AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Phoebe, if things keep progressing at their current rate, it's about eighty percent guaranteed we're going to be intimate before this night's over, so you'd better tell me what's on your mind. Otherwise, the whole time we're going at it, I'll be waiting for you to bark like a dog or tell me to call you Howard."
She gave him an unsteady smile. "I'm not that imaginative. I wanted to ask—I mean, would you mind very much if we—" She got stuck and tried again. "If we pretend I'm a—"
"Lion tamer? Prison guard?"
"A virgin," she whispered and felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment.
He gazed at her. "A virgin?"
She dropped her eyes, mortified at what she'd revealed. "Forget it. Forget I said anything. Let's just do it."
"Phoebe, darlin', what's going on here?" He brushed his index finger over her lips.
"There's nothing going on."
"You can tell me. I'm sort of like a bedroom priest; I've pretty much heard it all. Have you ground out so many miles between the bedposts that you want to turn back the odometer a little?"
"Something like that," she murmured.
"I don't have a whole lot of experience with virgins to draw on. Matter of fact, I don't recall that I have any. Still, I's'pose I could use my imagination." And then his eyes narrowed. "I don't have to pretend that you're sixteen or anything, do I, because that kiddie stuff turns me off."
"Thirty-three," she whispered.
"That old?"
He was teasing her, and she knew it, so she tried to sound offhand. "Why not? Maybe one of those dried-up women who's secretly afraid of men. Somebody like that."
"Now this is getting kinda interesting." His thumb brushed along the very top of her breasts, just above the edge of the bedspread. "I don't suppose a woman like you would let me have another look at what you've got hidden under here?"
"As long as you don't say anything nasty about them."
"I wouldn't do that."
"You did. You told me to show you my—"
He pressed his finger over her lips. "That wasn't me. Only a real jerk would talk like that."
She loosened her grip on the spread. Slowly, he lowered it, letting the cover fall to her waist.
"Now a man like me would appreciate a sight like this." Despite his words, he didn't even look. Instead, he was studying her face.
Before she knew it, she was the one touching him. She ran her palms over his arms and along his shoulders. She was entranced with the contrast between his iron-hard muscles and the gentle way he nuzzled her neck. He trailed kisses along her jaw, nibbled her chin, the corner of her mouth. Finally he drew back and looked down at her breasts.
They had been painted by Flores and viewed by multitudes, but she felt as if they were being seen for the first time. He touched her. Just the pads of his thumbs on the very tips of her nipples, and the feeling was so exquisite that she sighed, an expression of desire and pleasure that spread all the way to her toes.
"Lean back," he whispered.
She sank into the pillows. He continued to touch her like that, just the very tips of her nipples, until she didn't think she could bear it any longer. She had never experienced desire like this, so warm and liquid with no place for fear. He slipped his hand farther into her panties.
"Stop."
He immediately withdrew.
She smiled. "I want to see you." Going up on her knees, she reached for his zipper, then found the courage to slide it down over the heavy bulge that strained the denim.
"Hold on a minute, darlin'." He stilled her hands before she could go further and got up from the bed to disappear into the bathroom. He reappeared a moment later.
Her lips curved as he tossed a handful of foil-wrapped condoms on the table at the side of the bed. "What an ego."
