pitched noise unlike any other she’d ever made in her life, but that iron-hard heat stretching her, incinerating her, bumped up against something inside of her with every inward thrust of his hips, and she found
it impossible to keep quiet. Dear God, she was close…so close.

  “Look at you,” he crooned, sliding his thumb and forefinger into her wet folds and finding her clitoris. He trapped it between his fingers and delicately rolled. “Look at you with your pretty hair and your pretty lips and your pretty, pretty—hah!” His breath exploded from his lungs as she clamped down around him with a single hard, sharp contraction.

  She hadn’t been prepared for it any more than he had. There was just something about him getting verbal that really seemed to set her off. And it was hardly a monster orgasm, more like a single yank on the cords of a drawstring purse that snapped it closed. Almost immediately, however, she felt the real deal building inside of her, and she knew it was going to be bigger, brighter. Longer.

  He shuddered through that brief fist of muscle clamping around him then went right back to it, talking to her again, driving her higher with his body, with his words. “That’s it, sweetheart,” he growled as his thrusts began to slap his pelvis against the spot where they joined, his testicles grazing her bottom. “Come for me. I want you to come all around me, all over me. I want to watch that pretty—”

  Hearing failed and thought fled as a hidden land mine deep inside of her tripped. Her world blew apart as screaming sensation tore through her body in an explosion that she thought just might bury her in the resulting rubble. Instead, she flew to the sky on it, rolled with it in a free fall back to earth. Her body shuddered and quivered. And all the while that secret sheath between her legs clamped over and over and over again against the marvelous, beautiful invader treating her to the sensation of a lifetime.

  “Christ!” Jax snarled. “Oh, Christ, oh, Jesus, oh, fuck, Treena, I’m going to, oh, God, I’m gonna—” His teeth clenched and his hands gripped her thighs hard, yanking her to him and holding fast as he thrust deep one last time.