sheet around her. A flicker of annoyance told him she still didn’t know.
“Let me guess. He was thrilled to welcome me into the bosom of the Hamilton family,” Andrew said.
She turned to face him, dramatically reducing the space between them. She smelled faintly of mint toothpaste, and in his mind he easily stripped her of the green abomination. He knew what was underneath, and wasn’t likely to forget anytime soon. His jockeys seemed to shrink. Certain parts of him remembered all too well.
“I wouldn’t call him Dad the next time I see him in court, if I were you.” She grinned, quick and irreverent. “And your father’s thrilled I’m a Winthrop?”
“A.W. and Rand probably have a lot in common.” Thank goodness, she hadn’t inquired about his phone call to Claudia. Graciousness hadn’t been in Claudia’s vocabulary.
“Did he mention your partnership?”
“No. Let’s just say he was surprised that it wasn’t Claudia.”
Doggie snores filled the silence between them.
Kat shifted underneath the covers. Her soft calf whispered against him for the briefest moment. His mouth dried.
Awareness filled the space between them. She didn’t look at him, but it was there in the budding of her nipples against her T-shirt. If he hadn’t married her, he’d consider seducing her, because he wanted her in the most basic way and her body seemed to respond in kind. But he’d become a sperm donor when he’d signed on the dotted line.
Kat dusted her hands together. “Well, we seem to have some more business to take care of tonight. I checked my ovulation prediction kit and it seems I’m in season. You know, now’s the time. We should probably get the sex thing over with.”
5
UH-OH. KAT NOTED the slight narrowing of Andrew’s eyes. Perhaps she should have been more select in her terminology. However, she was determined not to go overboard. She’d show moderation. Keep it to a business level. Theirs was a business arrangement after all. No need to lose her head just because they were about to get naked together. If he wasn’t already…
Andrew propped on one elbow and leaned closer to her. The sheet slid down, baring his flat stomach. “I’ve never done the ’sex thing’ with procreation in mind. Anything I need to know? Does it matter which of us is on top? Should you be facing east?” The low timbre of his voice caressed her even as he reached over and traced a small circle on the back of her hand in a rhythmic motion.
Damn him. He was toying with her. All she wanted was a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am. Just the thing most women got with most husbands. But no. She had the rotten luck to stumble onto one intent on seduction. And darn good at it. She felt slightly dizzy and he’d only touched the back of her hand. So far.
It had been a really long six-year dry spell since Nick had hit the door. Six long, abstinence-filled years in which she’d avoided entanglements like the plague-because of that blasted all-or-nothing tendency of hers. She’d heard somewhere that sex was like riding a bike. Except she suspected she’d upgraded from a three-speed to a ten-speed along the way. Suddenly nervous, Kat ran her fingers through her perpetually disheveled hair.
“The only requirements are once a day for the next three days.”
“Only once a day? Surely twice a day would double our odds.” He slid his bedeviling hand beneath the neckline of her T-shirt and trailed her collarbone. Frissons of delight danced across her skin.
How was she supposed to keep her wits about her with his touch igniting small fires? “Uh, no. It doesn’t work that way. It decreases the potency of the sperm if you…” His mouth whispered along the shell of her ear. “If you, uh…oh my, uh, do it, um, too often.”
“You’re the boss. If you say once a day, then it’s once a day.” Andrew pushed the sheet into a tangle at the foot of the bed.
“What’re you doing?”
“I have a job to do and it’s time to get down to business.”
Now this was more like it. Now they were getting to the wham-bam part. Business. This was a business arrangement.
Baby for her. Partnership for him. Cut-and-dried. No crazy excesses.
Andrew leaned away from her, his gaze sweeping her from head to toe. She looked her fill of him. Peering at him through binoculars didn’t come close to this. Golden skin lightly covered with dark hair. No bulging muscles marred the classic lines of his body. He was all hard planes and angles bisected by a pair of white briefs that evidenced his willingness to get down to business. Want and intent warmed his eyes to a smoky gray.
She closed her eyes and inhaled his male scent.
“You have the most exquisite legs.” The low, heated timbre of his voice opened her eyes and increased the ache building inside her.
Not
With a gossamer touch, he stroked from the arch of her foot to her calf. He followed that same path with kisses that sampled and savored. The moist heat of his mouth against the sensitive skin behind her knee mightily weakened her earlier resolve.
Andrew lavished her thighs with kisses. Instinctively she parted her legs in supplication. But her wicked, wicked husband taunted her with a look that only promised, and pushed her T-shirt aside to nibble his way to the slight rise of her belly.
Kat tugged her T-shirt over her head and tossed it to the floor. Her senses begged to indulge in him. She stroked the hard line of his shoulder and felt a faint shudder ripple through him at her touch. She stroked the sleek muscles of his back as he explored her ribs and the underside of her breasts, the faint rasp of the stubble on his face, stoking the fire he tended with his sensual exploration. With deliberateness, he bypassed the aching peaks of her breasts and moved on to the pulse tattooing a rhythm of desire at the base of her throat. Braced on his forearms above her, only his mouth touched and caressed her.
His muscles bunched beneath her fingertips as her hands clutched at him, transmitting the fever building inside. Her breath grew ragged as he pushed aside her hair to sample the sensitivity of her neck and the shell of her ear. Trekking across a desert could not have left her with a greater thirst.
She groaned in frustration and invitation as she pulled his mouth to meet hers. It was the sweetest of tortures. Rather than gaining some satisfaction from the taste and feel of his mouth, it only turned up the heat coursing through her.
When his tongue touched hers, the last tenuous hold on her moderation slipped. She touched him as she’d wanted to the first time she’d seen him at his beach house. She purred her appreciation for the tight ripple of his buttocks when she slid her hands beneath his briefs and stroked and kneaded.
Andrew had teased and incited her earlier, but she’d sensed he did so while fully in control of himself. She’d sensed his measure of restraint in his touch, the cadence of his breath. Now spiraling urgency replaced his control.
He found her breasts and measured their fullness against his palms, intensifying the ache of his earlier neglect. She murmured a request on their behalf and he took one pearled tip in his mouth.
Pleasure rocked her, rippled through her and left her wanting more. Impatient to feel the hard length of him against her skin, she tugged at the waistband of his underwear. “These have to go. Now.”
“You’re the boss.” He took over for her and shucked his briefs.
My, oh, my. Kat lay very still and closed her eyes. The cool cotton of the sheets against her fevered skin
The heady scent of aroused male mingling with her own excitement
“Kat, please tell me you’re not falling asleep.” The sexy thrum of Andrew’s voice
