She was starting to wish she hadn’t agreed to dinner. She certainly wasn’t going to be able to eat anything. The tension had created a tight knot in her stomach.
She felt like a teenager, her heart all fluttery and her palms damp.
How crazy was that?
She tried to keep her gaze fixed straight ahead, but somehow she found herself turning her head to look at him. His shirt was open at the neck, allowing her a tantalizing glimpse of his tanned throat.
“You’re quiet.”
“I’m okay.”
“Fliss—”
“All right, I’m not okay. I don’t know if sexual frustration counts as a medical condition, but if it does I have an advanced case of it. You don’t want us to focus on the sex, and that’s just fine in theory, I get it, I really do, the principle I mean, not the sex, obviously I’m not getting the sex—”
“I think—”
“Let me finish! I’m struggling to get my words out here. All I’m saying is that I’ve reached the stage where the sex is getting in the way because it’s all I can think about. And it’s making me crazy.” She closed her eyes. “Forget dinner. I think you’d better take me home. I’ll take a cold shower. Watch a nature program on TV.”
“You want to watch a nature program?”
“No, but I don’t think I’m going to be safe around you. I feel a ‘bad Fliss’ moment coming on. You don’t want to be near me when that happens.”
“Or maybe I do.”
He swerved into his drive, sending loose stones flying. Seconds after he turned off the ignition, he grabbed her and yanked her up against him.
The look in his eyes made her heart pound.
“I thought you didn’t want this.”
“I want this. I was showing restraint.”
“Restraint is overrated.” Her hands tore at his shirt, clumsy in her haste. “Seth, I really want—”
“Me, too, so quit talking and let’s get inside. Whatever other sins we committed in the past, or may commit in the future, I don’t want one of them to be having sex on the front porch in front of all my neighbors.”
They stumbled out of the car, and somehow he opened the front door of his house. They all but fell through it and then he was kissing her, opening her mouth with his. She felt the erotic slide of his tongue against hers, and it felt so sinfully good she wondered how she could have survived so long without this.
Why had it never been like this with anyone else?
Why had no other man ever made her feel this way?
Still kissing her, he pushed her back against the wall and kicked the door shut. He pinned her there, trapping her legs between his and caging her with his arms, and she gave a shiver of excitement because whatever she’d started it was clear he intended to finish it.
/> She wrapped her arms around his neck and he dropped his hands to her waist and then her thighs, his body still pinning hers against the wall. She felt hard muscle and strength and whispered his name, urging him on as she trailed her mouth from his lips to the roughness of his jaw. Her breathing was as unsteady as his and her heart pounded with almost brutal force as his hands slid beneath her panties. Sensation shot through her, turning her limbs heavy and weak. She wanted him so badly it was indecent, and she moaned as she felt the slow, skilled invasion of his fingers. His mouth silenced her, his kiss deep and deliberate. She wanted to speak, to tell him how good it felt, how much she’d missed him, but her thoughts were tumbled and confused and she couldn’t form the words. She’d never felt like this before. Nothing had ever felt like this. She wanted him so badly that when he withdrew his hand she almost sobbed, but then she realized he was simply removing clothing that was getting in the way.
Her panties hit the floor. Her bra followed.
She fumbled with the buttons of his shirt and opened it.
She’d seen him on the beach, in board shorts and in even less, but she couldn’t get enough of looking at him.
Her body remembered his, remembered the feel and the taste. She knew every inch of him, but recognized the changes. His shoulders were broader, his muscles more clearly defined. He was strong, steady and sure of himself.
Years of separation fueled their desperation. They ripped off the rest of each other’s clothes, although Seth paused long enough to grab something from the pocket of his jeans. Haste made them clumsy and Fliss murmured a protest, and then he was lifting her, his hands hard on her thighs as he pressed her back. Desire was so intense it was almost suffocating. She wrapped her legs around him and cried out as he drove into her, the sound a mix of shock and pleasure as she felt her body yield to the thickness of him. She was engulfed in a storm of sensation, each upward thrust sending her senses spinning. She felt crazily out of control, dizzy with it, and gripped the muscles of his arms, trying to hold on to something as her body yielded to his demands. But whatever he took, he gave back a thousandfold until she was shivery and helpless.
She’d never known excitement like it, and she wondered if there would ever be a time when the chemistry between them calmed to something more serene and gentle. Right now the excitement was savage and urgent, a cascade of erotic sensations that built and built until she felt herself tip over the edge. Her body shuddered against his, and he captured her cry of pleasure with his mouth as he hit the same peak.