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touching her as a lover, not as a friend. His mouth moved over hers and into hers repeatedly, drowning her surprise with a greater need. Of their own accord, her hands slid up his chest to grasp his shoulders. More than anything they’d shared, she wanted this kiss to remember him by, and in a hundred small ways, she told him so. She touched her tongue to his and felt his heavy sigh consume her. She pressed her hips closer, and his arms encircled her with steely strength, flexing to hold her completely. All of her thoughts, all of her senses, coalesced into one burning ambition: to touch and taste and feel Josh’s body, to understand the mystery of his mouth and the way he kissed, deep and long and fully. His teeth grazed her lower lip, and pleasure rained down her body. He sucked her tongue into his mouth, and the pleasure rose again, more powerful than before. She was dying and living, and coming apart at the seams.
    Josh felt her small gasps echo in his mouth, felt the rise and fall of her breasts against his chest, and he marveled at the artless ease of her response. Nikki in love was sweet, warm, wild. The night stretched out before him with a wealth of possibilities. He would love her until she’d have no other. He’d teach her about herself in a thousand new ways, and he would teach her about him, slowly and carefully. The kiss was only a beginning, but one he never wanted to end. Her tongue tasted his lips, his mouth, and honed his arousal to a fine edge. He wanted all of her.
    Groaning, he let his hand slide under her T-shirt and up around to stroke her breast. Nikki felt the heat of his palm, the gentle kneading of his fingers, and suddenly she understood what he wanted. Much more than a kiss, nothing less than everything.
    A moment of panic, mixed with acute shyness, suspended her exploration of his mouth.
    “Don’t stop, Nikki.” He breathed the words against her lips, feeling her hesitation. He rubbed his nose down the side of hers. “You’re so beautiful in my hand. So warm, so full, and so mine.” His husky voice strummed across her emotions, filling her with exquisite yearnings.
    “I don’t want to stop,” she said quietly, the fall of her hair hiding her blush from him. “I don’t understand, Josh. One minute you want to send me away, and the next—” Her voice softened to a whisper. “I don’t know how to do this, Josh.”
    Only Nikki, he thought with gentle understanding, only Nikki would make such a confession. With his free hand, he lifted her chin, then let his gaze roam over the flushed beauty of her face.
    “We’re right together. We always have been.” Using every advantage he had, he brushed his thumb over the peak of her breast and watched with pleasure as her eyes darkened with the sweetness of passion. “You must know that, Nikki.”
    “We’ve never been like this before,” she said breathlessly, barely managing to keep her gaze focused on him. The sensations he sent spiraling through her body were so powerful, so new.
    “We should have been, a long time ago,” he said, refusing to lose her now. Physically and emotionally, he’d already started making love to her. “I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve lain awake in the room next to yours and thought of nothing but touching you here.” With his index finger, he traced the valley between her breasts.
    “Oh, Josh. You don’t know what you’re doing to me.” She felt weak and dangerously out of control.
    “Yes, I do,” he murmured. “You’re doing the same thing to me. What you’re feeling, I feel. What you want, I want. To touch and kiss and hold you naked against me until I can’t even think for needing to be inside you.”
    The boldness of his confession singed her cheeks with embarrassment and the rest of her body with an answering need. She saw the truth of his desire in the lines of strain around his mouth. She felt it in the tense hardness of his body. She knew it in her heart.
    “Why now?” she