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“Get it out of our systems? Sex?” He stared at her.
“Not sex,” Holly said hotly. “Each other!”
Not likely, Lukas thought. If he could have got Holly out of his system, he’d have done it years ago.
“You won’t even have to break up with me,” she went on cheerfully. “It’s perfect. We can have a six-week affair. Then we go our separate ways. I head off for the far side of the world, and you do whatever you’re planning to do next. Simple. See?”
Lukas saw. He thought she was completely out of her flaming mind. It made him furious at the same time it made him desperate.
“You think that’ll work?” Pardon his skepticism.
“Of course it will work.”
If she were taller, she would have been nose to nose with him now. As it was her breasts were within a millimeter of touching his bare chest. He caught a whiff of citrus scent, enticing him further.
He lifted a hand and touched her cheek, ran his finger down it to linger at the point of her chin. She held herself absolutely still, didn’t even seem to be breathing. He wanted her breathing. Panting. Eager. Desperate for him.
He bent his head just as Holly lifted her hands and laid both against his chest.
It was like being branded. Lukas’s jaw tightened. Everything else did, too. His nipples beaded under the touch of her palms. She rubbed them over him experimentally. He swallowed a groan and lowered his mouth to hers.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE KISS BEGAN SLOWLY, almost gently, echoing the kiss of long ago, as if Lukas were leashing his passion, keeping everything under tight control.
Then his tongue touched hers. And Holly could taste him on her lips. Instinctively, hers parted to give him entrance, wanting more. The kiss became harder, more urgent, almost desperate.
It felt exactly the way she felt—the way she had been trying not to feel for so long that it was a relief to not have to try to resist. She wanted what Lukas wanted—to touch, to taste. More than taste—to devour.
Of their own volition, her hands slid up the hair-roughened muscular expanse of his chest. She felt tiny nubs beneath her fingers, tweaked them and heard him groan. Holly swallowed his groan, darting her tongue between his lips to touch his teeth even as his tangled with hers. His hands, hard and warm and calloused, slid beneath her T-shirt, drawing her even closer, claiming her.
It wouldn’t last, Holly knew that. It was desire. Lust. Passion. It was sex, just as Lukas had said. And it would run its course. It wasn’t love. For it to be love, it had to be mutual. It had to knit together two people, create a relationship, make them better and stronger together than they were apart. They had to want that.
Lukas didn’t. He’d made it clear more than once.
Love was what she’d had with Matt—a sense of completeness that they had shared. A bedrock of enduring love that worlds—galaxies—could be built on.
This was a shooting star.
But what was wrong with a shooting star? It was short and sweet and stunningly beautiful. And when it burned out, as Holly knew it would, it couldn’t possibly hurt more than losing Matt had. And she would have the memory of Lukas. She would never have to wonder.
And wasn’t that better than no star at all?
She assured herself it was. And she promised herself she wouldn’t get burned. It was just pointless to keep denying the attraction. Everything she’d believed in when she’d married Matt hadn’t prevented her from losing him.
She wasn’t counting on keeping Lukas. She was going into this with her eyes open. It would be fine.
Still, when Lukas growled, “What are we waiting for?” into her ear, she felt a shiver of panic. But the feel of his lips on hers fed her desire, and she stopped fighting it and gave herself over to the need. She wrapped her arms around his neck and nuzzled his jaw.
Lukas lowered her to the bed, then settled next to her, a hand braced on either side of her. His eyes were dark, and yet she could see the hunger in them. And when he lowered his head and kissed her again, his mouth hot and hungry, Holly met his kiss with a hunger of her own.
Her hands slid over his back and the hard muscles of his arms and shoulders. While he was lean, his muscles were most definitely those of a man who worked hard physically. She loved running her fingers over him and feeling the tremor of those hard muscles beneath her hands.
Lukas’s own hands were doing explorations of their own, sliding beneath the hem of her T-shirt, tracing the line of the waistband of her shorts. Holly remembered how it felt to have his hands on her. He made her quiver. He made her moan.
