His heart beat wildly beneath her palms as she traced the lines of his collarbone, his sternum. He made a sound in the back of his throat. His beard scratched at her lips, but she found that she rather enjoyed that feeling. She’d usually kissed clean-shaven men, but everything about Gavin contradicted what she thought she’d preferred.
“How do you taste so sweet?” he muttered before kissing her cheek.
“It’s probably the tea.”
He shook his head. “It’s that, but not. It’s something else. I think it’s just you.” His mouth moved toward her jaw, and she leaned back slightly to give him access. “You’ve driven me insane since the first time I met you.”
She sighed. “That time outside your apartment?”
He pulled away, but only so he could look into her eyes. “You looked so gorgeous; it drove me insane.”
“Really? I just thought you didn’t want to talk to me.”
“I didn’t want to talk to you.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
“Let me rephrase that.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I wanted to talk to you, but I knew I’d bungle it, so I couldn’t. I knew I could never have you.”
She didn’t want to point out that he was talking to her now, and saying more than he ever had before. She kissed him on the forehead, on his cheeks, light butterfly kisses that caused him to fist his hands in her robe against her back. When she reached his lips, her heart thrilled when he captured her mouth.
Things only progressed from there. She touched his shoulders while he trailed a hand under her robe and her shirt, reaching the bare skin of her lower back. Her ears buzzed and her heart pounded, and she transformed into a being of pure sensation. Suddenly feeling like she was wearing too many layers, she untied her robe and tossed it aside, now clad in only her thin shirt. Her nipples beaded against the material, and she saw the gleam in his eyes as he realized she wasn’t wearing a bra.
Her breasts felt heavy, achy, and when he cupped one in his big palm, she let out a moan.
“Yes, touch me,” she breathed into the night. “Please.”
His thumb circled her nipple. She leaned backward until she was half-lying on the couch with him over her. He played with her other breast, but it wasn’t enough. She arched against him, and he took the cue, trailing his hand up under her shirt to clasp her bare breast. Biting the inside of her cheek, she stifled a groan at the sensation of his fingers on her breast.
“Let me see you,” he groaned. He tugged at her shirt hem with his other hand.
She wasn’t going to stop him. Instead, she reached down and flung off the offending garment, now her breasts bare in front of him. He drank her in for a moment, and she couldn’t help but preen a little under his admiring gaze.
“Damn, you’re gorgeous.” He smoothed a finger across a nipple, and she gasped at the sensation.
His hands played with her breasts, making her moan and breathe his name, and soon he replaced his hands with his mouth, sucking and nipping. He made her ache, made her wet and desperate. She’d never wanted a man as much as she wanted Gavin in this moment. It was a heady, all-consuming emotion, like a bottle of champagne. She was all bubbles and light.
He moved upward to kiss her mouth again. Reaching underneath his shirt, she felt the play of muscle and skin. She smoothed a fingertip around a mole she found, and when she traced a figure eight in the dip of his lower back, he shuddered, pressing his hardness against her. She shimmied and arched, wanting more friction, and in response, he kissed her harder.
Was she going to get off just from rubbing through their clothes? She hadn’t been this turned on since she was a teenager. Licking at his mouth, she dipped her hand in the waistband of his sweatpants, which earned her a curse.
The kiss turned almost frantic then. Kat heard Gavin say her name, and then he was moving downward, kissing a trail down her torso. He hooked his hands in her pajama pants and was about to pull them off when they heard the creak of a door.
They froze. She looked at Gavin, and he looked at her. They gasped for air and just as footsteps sounded toward them, Kat grabbed a blanket to cover herself and Gavin grabbed her shirt to stuff behind his back as Emma walked into the room.
The girl blinked at them, rather like a sleepy owl. She yawned. “I thought I heard a noise,” she said.
Kat’s face flamed, and she pulled the blanket closer around her shoulders. Gavin got up, giving her a brief glance, and promptly herded Emma back into her room. “Kat and I were just talking,” Kat heard him say before shutting Emma’s door.
Kat collapsed onto the couch. Her heart was still pounding frantically, and she couldn’t get her body to calm down. If she were anywhere else, she’d take care of this problem herself, but then again, this had been a perfect wake-up call. Was she really going to sleep with Gavin and hope it didn’t all go to hell afterward? She snorted. She wasn’t that stupid.
Sighing, she got her shirt and pulled it over her head, and then grabbed her discarded robe and made her way back to Gavin’s room. She really didn’t want to have some awkward this shouldn’t have happened conversation with him.
But as luck would have it, Gavin came into the bedroom and shut the door, saying in a soft voice, “Are you still awake?”
She rolled her eyes in the darkness. “I’m not going to be sleeping anytime soon.”
He seemed to hesitate. Kat rolled over, although she couldn’t make out his face in the darkness.
“Look, Kat—”
She held up a
