This Heart Of Mine

impatient to pull down the quilt.

Their play turned serious much too soon. He gripped her shoulders and pulled her on top of him-the servicing position. She wiggled up his body, caught his head in her hands, and kissed him again, hoping to slow him down.

'You're so sweet…' he murmured in her mouth.

But he was impossible to distract. He caught the back of her knees and spread them over his hips. Here it came. She braced herself for his thrust and bit her lip to keep from yelling at him to take his time, for Pete's sake, and stop acting as if the ref just blew the two-minute warning!

She'd promised herself she wouldn't criticize, so she sank her teeth into the hard muscle of his shoulder instead.

He made a low, hoarse sound that might have been pain or pleasure, and the next thing she knew she was on her back and he was hovering over her, those green eyes wicked.

'So the bunny lady wants to play rough?'

With two hundred pounds of muscle? Oh, I don't think so.

She started to tell him she'd only been trying to distract him so he wouldn't be so quick on the trigger, but he shackled her wrists and made a dive for her breast.

Ahhhhh… It was torture. Agony. Worse than agony. How could one mouth cause so much havoc? And she didn't ever want it to stop.

He brushed his lips over the slope of her breast. He grazed the nipple, moved to the other breast, where he did the same. Then, without warning, he began to suckle__

She writhed against him, but he didn't release the wrists he'd imprisoned in one hand. Leaving the other free to roam.

It meandered from breast to belly, then lower, brushing through the curls. But that proved to be a tease because he quickly moved on to her inner thighs.

They fell open.

He stayed where he was.

She twisted, trying to force those tantalizing fingers away from her thighs to the part of her that throbbed so much she thought she would die.

He didn't take the hint. He was too busy tormenting her, too busy playing at her breasts. She'd heard that women could have orgasms just from this, but she hadn't believed it.

She'd been wrong.

The shock wave caught her by surprise, thundered through her, and pitched her into the sky. She didn't remember crying out, but she heard the echo and knew she had.

He slowed. She shuddered against his chest, breathed him in, tried to understand what had happened to her.

He stroked her shoulder. He kissed her earlobe. His whispered breath tickled her hair. 'A little quick on the trigger, aren't you?'

She was mortified. Sort of. Except it had felt so good. And been so unexpected. 'An accident,' she managed. 'And it's your turn.'

'Oh, I'm not in any hurry…' He picked up a lock of her hair, drew it to his nose. 'Unlike some people.'

The sheen of perspiration on his skin, the way he pressed against her thigh, told her he was in more of a hurry than he wanted to admit. A very big hurry. Funny… she hadn't remembered that about him. Not exactly. She remembered that it had hurt. And now that she thought about it, there'd been a moment when she'd thought she might be too small.

No time like the present to find out if that was true.

She scooted on top of him.

He scooted her back off. Dawdled at the corner of her mouth. When was he going to get to the slam, bam part?

'Why don't you just lie back and rest for a while?' he whispered.

Rest? 'Oh, I definitely don't-'

He caught her shoulders, nestled his thumbs in her armpits, started that trail of kisses again. Only this time he kept going.

Before long his hands were at her knees, pushing them far apart. His hair brushed her inner thighs, so sensitive now that she quivered. And then he claimed her with his mouth.

The gentle suction… the sweet thrusts… She couldn't breathe. She caught his head, pleading. Her hips buckled as the waves seized her once again.

This time when she'd calmed, he didn't tease her. Instead, he grabbed the condom she'd forgotten about, eased his body over hers, and gazed down with those green eyes. His skin was hot beneath her hands, and the blaze of late-afternoon sun streaming through the window burnished him with molten gold. She felt his muscles quivering beneath her palms as the effort to hold back became too much for him. Still, he gave her all the time in the world.

She opened… stretched to accept him.

He filled her slowly, kissing her, soothing her. She loved him for the careful care he was taking, and slowly, her body accepted his.

But even when he'd buried himself, he didn't ram at her. Instead, he began a slow, silken thrusting.

It was delicious, but it wasn't enough, and she realized she no longer wanted his restraint. She wanted him free and wild. She wanted him to luxuriate in her body, to use it for his pleasure. Wrapping her legs around him, she grasped his hips and urged him on.

The leash he'd held on his self-control snapped. He plunged. She moaned and met his thrust. It was like being burned in a fire of the senses.

He was too big for her, too strong, too fierce… Absolutely perfect.

The sun burned hotter until it exploded. They flew together into a brilliant crystalline void.

He'd never made love to a woman with a bunny on her panties. But then, there was a lot about making love with Molly that was different from anything he'd experienced. Her enthusiasm, her generosity… Why should he be surprised?

Kevin slid his hand over her hip and thought about how good it had been, even though she'd acted strange at first, almost as if she were trying to convince herself to be afraid of him. He remembered the way she'd stood before him in her bra and bunny panties, with her head high and shoulders back. If an American flag had been waving behind her, she'd have looked like a very sexy Marine Corps recruiting poster. The few, the proud, the cottontailed.

She stirred in his arms and snuffled her nose against his chest, burrowing like one of her storybook pals. But despite the snuffling, the burrowing, and the bunny panties, Molly had been every inch a woman.

And he was in big trouble. In one afternoon, he'd undone everything he'd been trying to accomplish by ignoring her.

She slid her hand from his chest to his belly. Here and there the last shafts of sunlight glazed her hair with little reddish sprinkles like the ones she'd used on yesterday's sugar cookies. He forced himself to remember all the reasons he'd tried so hard to keep her at a distance, starting with the fact that she wasn't going to be part of his life much longer, which could very well piss off her sister, who happened to be the owner of the team he intended to take to the Super Bowl this year.

He couldn't think about all the ways a team owner had of making it tough, even for her star player, not right now. Instead, he thought about how much passion had been locked up inside the small, quirky body of this woman who was and wasn't his wife.

She snuffled again. 'You're not a bust-out. As a lover, I mean.'

He was glad she couldn't see his smile, because giving her even the smallest advantage generally meant he ended up swimming in the lake with his clothes on. He settled for sarcasm. 'I sense a tender moment coming on. Should I get a handkerchief?'

'I just mean that-Well, after last time…'

'Don't tell me.'

'It was all I had for comparison.'