She was sobered by a stab of longing.
“You, um, you wanted me,” she whispered.
Jon’s face went hard. “I’m warning you again. Don’t get all intense about me.” His voice was flinty. “Don’t even look at me that way.”
She looked away. Shit. She was scaring him off already, wrecking this for herself. “Sorry,” she whispered. “Can’t help it.”
He was silent for a moment. “Help it,” he said flatly. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all. What a fucking surprise.”
Oh, no, no, no. She was playing what few cards she had all wrong. “Oh, don’t worry.” She forced lightness into her voice. “My intentions are completely dishonorable. I’m leaving the Northwest, too.”
“You are? Where are you going?”
“San Francisco,” she informed him. “I got accepted into the training program of the Circo della Luna Rossa a few months ago. I cannot wait. I am so out of here.”
He looked impressed. “Wow. I’ve heard about that show. That’s, uh, pretty amazing. What do Mac and Danny think of it all?”
Her eyes dropped. “They, uh, don’t actually know about it yet.”
There was an expressive silence. “Ah,” he said.
“They’re going to be unthrilled,” she confessed. “But it’s not up to them. Anyhow. Never mind my brothers. The point is, I want no ties. I need to be able to just pick up and go. Travel the world for months at a time. So put your mind at ease. I’m just using you for sex.”
“I see,” he said, his voice velvety. “If you’re such a hardboiled, tough broad using me for sex, why are your legs clamped together?”
In fact, they were. Jon’s hands were exerting gentle, constant pressure. Her thighs shook with the effort of resisting. She laughed, which released the tension. Her thighs opened to his coaxing hands.
He stared down at her, rapt. That muscle still pulsed in his jaw.
She felt so exposed. Her pubic hair was just a dark silky swatch that hid nothing of her tender private bits.
Jon looked hypnotized. His eyes glowed with a focused hunger more potent than physical touch. He caressed her pussy with his fingertips. She jerked, like she’d been shocked. He grabbed her hips and scooted them to the edge of the couch. She fought for balance, and lost. Tumbled back, splayed wide. He leaned down and put his mouth to her.
Oh. It felt so good, it was scary. She’d naively thought, with her erotic reading, and being her own enthusiastic best friend and all, that she knew how deliciously nice that would feel. She hadn’t had a clue.
She hadn’t factored in the trembling, shivering, on-the-edge feeling, the cool air that shivered over the surface of her skin, the flickering from the fire. Those fierce, bright eyes, flicking up to watch her reaction.
She quivered and moaned. Every swirling caress of his mouth, his tongue, was a shock of startled delight. She couldn’t stop moving, twitching, but only because it was so…damn…good, oh God—
The explosion was so wrenching, she fell away, lost herself.
He was at her again when she came back to herself, but she tried to push his face away. “Let me rest,” she begged. “Give me a sec.”
“I’m not leaving you wanting more. I’m going to leave you too tired to move,” he said. “If we’re gonna do this, I’m gonna make it count.”
He went at it slower the next time, building her up, making her wait. She was shivering on the brink of an explosion when he forced his finger inside her. “So tight,” he muttered. “I love how you hug me.”
She pushed herself against his hand, pleading for deeper, faster. More. She needed something so bad and he had it to give. He stroked that spot inside she’d never known about, while his tongue lapped and swirled, and then fastened his lips over the taut bud of her clit, exerting the perfect suckling pressure, fluttering his tongue…
The climax took her so violently, she passed out, for a few seconds.
When she