settling right where she ached like she’d been without sex for centuries, not a couple of years.

  “Hurry,” she demanded.

  “I’ve waited so damn long. I’m not rushing this.”

  He’d waited? For her?

  The puzzle made no sense, but his gruff whisper shot both a fresh thrill and a protest through her. Her body throbbed like a ceaseless toothache. He was going to make her wait.

  “You’ve flushed the prettiest pink. Everything about you turns me on.” His raspy whisper throbbed inside her.

  His voice…low and rough and arousing. A hint of something familiar. Should she know it?

  Lauren frowned, trying to puzzle it out with her overheated brain. But he settled on top of her again, her sensitive breasts meeting the hot slab of his chest. Think tank time was over.

  A light dusting of hair grazed her nipples. And he was hard everywhere—pecs, abs, cock, thighs—all taut and ready and covering her with the intent to take. Electricity sparked every sensitive spot on her skin. Lauren softened around him, her body fitting against him perfectly, molding her every curve to his hard angles. Amazing. Like pieces of a puzzle made for each other. Perfect.

  She raised her hips to him. “Now.”

  “I’m dying to.” The words were a tortured moan. “But I have to get my mouth on you first. I have to taste you.”

  Before she could protest, his lips brushed the side of her breast. Heat curled everywhere he kissed and laved. He lifted his head, and Lauren swore she could feel his gaze on her nipples. More blood rushed to them, engorging them.

  “Fucking beautiful,” he murmured as his tongue curled around the sensitive tip.

  Pleasure washed over her, cascading down her senses like a hot fall of liquid desire. She moaned, arched toward him—and he rewarded her by sucking her breast deep into his mouth. Voracious. His hard pulls tugged the ache between her legs into something sharp and impatient. A gentle scrape of his teeth, a subtle nip, then explosions of sensation detonated all through her, and she cried out.

  “So responsive,” he praised as he transferred his attention to her other nipple.

  He laved it with the same care, a hard suck, a small stinging bite. The pleasure ratcheted up, the ache clamping down deep in her sex. She clenched her hands into fists. Perspiration filmed her chest. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.

  Lauren could only want.

  And when he smoothed his palm down her belly, yanked off her thong, and slid his hot finger through her aching wet slit, she cried out.

  “Oh, hell,” he panted against her breast. “You’re bare. Do you shave?”

  “Wax,” she moaned.

  “That’s so damn sexy.”

  It was merely cleaner to her, but everything he said made her feel sexy. No one had made her feel like a desirable woman in a very long time. She wanted more. Now.

  She opened her mouth to make a demand of her own when he circled his fingers around her swollen, humid opening, sensitizing her to his touch. Before she could take another breath, he plunged two fingers deep.

  Oh, God. She was dissolving. Disintegrating. Coming apart already. How much of her mind would she lose if he thrust his cock inside her?

  “I knew you’d feel amazing,” he groaned.

  But she barely heard. Pleasure ripped a cry from her throat. He was sending her into a spiral she had never experienced, had barely imagined in her wildest fantasies. And he thought she was amazing?

  He twisted his fingers inside her and hooked them upward, reaching a sensitive spot in her slick channel that nearly had her coming off the bed. And if he kept touching her there, she’d be coming. Period.

  Lauren thrust her hips up and pleaded, “Now. Please.”

  “Soon.”

  “But—”

  As he thrust his fingers deep again, she felt him shake his head. No.

  Damn!

  Soft strands of his hair tickled her skin as he shifted down, his mouth leading the way. Pressing soft kisses on her shoulder, the side of her breast, her belly…lower, she gasped, writhed, moaned.

  “I’ve got to taste you.” The words were a harsh whisper against the bare flesh of her sex as he rubbed and pressed against the ultra-sensitive spot inside her. “Open for me, Lauren.”

  She did, probably setting a new world record as she bent her knees and raised to him in invitation, ready and eager for him to envelop her, fill her…fulfill her.

  “You’re damn tight,” he gritted, maneuvering his fingers into the hot depths of her sex. “How long has it been?”

  She was about to explode into a million pieces and he wanted her to answer a question? “Two years,” she gasped. “And a few months.”

  “Then let’s make sure you’re good and wet before I fuck you. Because I’m going to tonight. Hard.”

  Tim had never talked dirty. Never been edgy or blunt. For years, sex with him had been mechanical and automatic. Silent. Her stranger brought an intensity to the bedroom that drove her wild. Well, that and the way he touched her. The way he noticed her flushing skin, responded to her fresh waxing, cared about her part of the experience.

  Whoever he was when he wasn’t seducing her, he must be at least a somewhat decent guy.

  If that was the case, why would he resort to sneaking into her house and cuffing her to her bed to get her attention?

  Good question. And she really ought to get an answer now. Many answers, actually. Caving in to ruthless seduction by a breaking-and-entering seducer? Some rational part of her brain reasserted itself and insisted she wasn’t ready to raise the white flag. Begging a stranger to claim her body and take her as he pleased? Stupid.

  “Do I know you?”

  “No questions now.”

  “Yes, now. Right—”

  He glided a thumb across her clit, the sweet, hot friction robbing her ability to speak.

  “Ohmigod!”

  “More?” he taunted.

  No, get the hell out—of my body, my bed, my life; it should be the automatic response. It wasn’t nearly as automatic as whimpering and lifting her hips to him.

  She fought to whip up her defiance. But why fight everything she’d been wanting since her divorce? Hell, since her marriage to Tim had gone south? Lauren wanted passion, hot and wild with no strings attached. This stranger was giving it to her, as if he knew her body intimately, perfectly.

  “Yes,” she gasped.

  “Good girl. I’ve got a reward for you…”

  The fiery press of desire burned between her legs. His hot exhalations grazed her clit, sending her temperature spiking.

  Before she could berate and beg him in the same breath, he settled his head between her legs, wiggled those fingers still impaling her, and ran the tip of his tongue right over her clit.

  Lauren screamed with the livewire sensation. Shockingly hot. Wickedly destructive.

  The sensations magnified when he sucked her clit into his mouth. The wet blade of his tongue stroked her sensitive nubbin, shredding her self-control.

  With a loud cry, Lauren arched to him, gripping the headboard in her fists.

  “That’s it,” he urged. “I’ve thought about doing this to you so many times…” he murmured against her slick folds.

  In an insistent pace, he kissed, nipped, suckled, thrust—and utterly possessed her. Pleasure soared. Blood engorged her flesh, making every swipe of his tongue even more sensitive than the last. Her heart roared like a wild gong in her ears. Boom, boom, boom. Tighter, tighter, the ache coiled, building into something beyond big. Huge was too small. Gigantic. Phenomenal. Mind-bending.

  “Oh! Oh my…” she panted.

  “Now,” he demanded, thrusting his fingers into her depths and finding just the right spot as another lash from his tongue had her ache peaking, her pleasure skyrocketing.

  With a scream, she exploded in a never-ending series of spasms and clamped down on his fingers, ecstasy saturating her.

  Lauren had barely caught her bre
ath before the stranger wound his way up her body, covering her. Every inch of his body was rigid with hunger, taut with holding back. She shivered, knowing what he’d want next.

  Feeling how much she wanted it, too.

  “Are you still on the pill?”

  Still? He knew she had been? Did he know about her irregular periods, too? “Yes.”

  “Good. Got to fuck you. Now,” he growled. “Nothing between us.”

  “Nothing?” She panicked. No condom?

  “I’m healthy. I promise.”

  “I can’t just take the word of a stranger.” Even if he sounded so damn sincere.

  “I swear, I haven’t touched a woman without a condom in twenty years. I just had a physical, and I’m clean. You’re safe. I would never endanger you in any way. Please.” His grip tightened on her. “Please.”

  Odd and crazy, but she believed him. Or maybe she was just melting from the inside out from the passion he was so adept at giving. It made her hunger, made her weak. It made her do one of the most wild, impulsive things she ever had in her life.

  Panting, craving him, Lauren sent him a shaky nod.

  Hell, she’d just come more spectacularly than she ever had in her life, but his intensity and determination alone were enough to renew her arousal.

  He fitted his hands beneath her, then cupped her ass in the hot scald of his hands and whispered to her. “I’m going to get inside you, so damn deep you won’t remember what it’s like without me there. I’m going to make you ache, make you beg. Make you mine.”

  * * * *

  Noah took a deep breath, determination to do exactly as he said washing through him. And by the time tonight was over, she was going to feel his possession all the way down to her heart.

  Under the soft golden light beside her bed, she flushed a pretty pink once more and bit her lip, now swollen from his kisses. Her soft blondish curls tumbled around her shoulders, longer strands caressing the pale column of her neck and curling toward her breasts.

  God, she was gorgeous. And he couldn’t believe that tonight—finally—she was his.

  A fact that wasn’t going to change—not if he could help it.

  Lauren Southall was about to experience what ten years of a man’s pent up lust felt like.

  Hell, he’d tried everything—every woman—to take away the edge. He’d known the first time he met Lauren, shaken her hand and saw those brown eyes dancing with life and humor, that he had to have her. But Tim’s wife had been off limits. Over the years, he’d seen her happiness dim, known the divorce was inevitable. And he’d bided his time, occupying it with women like Misty, who expected nothing more than good sex and a nice parting gift.

  Now, his waiting and planning—the biting ache for a woman he could see and talk to, laugh with and touch casually, but never have—was all about to be over.

  Noah swallowed hard, gripped her hip with one hand and guided himself to her steamy entrance with the other. He eased in an inch, gritting his teeth against the hot silk of her wet sheath tightening on him, still rippling with gentle aftershocks.

  The blindfold shielded her eyes from him, and he cursed the necessity of protecting his identity so she could feel him—and not be weirded out by the fact she was fucking Tim’s buddy and her boss. Damn it, he wanted to see her expressive eyes widen as he filled her.

  He would, he promised himself. Someday, he’d look right into those saucy dark eyes as he gave her every inch he had, every bit of love he’d been feeling for years. First, he had to own her body, prove he could master it. Surely, her heart and her flesh were connected. Once he’d conquered one, the other couldn’t be too far behind, right?

  The claiming was going to start—and end—tonight.

  She gasped at the feel of him breaching her, and he watched a sweet flush creep down her cheeks, between her collarbones. Already she was scalding him, killing him with her heat. What a way to go…

  He covered her lips with his own, penetrating her mouth as he pushed his way inside her body, inch by torturous inch. Under him, Lauren moaned, her sex clamping down on his cock, her heels in the small of his back.

  Slick. A smooth glide. Down, down. He tunneled into her in a seemingly endless stroke until he was finally seated to the hilt. God, she was tight. Silken. Better than any woman in memory. Better than any fantasy.

  He groaned, throwing his head back as she took him completely, the head of his cock pushing against her womb.

  “That feels so good.” Her voice fluttered.

  Understatement of a fucking lifetime. Especially when she tilted her hips up to him and he slid in another half inch. Even his testicles rested tight against her now. He’d never felt anything like the electric pleasure pulsing through him.

  Noah took a deep breath. “Hang on.”

  She sent him a shaky nod. And he pulled back until just a fraction of his head remained inside her, then he drove deep again. Lauren cried out. The sharp note echoed through the room, throwing a shiver down his spine. And she closed around him, her body sucking him back in and clinging.

  Jesus, two strokes into this, and she was already blowing his mind. He had no doubt a third would feel every bit as good.

  Better, Noah soon found out. Pleasure shot up his cock, coiling heat low in his belly, curling his toes.

  On the fourth stroke, he invaded her mouth again, mimicking the action of their bodies with their tongues. Lauren melted around him, opening, accepting, smelling so damn good. And meeting him with every downward stroke, tipping up to him, ripping through his control.

  But he couldn’t stop, even though he felt like he was driving a hundred miles an hour down a twisting road while blindfolded. He was destined to crash—hard.

  But not until Lauren crashed with him.

  Bracing his hands against her hips, Noah forced himself to slow down, deliver each thrust with deliberate impact and maximum friction. Gritting his teeth, he growled as he filled her to the hilt again. Beneath him, Lauren’s little pants as she tried to catch her breath were driving him out of his mind.

  As he found her magic spot, the one guaranteed to fast-forward her into orgasm, she writhed.

  With short digs of his cock, he worked her, dragging the head, which felt as if it had ballooned ten times its normal size, right where she needed it. She rewarded him quickly, breath catching, flush spreading across her fair skin, thighs latching on, pussy tightening.

  “I—oh! I need…”

  “I know what you need,” he rasped into her ear. “I’m going to give it to you.”

  He did. He lengthened his strokes again to deliver friction, rub her G-spot, then nudge her clit with his pelvis at the end.

  “Yes,” she cried out.

  He did it again and again, thrusting deep, jolting her cervix with every fierce downward stroke until her vaginal walls fisted him and rippled with the pending explosion. Balls deep, he rocked against her again.

  “Yes.” Her fists gripped the headboard. “Yes!”

  One more long, calculated plunge inside her and she came apart.