He'd deliberately saved kissing her mouth for last, because once they kissed again, he wouldn't be able to keep from making her entirely, completely his. And he wanted her to know how precious, how special, she was to him before that happened. Not just to have a quick roll in the hay that would be over far too soon.
He ran the flats of his hands up her naked curves--the sweet flare of her hips that flowed into her waist, the swell of her full breasts, her strong shoulders. Finally, he tangled his fingers in the dark silk of her hair.
"You make me happy, Roman." He felt her words as much as he heard them. Felt them all the way down in a part of his heart he hadn't ever let come alive. "So, so happy."
How could he do anything but tell her the truth? "You make me happy too."
And then, his mouth was on hers, and hers was on his.
Finally.
Every nerve in Roman's body came alive when Suzanne opened her lips so that he could slip his tongue in to taste her. Nothing had ever been as sweet. And nothing had ever felt as good as it did when she slid her tongue against his.
Slowly. Softly. That was how he wanted to kiss her. He wanted this to be a kiss for the ages. A kiss that neither of them would ever forget. But there was no way to hold back the fire raging inside them both. One that soon made their kisses heated, feverish, frenzied.
Everything he wished he could say to her, he said with his kiss instead. The way their tongues danced, their breath merged, their sighs and moans filled the room--all of it was filled with hope. Dreams. Wishes. And hunger.
So much hunger that the more he had of her, the more he needed.
Somewhere in the middle of their kiss, her hands left the bed frame to run over his shoulders and back.
"I need you." She fumbled for the button on his pants. "Inside me." He lifted his hips so that she could yank the button open and the zipper down. "Now."
She was starting to shove off his pants when he distracted her with another kiss. He needed to lick her lips from corner to corner, top to bottom, needed to stroke her tongue with his, needed to kiss and kiss and kiss her until she was practically coming again from that alone.
But she was too focused on her goal of having him inside her--the best damned goal in the entire world as far as he was concerned--to let him distract her for long. Grasping the dark wool of his slacks with her hands, she tore through them just as he had her T-shirt.
He'd never been with a woman this fierce, this determined, this captivating, this perfect in every single way.
And then she was shoving off his boxers and wrapping her long fingers around him. It felt so good that he could barely force himself to pull away from her hand.
"I knew letting your hands go free was a bad idea," he growled against her mouth as he threaded his fingers through hers.
If she touched him again like that, he'd explode, but that wasn't the only reason he needed to hold her hands. Their lips were one point of deep connection--their palms pressing close, their fingers entwined, were another.
He'd never in his life held a woman's hands, not when they were walking down the street, and especially not when they were in bed. You didn't hold hands with someone you were casually sleeping with, only with someone you cared about. And as he'd confessed earlier in the night, he'd never cared about a woman before.
But he needed to hold Suzanne's hands. Needed to be close to her in any and every possible way. Skin to skin. Mouth to mouth. Hand to hand. And now...
She lifted her hips against his and he slid his erection over her slick heat, making them both moan at how good it was. "Again," he urged her, pushing against her wetness, but not quite inside. "Yes," he murmured against her mouth as she circled her hips so that the thick, hard head of his shaft was rubbing over her liquid hot center. "Make yourself feel good, Suzanne." He loved saying her name, loved the way the curves and edges of it felt on his tongue. "Make yourself come on me." Sweat dripped from his chest to hers as he worked to hold back his own release so that she could find hers. "Just like this, with nothing between us, just the way I know you've wanted me. Just the way I've wanted you."
She moaned her pleasure at his filthy words into their next kiss, then gasped as he thrust his tongue deep and she launched into her next climax.
Roman wanted nothing more than to drive himself into her, but somehow, he remembered to just keep rubbing and grazing and grinding against her until she finally stilled beneath him. The very last thing he wanted was to pull away from her now, but he hadn't been thinking clearly enough earlier to get a condom ready.
She made a sound of protest as he slid his hands from hers and leaped off the bed. He grabbed a handful of condoms from the box he kept in his closet, then jumped back over her, scattering all but one of the little packages across his bed.
Her laughter wound around his heart. "Great minds think alike," she said. "We're definitely going to need more than one."
Utterly captivated by her smile, he momentarily forgot to rip open the package. All he could do was stare down at the most beautiful woman in the world...and marvel that she was here, in his bed.
Reaching for the small square packet, she said, "I'll take care of that." A beat later she was tossing the wrapper to the side and reaching for him again. "And don't you dare try to take over for me. I'm dying to get my hands on you." She licked her lips. "To start, anyway."
He deserved a medal for not losing it as her fingers slid over his shaft while she painted mental pictures of her lips doing the same. Gritting his teeth, he somehow withstood her teasing touches until she finished rolling on the condom.
He took her hands again, crushed her mouth beneath his, then sank deep in one hard, desperate thrust. As she wrapped her long legs around him to take him even deeper, they rocked and kissed and whispered each other's names. Pleasure climbed, climbed, climbed. So high that Roman temporarily forgot that they could only have tonight as he lost himself completely to the woman who had turned his world upside down from the very first moment he'd set eyes on her.
Finally--finally--he was loving her the way he'd wanted to love her from the start. Not only with his body, but with every piece of his once-hardened heart as well...and a soul that had been lost in darkness for far too long.
Roman had always vowed not to make the mistake of dreaming about true, lasting love that could never be. But as Suzanne looked into his eyes with pure, sweet emotion and whispered, "I love you," at the same time that another climax began to take her over, he had no choice but to let the forbidden dream become real as he fell heart first into ecstasy, with Suzanne held tight in his arms.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Suzanne had always dreamed of finding love. But nothing could have prepared her for the passion, the pleasure, the joy, the breathless wonder of loving Roman.
She wanted to lie in his bed forever, naked, limbs entwined, their hearts beating like crazy as they worked to catch their breath. But her empty stomach, and its loud growl, had other plans.
Levering up on one muscular arm, he stared down at her. "Sounds like you need that pasta I was planning to make you." He dropped his gaze to her lips, still tingling from his wonderful kisses. "Before you distracted me."
"It was the best distraction ever, wasn't it?"
She loved the way his lips curved up in a smile. "It was."
He hadn't made her any promises tonight, hadn't told her he loved her back, but though she hoped both would be coming soon, his lovemaking had already told her everything she needed to know about how he felt.
He touched her like she was the most precious woman on earth.
He kissed her like he didn't ever want to stop.
And when he made love to her, her heart grew so full it nearly burst from her chest.
She was on the verge of doing her best to distract him again when her stomach rumbled even louder.
"You need to eat"--he stood and pulled her from the bed so that she was standing against his gloriously hard, naked body--"so that you have e
nough energy for what I'm going to do to you next."
Mmmm. Didn't he know that when he said things like that, the last thing she wanted to do was go downstairs to the kitchen to cook and eat?
But before she could protest that she already had plenty of energy to make love to him again, he was buttoning her into his long-sleeved shirt, his yummy scent all over it.
After he pulled on a pair of faded jeans--she'd been wrong when she'd thought there couldn't possibly be anything sexier than the way he looked in a dark suit--he slipped a condom into the back pocket, then took her hand and led them out of the bedroom and down the stairs to the kitchen.
She loved holding his hand. She felt so giddy that, even though she had the worst singing voice on the planet, she wanted to break out into song. Especially when she thought about the condom he was bringing downstairs, as if he knew they wouldn't be able to keep their hands off each other long enough to make it back upstairs.
"I've never made pasta from scratch before," she said when they got to the kitchen and he threw out the dough that had grown hard while he'd been making her come over and over again. "Show me how."
The look he gave her as he first put the water on to boil, then got more eggs from the fridge and flour from the pantry, told her he'd figured out that she was up to more of her distraction tricks, but she didn't care. Any excuse to have him wrap his arms around her while they broke the eggs and folded them into the flour they'd dusted over the marble countertop. With his hands over hers, they kneaded the dough. She'd never been much interested in cooking before, but now that she saw all the sexy possibilities...
Turning her face to his, she caught his lips in a kiss. The dough was momentarily forgotten as he cupped her jaw and deepened the kiss, his tongue finding every wonderfully sensitive spot on her mouth, her cheek, her jaw. Too bad her darned stomach kept rumbling like a truck barreling down the highway.
With a groan, Roman lifted his mouth from her skin. "The dough's ready for us to roll it out and cut it into ribbons."
He put the heavy wooden roller into her hands, but though she could easily do this herself, she was glad that he didn't move away as she began to roll out the dough. Instead, he stayed with his chest pressed to her back and lifted her hair to the side to nibble at the sensitive skin he'd just bared.
Suzanne had always been rock solid when she was on the job. Nothing fazed her. Nothing ruined her concentration. But there was no way she could stay focused on the job of rolling dough when all she wanted was to turn in Roman's arms, wrap her arms around his neck, and kiss him again. Especially now that she knew how good it was to be with him, to have his hard muscles against her, his hands and mouth all over her while he drove her from peak to peak.
And there was that condom in the back pocket of his jeans, after all...
"Love me again, Roman." She whispered the words against his lips. "Right here. Right now. On the island. I'm a million times hungrier for you than anything else."
The next thing she knew, his hands were on her waist and he was lifting her up onto the counter. Her bottom squished into the half-rolled dough, but she didn't care about having to wait even longer for dinner, no matter how much her stomach rumbled.
All she cared about was finally getting to be with the man she'd been afraid she might never be able to have.
"I can't get enough of you," Roman said as he put his big hands on either side of the shirt he'd buttoned her into upstairs and tore it open. He cupped her breasts, then lowered his head to tongue her nipples, one then the other. Though they'd only just made love, he seemed utterly starved for her. He ran kisses down over her stomach, toward the part of her that ached for his touch. "I'll never be able to get enough of you."
She put her hands on his jaw so that he had to look into her eyes. "You never have to."
His expression flashed dark and intense...and then he was putting his hands on her ankles, lifting her legs over his shoulders, and lowering his mouth to her sex.
"Roman." She fell back to brace herself on the counter with her forearms as he turned her entire world inside out. No one had ever made her feel like this.
Like she would willingly give herself over to him, without question, without pause.
Like she would trust him not only with her heart, but with her soul too.
Like she was finally exactly where she needed to be, with exactly the person she was meant to be with.
"Suzanne." The way he rumbled her name against her aroused flesh sent her even higher. "You're so beautiful." He punctuated his words with a flick of his tongue and a slow slide of his fingers inside her clenching heat. "I need you." The French kiss he was giving her between her legs made every last rational thought slide out of her head. "I need you."
Hearing the urgency in his words--and the plea in them that she wasn't sure he'd meant to be there, but obviously couldn't hold back--had her shattering against his tongue and hands.
And then, as suddenly as he'd put her on the counter so that he could devour her, he was carrying her into the nearby living room, and pulling her down over him on the leather couch.
She didn't know when he'd managed to take off his jeans or put on protection, but she didn't care. All she cared about was sinking down onto him so that she could ride every thick, hard, glorious inch of him.
"Oh God." She had her hands splayed on his chest for leverage, while his were on her hips to help lift her up, then bring her back down onto his erection again and again, until she was nearly delirious from the pleasure of it. "Nothing has ever felt this good." She had never been a talker during sex, but with Roman she couldn't hold in what she was feeling. Didn't want to hold it in. "I never want to stop loving you." He shifted her hips so that every time he thrust deep, new blazes of pleasure rocketed through her. "I never want you to stop loving me." More waves of bliss moved through her when he rolled their hips together. "Please don't stop, Roman. Please."
"I won't ever stop." His hands tightened on her hips as emotion swamped his face. "I can't stop. Not with you."
He rolled them over on the couch so that she was beneath him, his mouth on hers in a deeply emotional kiss, his body taking hers--loving hers--without restraint.
She'd been stunned by how beautiful making love with him had been in his bedroom. Now she was stunned all over again by how raw, how animalistic their passion was.
Once upon a time, she would have been afraid of a love this wild, but now she relished every moment of it. She'd finally met her match in Roman, a man whose depth of desire was as boundless as hers.
Her body should have been replete from their earlier lovemaking, but she was starved for as much of Roman as she could possibly have. She'd never slept with anyone she was in love with. The whole act was so much bigger, so much better--nothing else could possibly compare to the way she felt when she was in Roman's arms.
Their kisses soon grew so wild that they fell off the couch onto the rug. Neither of them cared. All that mattered was trying to get as close as possible to each other. Every moment of bliss, every second of ecstasy he gave her as she climaxed, she not only took--she gave just as much.
"I had no idea." She could barely get the words out, as hard as her breath was coming in the aftermath of their fiery-hot lovemaking. Her voice was muffled by his broad shoulder, but she didn't want him to move away from her anytime soon. Ever, actually, given how much she loved the feel of his heavy weight over her.
Yes, she'd happily stay right here with Roman on his living room rug forever.
"About what?" Obviously not in any rush to move either, Roman's question rumbled over the top of her head.
"How amazing sex could be."
Still holding her close, he rolled them so that she was lying on his chest again. "I'm glad you didn't know. I'm glad I could be the one to show you."
She hated the flash of jealousy that shot through her. "But you knew?"
He moved a lock of damp hair away from her cheek. "I thought I did. But with you..." His th
umb brushed her lower lip as if he couldn't keep from touching her and she instinctively licked out against him, the same way he had when she'd been wiping chocolate ice cream from his mouth. "You make me want things, Suzanne."
"You make me want things too," she said, with a naughty little wiggle of her breasts and hips.
"I've never wanted anyone the way I want you--but I'm not just talking about sex." He ran one hand down over her curves as he gathered his thoughts, and she held her breath for whatever he was going to say next. "I'm talking about--"
Horror suddenly took over his face. "I hurt you." She followed his gaze to her hips. There were red marks where his fingers had gripped her during their lovemaking. "I knew I couldn't trust myself with you."
"No." She put her hands on his jaw and made him look at her. "You took me without holding back. You gave me everything you have. Everything you are." Her body was still buzzing from how good it had been. How good it felt to be as close to him as she could possibly be. "And I loved it, Roman. You know I did."
"I should have been more gentle. I haven't been gentle with you. I haven't been able to control myself long enough to go slow."
"Next time you can be gentle, but only if it feels right to go soft and slow. Because if we need to be wild again..." She kissed him, openmouthed this time, and he immediately brought his arms around her waist to drag her close.
She was more than ready to find out what next time had in store for them when her stomach roared between them. And she was beyond ready for him to tell her what other things he wanted from her besides sex.
But instead of going back to that vulnerable place, he said, "You'd better get some clothes on." He gently ran his hands up her back from her waist before levering them both up from the floor and stepping away from her. "Otherwise, I'm never going to finish making you dinner."
The only reason she went to grab her last clean T-shirt and underwear from her suitcase was because she could see that he needed more time to wrap his head around what he was feeling. Hopefully by the time dinner was ready, he'd be ready to spill the rest of his feelings to her.
Feeling sated--temporarily, at least--and more than a little overwhelmed by all the delicious sensations still zinging around in her body, instead of trying to help cook again when she was dressed, she gladly sat on a bar stool behind a topped-off glass of red wine. She smiled when she saw the Sullivan Winery label on the bottle of Zinfandel.