“I’ll bet you were adorable.” He pecked a light kiss on the tip of her nose. “But every day you spent in braces was worth it.” He ran the tip of his tongue along her upper teeth, barely inside her lips. She shivered with the pleasure he had promised to give her. “Cold?”
“No.” Then the absurdity of the question struck her and she laughed. “No,” she stressed, shaking her head.
His eyes became as glowing and hypnotizing as lantern light in the middle of a nighttime forest. They were all Kerry could see. Twin stars at the center of this private universe.
“Hot?”
She nodded.
“Where?”
“Everywhere.”
He pressed his open palm against her stomach. Never removing his eyes from her face, he slid his hand down, following the tapering line of her body, until his hand conformed perfectly to the delta shape. “Here?”
Kerry made a yearning sound and swayed toward him. “Yes.”
“Tender?”
“A little.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re not?”
“No, Linc, I’m not.”
They kissed, and because it was such a torrid kiss, he removed his hand, caught her, and held her close, rocking her slightly. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” he whispered raggedly. He nuzzled her neck. Kissed it. Touched it with his tongue. “You know the song that goes, ‘I want to kiss you all over’?” She made an affirmative motion with her head, though she didn’t move it away from the hollow of his shoulder. “Well, that’s what I want to do to you. Kiss you all over. And over again.”
He encircled her upper arms and eased her away. When her eyes drifted open, he said, “Desire was the only thing that kept me going while we were tramping through that damned jungle. Basically I’m a coward.”
“Impossible,” she said fervently.
He grinned crookedly. “You caught me on a brave week. Anyway,” he said, giving a dismissive shake of his head, “the motivation that drove me was that one day, by some miraculous twist of fate, I was going to have you in bed.”
“You don’t fool me, Lincoln. Other people might buy that callous air you assume, but I don’t. Your motivation was to get those orphans to safety.”
He had the grace to look chagrined. “Well, it made the situation a helluva lot more bearable to fantasize about you along the way.”
“Did you?” She assumed the posture and expression of a practiced coquette, though the gestures came to her subconsciously.
“All the time. Constantly. Continually.”
His hands moved over her throat and chest. The pads of his fingers glanced over her skin, barely touching
it. Even though they were sensitive to the intricate dials of a sophisticated camera, they were appealingly rough and masculine.
Lightly, he placed his hands on the sides of her breasts. He applied a slight pressure, then relaxed. Several times he did that, making her breasts move beneath the nightgown, which was made of a cotton so thin and airy that her nipples showed up as enticing shadows beneath it, even in the darkness of the room.
“Your breasts fascinated me. The way they moved every time you did. It seemed like your clothes were always getting wet. The night you bathed in the stream. The river crossing. Even perspiration made your shirt cling to you. And I’d see...”
He brushed his thumbs over her nipples. Not that they needed any encouragement. His words had already brought them to aching hardness.
“They bewitched me. All I could think of was touching, kissing.”
He bent his head and kissed her breast through her nightgown. The wet, stroking caress of his tongue seeped through the sheer cloth and caused it to mold provocatively to the rosy tips. “Nice.”