But when Daniel’s hand rose up her thigh to tangle in the fabric of her panties, her heart felt as if it would burst with sheer unadulterated terror.
She took a deep breath, willing herself not to panic. Birds and bees did it. Dogs and cats, and rabbits and-And analyzing things was only making things worse.
Daniel’s hand stilled, his fingers resting lightly against the soft skin of her inner thigh. “Are you hyperventilating?”
She looked down at him in horror. “Why do you ask?”
“Because you’re hyperventilating.”
She closed her eyes, mortified.
“Rose, are you a virgin?”
Her eyes flew open. “What?”
His gaze was gentle but inquisitive. “It’s not an insult.”
“I know that.” She closed her eyes, reddening with humiliation. She knew how sex worked. She was a wedding planner. Sex was part of her business. Sort of. Plus, she was college educated, and more than one boyfriend had rounded second on his way to third over the years, thank you very much.
But the truth was, she’d waited for the true-love veil to tell her when she’d found The One.
She took another deep breath, letting anger push away the fear. No point in waiting anymore. The truelove veils were gone. They weren’t coming back. As Daniel had said, real-world relationships didn’t come with any guarantees.
She wanted him. That was the only truth that mattered. Even now, in the grip of sheer panic, her flesh hummed where he touched her. His dark gaze, thoughtful and intense, sent liquid heat flooding straight to her center. The only thing she feared more than making love with Daniel was not making love with him.
If he stopped now and walked away, she’d chase him down and make him put out the fire he’d slowly stoked inside her from the first time he’d met her gaze across a crowded bar.
She took his hand and slid it up her thigh until his fingers pressed against her center. A jolt of white-hot pleasure shot through her, eliciting a soft gasp.
Pressing a kiss against her hip, Daniel slipped his fingers inside her panties and touched her. Her breath caught.
“I’m not in any hurry here,” he murmured against her belly, dropping a light kiss beside her navel.
Evidence to the contrary pressed heavy and hard against her leg, but she couldn’t have found her voice to argue even if she wanted to. What his hands were doing to her body was sheer genius, leaving her no hope of having a coherent thought.
He was relentless, driving her toward madness with each touch, each kiss, each murmured word of endearment against her skin. He tugged her panties down her legs and tossed them aside, kissing his way back up her legs. Sensation melted into sensation, each more intense than the last, until something inside her splintered into a thousand shards of pleasure, leaving her shaking and breathless.
Daniel wrapped his arms around her, holding her until the shudders eased. “You okay?” he whispered.
She managed a nod, still too shaken to speak.
Daniel stroked her hair and rolled away, sitting on the side of the bed. He reached for his jacket, which he’d draped over the back of a nearby chair. “I bought these today, before I went to get dinner.” He showed her a small box of condoms. “Just in case.”
She couldn’t help smiling. Confident devil.
“It’s still not too late to stop,” he murmured, although she could tell by the look of consternation on his face that he couldn’t believe he was actually saying those words.
She took the box from him and pulled out a foil wrapper. This she could handle. In her line of business, she’d been to enough bachelorette parties to know what to do with a condom.
“Lose the pants.” Her voice sounded raw.
Arching an eyebrow, Daniel stepped out of his trousers. His underwear quickly followed. Slowly, he turned to face her.
Her hands began to shake, her bravado leaching away.
“Small steps, sugar.” Daniel took the condom from her trembling fingers and sheathed himself. He sat beside her on the bed, smoothing her hair away from her damp face.
“I know what to expect,” she said.
He smiled. “No, you don’t.” He bent and kissed her, the touch light and sweet enough to bring tears to her eyes.
He dropped kisses across her jawline and down the side of her neck. He dipped his tongue into the hollow of her throat and moved lower, each touch of his mouth to her flesh painting streaks of fire across her skin.
She shifted restlessly, her back arching as his erection pressed against her belly. A hot ache settled in her center and radiated outward, driving out her fear. She dropped her hands to his hips, guiding him between her thighs. When he entered her, the breath rushed from her lungs in a low, growling moan.
She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Pain, certainly, but that was mild and ephemeral, quickly eclipsed by a kaleidoscope of sensations, constantly splintering and reforming new, more vibrant colors and shapes and sounds. Pressure built inside her, a gathering firestorm. Heat licked at her belly, crackled and sizzled through her blood until the flash fire consumed her.
Daniel moved over her, into her, through her, carrying her with him as he soared toward release. She dug her fingers into his back, holding on as he lost himself inside her.
She didn’t want to let him go. Couldn’t let him go.
Silence descended between them, as slow and sure as the daylight dying outside her window. As their ragged respirations eased, she once again could hear the normal sounds of her life seep into her bedroom. The hum of electricity moving through the walls. The rumble of traffic from the expressway a few blocks away. The slow plink- plink of the dripping faucet in the bathroom sink across the hall.
Daniel tucked her against him, cupping one breast in his hand. He stroked her nipple with the pad of his thumb, the caress somehow more tender than sexual. “Still with me?”
“Still here,” she answered, her voice raspy.
He didn’t say anything else, just rested his chin on her shoulder, his breath warm on her cheek. His beard stubble pricked her skin, the sensation more pleasant than painful.
Rose curled up closer to him, drowsiness descending. She felt as if her body were an alien landscape of shifting sands trembling with aftershocks, spinning out of control into a deep, endless darkness, wondrous and frightening at the same time.
She closed her eyes and shut out the night, shut out the doubts and hopes that clamored for her attention.
Something had happened tonight. Something big and important. But she was too wrung out to think about it yet.
There was plenty of time.
DANIEL LISTENED to Rose’s slow, deep respirations, his own body begging for sleep. But he had too much to think about to give in to post-sex lethargy.
He eased himself away, careful not to wake her, and gathered up his clothes, carrying them with him into the bathroom across the hall. He closed the door behind him and leaned against it, his heart thudding against his rib cage.
It was supposed to have been just sex. Two healthy, consenting adults enjoying nature’s oldest full-contact sport. No promises, no expectations.
No virgins.
He flicked on the light switch and gazed at his reflection in the mirror. His jaw was dark with the day’s growth of beard, his eyes sunken and a little bloodshot from lack of sleep and a heavy dose of second thoughts.
He hadn’t forced her to do anything. He’d offered to stop more than once. She’d seemed pretty happy with the outcome, he thought, his lips curving with a wry half smile.
So if it wasn’t her state of mind he was worried about, whose was it? His own?
God help him, she mattered in a way nobody had mattered to him in a long, long time. He’d spent the last hour
