Ever since he’d caught himself wanting to be a frog kissed by a princess.
Almost immediately, he could all but hear his mind frantically crying out, Mayday! But even as it did, he sensed that it was already too late.
He knew that he didn’t have a prayer of being able to bail out. At this particular time and place, he was a goner. And, heaven help him, a part of him reveled in that.
Just like that, a sense of urgency filled him. He wanted to make love with this woman before his better instincts made a reappearance and prevailed upon his sense of decency, his desire to do the right thing by everyone, including Hailey.
Maybe most of all by Hailey.
That meant walking away from her. But heaven help him, he didn’t want to.
As Dillon’s adrenaline rushed through his veins, making him feel like a man who was attempting to skydive without a parachute, he could feel her lips curving against his.
She was smiling.
Confused and curious, Dillon drew his head back to look at her. “What?”
“Nothing. I’m just happy,” she told him simply. And then, placing a finger to his lips, she said, “No more talking.”
She was right, he thought. No more talking. This wasn’t the time for that. If he talked, he might just wind up stopping what he was about to do and Lord help him, he didn’t want to. What he wanted to do was make love with this woman. He wanted to finish leaping out of the plane without that parachute, because even with everything that had been going on in his life—was going on in his life—he had never felt as exhilaratingly alive as he did at this very moment in time.
Dillon found himself wanting to literally devour the moment. Devour her. And there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Hailey could feel her head start spinning again, but this time her head felt as if it were going so fast, she could barely catch her breath.
She had come very close to giving up hope that Dillon would respond to her. Even today, there were times that she felt as if she was getting through to him, and other times she felt as if he was literally pulling away from her.
For the life of her, Hailey couldn’t make sense out of his reluctance. They’d gotten along well, and when he kissed her those two other times, he hadn’t been just a man taking advantage of the moment or the situation. He was right there, totally committed. And he wanted her. Not just another conquest, not just a warm body for an interlude, but her.
He wanted her.
Which was why, each time he drew away, throwing up that force field between them, she couldn’t understand why he was doing it. Couldn’t understand why this sort of rejection was happening.
But now, as they kissed over and over again with their bodies heating up, creating something between them that was theirs alone. The rest of the world just slipped away into an abyss.
Hailey had her answer.
He wanted her.
And for her part, she was determined he wasn’t going to regret his choice.
Dillon didn’t remember undressing her. Didn’t remember if she had undressed him or if he had shed his own clothing in a frenzied desire to get closer to her. All he knew was that his clothes were no longer on his body and she was nude on the sofa, like a spectacular goddess right in front of him, her body primed and ready to be worshiped.
And he did.
He worshiped her with his hands, with his eyes, with his lips that eagerly passed over every single inch of her, awed as if he had been allowed access to a shrine.
Dillon couldn’t get enough of her.
The more he kissed her, the more he wanted to kiss her. The more his blood heated within his body, demanding that he rush to avail himself of the final fulfillment.
But if this was going to be their one and only time together—and he had made his peace with convincing himself that it would be just this one time—he was determined that it was going to be memorable. Not for him, because it was already that for him, but for her. He never wanted her to look back at this time and feel the sting of regret eating into her soul.
So he made certain that he made love to her gently. He wanted Hailey to remember him as a kind lover. And most of all, he was determined to be a thorough lover.
With that in mind, he brought her up to the point of ecstasy not just once but several times. When her body shivered beneath him, succumbing to a climax, Dillon was quick to start building toward the next one, delivering bone-melting strokes along her body with his lips and his tongue.
With hot excitement rippling through his own body, he methodically moved down along hers, coaxing yet another explosion to reverberate throughout her moist, feverish body.
Struggling mightily to catch her breath, she bracketed his shoulders with her hands. Then she tugged on them. When he looked up at her, she managed to get one word out in a hoarse whisper.
“Together.”
He understood.
Seductively sliding his body up along hers, Dillon stopped moving only when he could look into her eyes.
Again he caught her mouth, his lips slanting over hers time and again before he finally moved his knee urgently in between her legs. Silently, he got her to open for him.
Then, weaving a necklace of lingering hot kisses along the top of her breasts and throat, Dillon moved up just a little higher until his eyes were on hers.
And then, with one movement of his hips, he entered her and they became one palpitating unit, driven by one desire: to set the night on fire.
His heart pounding in his chest, Dillon still
