'Are you wooing me, Joseph?'
His one-sided smile brought the devil's sparkle to his eyes. 'What does it feel like to you?' He bent to probe her ear with the warm wet point of his tongue.
'I thought we were having a one-night affair because I was in need of comfort.'
His hands flattened her milky white orbs with their tips pinched against the edges of his hands. 'Be honest with yourself, Winn. Yes, you needed me, but this has nothing to do with comfort. This is something we saw coming from the first time we laid eyes on each other, isn't it?'
She gasped slightly and arched her back against him. 'You're hurting me, Joseph.' Her hands pulled at his.
Immediately his hold lightened. 'I'm sorry,' he whispered gruffly. His head dropped down, and he kissed her shoulder again, then her jaw and the tip of her ear, caressing her breasts now with the consideration of a penitent. She tipped her head back until it rested on his bare shoulder and covered his hands again with her own, following his explorations with her fingers, which lined his and learned the texture of hard knuckles, hair and blunt nails.
Into her neck he murmured, 'Ah, Winn, I love you. This isn't just some crazy spring fever, this is the most terrible thing I've ever gone through in my life.'
Her heart seemed to swell and her blood raced. She wanted to confess her love, too, but in lieu of the words she was not allowed to say, she could only offer, 'I know, Joseph, I know. I've been going through the same misery.'
He forced her face to turn and lift, and kissed her with an ardency that fired her blood anew. His tongue tempted with provocative ministrations, circling, probing, riding along her teeth and within the most intimate confines where cheek met lip. He suckled her tongue the way she longed for him to suckle her breast, raising a deep yearning that beat against the inner walls of her femininity and made her arch back in delight and quest. She had to have more or die, it seemed. Unable to tolerate the constraint any longer, she swung up off the chair, then surprised both herself and him by ordering, 'Now you sit.' She grabbed up the brush. 'What's good for the goose is good for the gander.'
Caught off guard by her sudden reversal of roles, just when he'd been about to make his move, he stood with his shoulders and chest heaving while the awesome power of his breath beat between them. His fists were clenched. The shadow in his navel became rhythmically wide, then narrow, wide, then narrow again.
Muscle by muscle he forced himself to relax, then with his dark eyes boring into hers, he swung onto the chair. But instead of facing the mirror, he faced her, straddling the small stool as he'd done once before, running his hands up the backs of her thighs, cupping her buttocks and pulling her up close. He pressed his face into the warm pillows of her breasts, but immediately she pushed his shoulders back, gaining her freedom.
'Not yet. I feel feminine and powerful when I make you wait, just as you made me wait. Let me hang onto it for a little while. Relax… close your eyes… please.'
He did. And stopped trying to claim her, resting his wrists on the low wire back of the chair, letting his relaxed fingers trail toward the floor. His shoulders slumped a little. His head relaxed and his lips parted slightly. Though his breathing was still pressured, the rest of him waited in apparent repose.
She adulated his hair with her eyes before doing what she'd thought of doing countless times. She lifted her fingers and threaded them through his curls. But his locks had coiled tightly as they'd dried, and only at the crown of his head was his hair still damp. So she brushed it, running the bristles back from his forehead to the base of his neck, then from his temples to the same spot. When she drove the brush through the curls, his chin lifted and his head was tugged backward. But his eyes stayed closed.
'The two things I loved first about you were your hair and your eyes. Even that first night I had the terrible urge to touch your curls, to smell them.' She leaned forward and buried her nose in the soft strands, kissed his warm skull-his hair was the finest texture of any she'd ever felt, and as she sniffed its clean scent, his moist breath dampened the fullest part of her right breast. Still he remained docile, not grasping or nuzzling. Pleased, she returned to her delightful chore. She'd been brushing for a full minute when she felt his fingers behind her right knee. They brushed upward until they encountered her red knit shorts. Her breathing shattered, and she glanced down sharply only to find his eyelids still closed. His fingers glided slowly down to her knee again, then made the same titillating journey up and down her opposite leg. The brush continued drawing through his hair, but slower… slower… slower…
His knuckles caressed her inner thigh and trailed upward to tease the tender flesh at the top of her leg. Then he treated the opposite limb to the sensual harbinger of things to come.
Her hand now lay still upon his head, the brush caught in his curls while the backs of his fingers brushed upward again and slipped within the elastic of her panties. But instead of retreating, his fingers continued moving up to her hip where they explored the hollow before making the leisurely journey back down again.
When they touched flattened hair, his fingers paused, and both Joseph and Winn opened their eyes. His head was thrown back, hers dropped forward. Neither of them saw a visible movement on the other.
He slipped his fingers fully within the white tricot garment and sent rivers within Winn's body flooding their banks. Her left eye blinked slowly. Her wrists fell limply across his shoulders, and her tongue stole out to wet her lips. His free hand found her back and drew her closer until she took a single step, and her knees came up against the back of the chair.
His warm wet tongue touched the bare skin of her stomach just above her waistband, and then his teeth grasped the elastic of her red shorts and worried it suggestively before he fell back again, gazing up at her blue aroused eyes.
He turned his exploring fingers over so the pads rested against her flesh, but still they encountered little, for Joseph reached from an awkward angle, sitting below her, straddling the chair as he did.
'Kneel down,' he ordered in an odd, thick voice.
His hands pressed her hipbones, and without hesitation she dropped to her knees. His right hand splayed upon her back while his left slipped down inside the elasticized waists of both garments, searching for the object of his desire.
Then the brush dropped to the floor with a muffled thud as an agonized sound came from her throat.
His lips found hers, and she gripped his shoulders while his explorations took on a rhythm upon which she rode as if posting with the canter of a horse. A deep groan vibrated in his throat, and she slid one hand down his hard chest with its sleek covering of hair, passing a tiny nipple, then continuing down the wedge of hair that led to the brief strip of fabric covering his loins. When she caressed and measured him through the cutoffs, it was with zipper and placket adding to the fullness of his flesh.
His widespread legs gave her full access to him. She followed his example, slipping her fingertips up inside a frayed leg, encountering first the resilient texture of a soft masculine orb that was flattened by his shorts. He groaned and stretched backward, removing his lips from hers. But still, she couldn't reach. He moved sinuously, lifting his hips from the tiny chair, bracing against the dressing table on an elbow.
She reached for his waistband, and at the touch of her warm fingers on his stomach, he jerked in a breath and held it, creating slack between his flesh and the garment. The muscles of his stomach were like sculpted teak as she touched them with her knuckles while working the heavy metal button from its hole.
She thought about the white cotton he'd earlier clenched in his hands. She reached for the zipper and eased it down with agonizing slowness.
He jerked again as she touched him deliberately for the first time, but tentatively, almost shyly, with fingertips only, then he settled his hips back against the chair and waited. He lunged forward now in the chair, whispering harshly in her ear, 'Winn… Winn… I've wanted you to touch me for so long.'
She'd always thought it was women who voiced such yearnings, but his heavy breathing and words of encouragement made her realize he was different from most men. He was unashamed of admitting his vulnerability, and this pleased and excited Winn.
When her hand closed around him for the first time, he groaned and rammed one hand inside her back waistline, the other in the front, bracketing her like a saddle made of warm flesh, until his fingers met and nestled within her warm folds.
'Oh, Joseph, you're so good at this. I knew you'd be. I use to lie awake at night and imagine the different ways you'd touch me… oh!' She gasped and arched backward, and his tongue slipped into her mouth with a rhythmic imitation of the stimulation he was bestowing.
The upward pressure increased, taking her with it until she realized he had stood and bowed his legs around
