Sliding toward him, she took his face in her hands and slanted her mouth across his. She felt the heat climb in his cheeks, felt the urgency mount in his kiss as he matched her hunger.
Then his hands covered hers and he pulled back, no more than an inch, but the separation was too much. She felt bereft. She tried to close the gap, but he held back. “What do you want, Dana?”
“You know,” she said, lost in the first whisper of a smoldering sensuality she was just beginning to discover. “Can’t you tell?”
“I want you to say it. I need to know that you mean it.”
She swallowed hard. “I want you to make love to me.” She began faintly, but by the end she managed to sound bold and convincing.
Against her hands, Jason’s fingers trembled. “You’re sure?”
“Very sure.”
“You aren’t doing this out of some misguided sense of obligation because you’re staying here?”
“I’m doing it because I think I’ll fly apart if I don’t experience what it’s like to have you love me.”
The words had come from her heart—her poor, misguided and probably soon-to-be-broken heart. Apparently they were enough. Jason scooped her into his arms and carried her up the steps. “You can back out anytime,” he said, but the look in his eyes pleaded with her not to.
There was no chance she was going to change her mind now, anyway. Dana felt a shimmering feminine awareness that pulled like a magnet. It was all she could do to keep her hands from roaming down Jason’s shoulders to explore his chest. Curiosity mixed with desire made her bold. Whatever shyness she might have been expected to feel had long since vanished, swept away by wave after wave of deep longing. All of the warnings she’d given herself just this morning seemed unimportant when compared to the discoveries she was about to make—about herself, about Jason, about making love.
With the door to Jason’s room firmly locked behind them, she stood on tiptoe to draw him into a kiss from which there could be no retreat. She was desperate to know where passion led, where this tantalizing spiral of white-hot sensation peaked.
Lifting Dana gently and putting her on the bed, Jason scanned her face, his gaze intent. “No regrets?”
“Not now. Not later,” she promised. And if there were, she would keep them to herself, knowing instinctively that there would be worse regrets if they never shared this moment.
His fingers looped under the hem of her sweater, then slowly drew it over her head. The casual brush of his fingers against her bare midriff left a trail of heat. He traced the swell of her breasts, teasing until she was sure she would die if his touch didn’t reach the sensitized nipples. With one deft movement, he unhooked her bra and for a moment he simply stared, his expression rapt. If Dana had ever worried about her attractiveness, that look put her worries to rest. Fascinated, he touched one swollen, rosy peak, first with the pad of his thumb, then with his tongue. Dana’s back arched as a riot of new sensations shimmered through her.
But for every feathered touch and every deep caress, satisfaction was followed too quickly by a rising sense of need. Like the climber who always discovers new peaks the instant the last has been attained, Dana discovered that each glorious, thrilling sensation only hinted at one even more spectacular.
She lost track of where one stroke ended and the next began, caught up instead in a never-ending wave that crested, then eased gently away before building again, higher than ever. Still there was this emptiness that she didn’t understand.
Jason’s flesh burned every bit as hot as her own. His desire was written on his face, but he seemed determined to take his time, determined to tease and taunt until neither of them could wait an instant longer for fulfillment. That time was fast approaching.
Up until the last possible second, Dana waited for the fear to ruin what was happening between them. She was so sure that her conscience and common sense would kick in and rob her of Jason’s tenderness, of his love. As her body lifted toward his, seeking the elusive fulfillment he withheld, she realized that behind the desire in his eyes there was worry. He, too, was waiting for her to change her mind, giving her time for thought to overrule sensation.
She reached for him then, boldly caressing, telling him without words that there would be no retreat. He couldn’t hold back a low moan as her strokes became more insistent. And then he was chuckling.
“I get the message,” he murmured as he held himself above her.
“I certainly hope so,” she said. “There’s a lot to be said for anticipation, but I think it’s time you make a commitment.”
The word with its multitude of meanings crept out before she realized how Jason would interpret it. Satisfaction flared in his eyes as he eased into her at last. There was one brief, searing instant of unexpected pain, then Dana was filled with that sense of completion that had eluded her for so long. Lost to the sensations, she forgot all about her foolish slip of tongue, forgot everything except the wild racing of her heart, the rush of heat and, finally, the most incredible release—as if she’d just discovered a way to catapult over rainbows.
The night was all about giving—and learning to accept. It was morning before her last
