"We can do other things," he murmured in reply, sitting down with her across his lap, tilted back across his supporting arm. Deftly he slipped his hand inside the scooped neckline of her sweater.
She closed her eyes in delight as his rough palm scraped over her nipple. He exhaled, a long, sighing sound; then it was as if they both held their breath as his hand shaped itself over her breast, learning her size and softness, the texture of her skin.
In silence he withdrew his hand and pulled the sweater off over her head, then deftly unzipped her bra and pushed it off her shoulders to fall to the floor.
She lay half-naked across his lap, her breath coming fast and shallow as she watched him looking at her. She knew her own breasts, but what were they like from a man's point of view? They weren't big, but were firm and upright. Her nipples were small and pinkish-brown, velvety soft and delicate compared to the rough fingertip he used to lightly circle one, making the aureole pucker even more tightly.
Pleasure speared through her, making her clench her legs tightly together to contain it.
He lifted her, arching her even more across his arm, and bent his head to her breasts.
He was gentle, totally without haste. She was stunned by his caution now, given his rapacious kisses. He nuzzled his face against the underside of her breasts, kissing the curves, licking gently at her nipples until they were reddened and so tight they couldn't possibly get any tighter. When he finally began sucking her with slow, firm pressure, she was so ready it was as if he had touched her with a live wire. She couldn't control her body, couldn't stop herself from arching wildly in his arms; her heart was thundering, her pulse racing so fast she was dizzy. She was helpless; she would have done virtually anything he wanted. When he stopped, it was by his own willpower, not hers. She could feel him shaking, his strong, powerful body quaking against her as if he were chilled, though his skin was hot to the touch. He sat her upright and pressed his forehead to hers, his eyes squeezed shut and his hands roughly stroking her hips, her bare back. "If I ever get inside you," he said in a strained tone, "I'll last, like, two seconds. Maybe."
She was crazy. She had to be, because two seconds of Sam sounded better than anything else she could bring to mind right now. She stared at him with glazed eyes and ripe, swollen mouth. She wanted those two seconds. She wanted them bad.
He looked down at her breasts and made a sound halfway between a whine and a groan. Muttering a curse, he leaned down and snagged her sweater from the floor, pressing it to her chest. "Maybe you'd better put this back on."
"Maybe I should," she said, and her voice sounded drugged even to herself. Her arms didn't seem to be working; they remained twined around Sam's neck. "Either you put on the sweater, or we go to the bedroom." That wasn't much of a threat, she thought, when every cell in her body was saying "Yes! Yes! Yes!" As long as she could keep her mouth from saying it, she was holding her own, but she was beginning to have serious doubts about holding him off for even a couple of days, much less a couple of weeks the way she had planned. Torturing him didn't sound like nearly as much fun as it had before, because now she knew just how much she would also be torturing herself.
He stuffed her arms inside the sweater and pulled it over her head, jerking the fabric into place. The sweater was inside out, she saw, but who cared? She didn't. "You're trying to kill me," he accused. "I'm going to make you pay, too."
"How?" she asked with interest, leaning against him. The same thing that was wrong with her arms was also wrong with her spine; it wouldn't hold her upright. "Instead of that half hour of thrusting time you claim you want, I'm going to stop at twenty-nine minutes." She snickered. "I thought you were holding out for two seconds."
"That's just the first time. The second time we're going to set the sheets on fire."
It behooved her, she thought, to get off his lap. His erection was like an iron bar prodding her hip, and talking about sex wasn't helping any. If she really, really didn't want to go to bed with him now, she should get up. But she really, really did want to go to bed with him, and only a small portion of her brain was still cautious. That small portion, however, was insistent. She had learned the hard way not to assume happily-ever-after would happen for her, and just because they were hot for each other didn't mean there was anything between them other than sex.
She cleared her throat. "I should get up, shouldn't I?"
"If you have to move at all, do it slowly."
"That close, huh?"
"Just call me Mount Etna."
"Who's Edna?"
He laughed, as she had intended, but the sound was strained. Gingerly she eased off his lap. He winced and awkwardly climbed to his feet. The front of his pants looked deformed, the way it was tented out. Jaine tried not to stare.
"Tell me about your family," she blurted.
"What?" He looked as if he was having trouble following the change of subject.
"Your family. Tell me about them."
"Why?"
"To get your mind off… you know." She indicated the "you know" in question. "You said you have two sisters."
"And four brothers."
She blinked. "Seven. Wow."
"Yeah. Unfortunately, my oldest sister, Dorothy, was the third child. My folks kept trying to have another girl so she wouldn't be the only one. They had three more boys trying to get Doro a sister."
"Where are you in the lineup?"
"Second."
"Are you a close family?"