"Tell me," she whispered.
His mouth curved up, just enough for his eyes to crinkle at the sides. "I'm in love with you, Grace."
Hadn't she known it was what he was going to say? Hadn't she read the truth of it in the way he looked at her? In the way he touched and kissed her? In the way he treated her son as though he was the most precious child in the entire world?
But that didn't make the impact of his words of love any less forceful.
The only way she could keep her legs from giving out beneath her was to grip his hand still pressed over her heart, while his other hand on her hip held the rest of her steady. She knew he could see how much he'd just rocked her world, even more than he'd already rocked it by simply existing. And yet, just as he'd always gently pushed her to let him into her life since the day they'd met, he didn't let her retreat from what he'd said now, either.
"I'm so in love with you that in one week, you and Mason have already become everything to me." He leaned in so that his cheek pressed against hers and his lips were at her ear. "That's why I'm nervous--because I want tonight to be perfect. Completely perfect."
His breath was warm on her sensitive skin, but she shivered at the beautiful things he was saying to her.
Beautiful, but so incredibly overwhelming.
Could she trust that what she felt really was love this time? Or was it just a deeper physical hunger than she'd ever thought to feel? And when would she stop being so frightened of making another mistake?
Grace had never been more grateful for anything in her life than she was for her son, but at the same time, she'd never withstand the kind of heartbreak she'd been through with his father again.
"I didn't tell you I'm in love with you so that you'd feel you had to say it back. I know I've pushed you to date me since the moment we met, and I can't regret doing that when I really do believe that you and I and Mason belong together. But I would never push you to give me your heart before you're ready, just as I would never push you to make love with me if you're not ready."
She wanted to tell him that he had her heart, wished she could just leap without being afraid of crashing and breaking into so many pieces this time that she'd never be whole again. But for tonight, there was only one thing she was one hundred percent sure about.
"I want to make love with you, Dylan. More than I can remember ever wanting anything else."
The final word had barely fallen from her lips when his mouth came down on hers, hot and borderline desperate.
"You can't want it more than I do." His lips rained a sizzling and heated path from her mouth to her jaw. "When does Mason wake up in the morning?"
She couldn't get her head around his question for a few seconds, not in the wake of the sensual pleasure of having his mouth and hands roving hungrily over her. Finally, she managed, "Six."
"How am I going to fit everything I want to do with you into nine hours?"
A rush of need hit her then, so potent that she went a little crazy. Crazier, even, than she'd already been for Dylan. Now that she'd decided to make love with him, to finally give in to the soul-deep craving that she'd been working so hard to fight these past weeks, need clawed at her. And she couldn't wait another second.
Grace reached for his shirt, her fingers fumbling and desperate as she tried to get it off him. "I need you to take me. Now. Right now."
She barely had his shirt halfway up when he put a hand over hers. "We may only have nine hours, but a little foreplay and a handful of orgasms aren't going to kill you."
A handful of orgasms before he finally took her? She'd never survive it.
"You know I haven't had sex in forever, that I haven't ever had it with a man who makes me feel the way you always do. Don't make me wait. We can just do it once to take the edge off and then--"
His mouth on hers cut her off, and though his hand fisted in her hair, the slow, sweet way his tongue stroked over hers until she had no choice but to match his rhythm told her more clearly than any words would have that he was most definitely going to make her wait.
And that she was going to love every single second of it.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Dylan wanted to rip off the pretty dress that had been giving him little glimpses of cleavage and leg all night as she moved. He wanted to devour her in one big greedy gulp. He wanted to claim her and make her his own and never let her go. But even as desire raced through his veins so hot and fast that it nearly stole away his sense of right and wrong, he knew he couldn't let himself do any of that tonight.
Tonight wasn't about speed. It wasn't about taking.
It was about giving Grace endless pleasure.
Pleasure that would make her head spin so fast, she'd have no choice but to hold on tight to him...and never let go.
He slid his hand down to cup the nape of her neck. "Do you have any idea how much I want you? How many times I've dreamed about being inside of you in the past week?"
"Please," she begged again, "stop talking to me like that. You're only making it worse."
"Better," he promised. "I'm going to make tonight better than anything you've ever imagined."
He moved his hands so that he could slowly brush both thumbs over the slim straps of her dress on each shoulder, touching both fabric and skin. Though she was so hot to the touch that he felt scalded by her, she shivered.
"Your skin," he said as he lowered his mouth to press a kiss to one shoulder, "it's so soft. So sensitive. And so damned sweet."
He brushed aside the pretty braided fabric so that he could close his mouth over her collarbone. He loved the way she arched into him to give even more of herself than he was already taking. He'd meant it when he said he was going to kiss every inch of her that he uncovered. And as he made his way to her other shoulder and had to stop to lick into the hollow of her throat, her taste was so intoxicating that it was going to take everything in him to hold on to his self-control tonight.
"Dylan." He could feel her nipples beading hard against his chest through her dress as she pressed herself tightly against him while working to take in a ragged breath.
He gave her more of what she clearly wanted by tasting the upper swell of her breast on the way to her other collarbone. She didn't say his name again, just made sexy little sounds of need and desire as she arched into him and silently begged him to take more of her.
All of her. That was what he wanted. Every perfect curve. Every beautiful, shuddering breath. Every sweet moan of desire. And even after they were temporarily sated from their lovemaking, he knew he'd want even more. Everything.
But for tonight, he'd have to be happy to take only what she offered. A few perfect hours with her naked and soft in his arms. A night he'd yearned for since the first moment he'd set eyes on her.
He lifted his mouth from her skin and made himself shift back. Just enough for her dress to slide even lower down her chest. "This picture," he said in a voice that was already raw with need, "of you standing here in front of me with your dress coming away, knowing you're going to be all mine soon--I'm going to replay it inside my head forever and ever."
She inhaled a shaky breath, one that shook her rib cage so that her dress slid even lower. "I will, too. The way you're looking at me, as though I'm..."
He lifted his gaze to her face. "Beautiful. You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."
He slid his hands back into her hair and pulled her flush against him so that he could devour her. She matched his passion with her own, quickly taking them closer to the edge than he'd meant to go.
"God, you tempt me," he said when he finally managed to draw back. "Do you have any idea how hard it's been to think straight around you when you're asking me your interview questions? If I've sounded like an idiot, now you know why."
"You've never sounded like an idiot." For a moment she looked a little nervous again, but then she slowly smiled. Such a sexy smile that he couldn't drag his gaze from the upturn of her lips as she said, "But since I lo
ve knowing that I've been tempting you all this time accidentally, how about I tempt you some more on purpose?"
His synapses tried to fire, tried to connect the dots of what she'd just said, what she'd asked. But before any of her words could string together inside his brain, she was taking a step back and shimmying so that the top of her dress finally slipped all the way off to pool at her waist. Leaving her clad only in an extremely translucent lace bra, pink with white trim.
Every muscle in his body tightened as he fought the urge to pounce. To rip her bra and dress off the rest of the way. To drag her down onto the rug so that he could claim her again and again and again until he had taken at least the edge off his desperation.
Though he'd sailed through plenty of storms with steady nerves, when he reached behind her to undo her bra clasp, his hands were shaking slightly and it took him more than one try to actually get it unhooked. It didn't matter how many times he saw Grace naked, he simply wasn't prepared for her mind-blowing beauty.
She sucked in a breath when he cupped her bare flesh. "The way your big, tanned hands look over me..." She shuddered in his hands, her eyes closing as he slid his thumbs over the taut peaks. "You know that handful of orgasms you said you were going to give me tonight?" He brought his hands down more firmly over her so that her nipples were rubbing against his palms. "I can't believe it, but I'm almost there already just from this," she confessed in a breathless voice.
But he could damn well believe it because he'd seen, again and again, just how naturally sensual she was, the most innately sexy woman he'd ever known. The way simply brushing a fingertip across her lower lip or rubbing his thumb inside her palm could make her pupils dilate, her skin flush, and her breath come faster. He hadn't missed one single sign since the day he'd met her, even if she'd mistakenly thought that her libido had died when her last relationship had gone so horribly awry.
He didn't give her any warning as he lowered his mouth to one breast. Her eyes flew open and her hands clutched the back of his head as if to keep him right where he was until she was ready to let him go. But she needn't have worried about him going anywhere, not when he could easily have spent the rest of the night worshipping her breasts.
He swirled his tongue over the tight bud of rose-colored skin and groaned his pleasure when he moved to lave her other nipple the same way. But it wasn't enough to go from one to the other--he needed to have more, to taste as much of her as he could have at the same time. Cupping her breasts in his hands, he pressed them together so that every kiss, every scrape of his teeth across her nipples, came right on the heels of the one before it.
They were still standing, but as he took her closer and closer to release with nothing more than his hands and mouth on her breasts, he could feel her grow less steady in her sexy high-heeled sandals. Intending to carry her over to the couch, Dylan swept her up into his arms, but she felt so good there that he couldn't bear to move just yet. Her lower lip was slightly swollen from where she must have been biting it when he'd been teasing her breasts, and her mouth drew his like the strongest magnet ever made.
When her hands wound around his neck while he kissed her, it meant everything to him that she was trusting him to make love with her tonight. Especially when he knew it was so much more than she'd ever intended to trust him, or anyone else, with.
A part of him wanted to kiss her until sunrise, to just keep teasing and taunting and tasting her perfect lips for hours. But he'd waited too long for this night--a week that had felt more like a lifetime--to rein in the need to get her completely naked and feast on the rest of her skin the way he was devouring her mouth. Without breaking their kiss, he carried her over to the couch, and when he laid her down on it, he went to his knees in front of her.
Looking at her lying on the couch--her full breasts bare, the skirt of her dress hiked up to mid-thigh, her hair across the pillows tangled from his hands, her mouth and skin flushed from his kisses--Dylan's heart nearly stopped in his chest.
"I could stare at you all night and never quite believe you're real." He whispered the words with more reverence than he'd ever felt for anything, even the ocean lit up beneath a full moon.
"I feel the same way--as though I might wake up soon and realize that it was all just a dream." She pressed her mouth to his, soft and sweet, before whispering, "It isn't, is it?"
"God, no." And as he took their kiss deeper again, he had to fill his hands with her, one sliding up the silky skin on the inside of her thigh, the other cupping her breast and teasing her nipple until she was arching against him.
It nearly killed him to lift his mouth and hands from her, but her dress was tangling on his fingers. "I need you naked. Now."
When he reached for the zipper at the side of her dress and began to pull it down, he knew the sound would be forever connected in his brain with sex. The hottest sex of his life. Grace lifted her hips so that he could pull her dress down, and soon she was left wearing only sexy panties that matched the bra he'd already stripped away. Slowly, so slowly that he knew it just might do them both in, he slid the sheer panties off her hips and down her beautiful legs. Her breath came in hard pants as he moved his hands back up her legs, from calves to knees and then thighs before he finally--finally!--cupped hot, wet flesh.
She moaned as she shifted her hips up higher into his hand, and Dylan could feel how close to the edge he was. Too close. So close that he was afraid he might not be able to form a coherent thought soon. Before that happened, she had to know, "If you need me to slow down, if you feel like we're pushing too far, too fast, if you need me to stop, I will. No matter what."
"I know you will. That's why I don't want you to hold anything back from me. Not tonight. Don't hold back, Dylan."
With her words--Don't hold back, Dylan--playing over and over inside his head, he put his hands on her legs and dragged her hips to the edge of the couch so that her sex was just inches from his hungry mouth, with only her super-sexy golden heels still on.
"I can't hold back," he told her, every word raw, desperate, and totally honest. "Not with you."
God, she was sweet. And so damned addictive that as he tasted and teased the slick skin between her legs, though she definitely wasn't trying to get away, he gripped her hips tightly to hold her right where he wanted her. From the way her eyes darkened and her skin flushed even further, he knew she liked the slightly rough play of his hands over her soft curves.
Because for all her professed early nerves, Grace had always been one hundred percent sensual woman in his arms. And the way she gave herself over to pleasure as he slid one finger into her, then another, all while flicking the center of her arousal with his tongue? It only confirmed yet again that they were not only meant for each other, but also that her innate sensual hungers matched his perfectly.
One wicked image after another flew through his brain. Binding her wrists and ankles with silk ties to drive her to the edge again and again until neither one could take it anymore. Having her wait for him on her hands and knees for just long enough that she thought she might go crazy waiting even another second, then driving into her so that she came the moment he took her. Taking her out onto his boat, both of them naked as they dove into the water and then wrapping her all around him as she held on to the ship's ladder and he drove up into her.
Dylan had never wanted anything as much as he wanted Grace to feel good, so when she went tumbling into climax with his mouth and hands on her, he made sure to take her back up to the peak again before she'd even come all the way down.
"Dylan, I can't--" she began in faint protest.
But he could feel how close she was to coming apart again, less than sixty seconds after her first orgasm, so he replaced his tongue with his fingers. "One more. For me." Shifting so that he could kiss her mouth while still playing with the hot, wet flesh between her legs, he thrust his tongue against hers with the same rhythm as his fingers inside her.
Within seconds, she was riding his hand without any inh
ibition, and he nearly lost it, especially when he let himself think about the fact that soon it wouldn't be just his fingers inside her. He loved the way she was gripping his shoulders so hard that her nails scored his back, loved knowing that she'd marked him in her passion.
Marked him as hers.
She was soft and boneless against him as he came up onto the couch and gathered her close. She rested her head in the crook of his neck as he stroked her back while she worked to catch her breath.
"I thought you were kidding when you said you were going to give me a handful of orgasms," she whispered.
He whispered back, "Two isn't a handful."
Her eyes flew open again, and she might have tried to tell him she didn't have another orgasm in her for the night had he not covered her mouth with his. He was about to pull her up to straddle him on the couch when she beat him to it.
They were both panting by the time she lifted her mouth from his and said, "Who said the handful has to be all mine?"
"Grace..."
But she only laughed when he growled her name in warning, and when she yanked at his dress shirt, this time he didn't stop her from unbuttoning it partway and pulling it over his head. The sooner he was naked, the sooner he'd be inside of her. And once he was there, he already knew he'd never want to leave, never want to let her go, never want to stop loving her.
She lowered her mouth to his pecs, and again and again she kissed him, teasing and tasting him the way he'd teased and tasted her bare skin, until his head was spinning and he was gripping her hair in his hands the way she'd gripped his when he'd been loving every inch of her.
Drawing deeply from a bank of superhuman self-control, he lifted her back up over him so that they were mouth to mouth, chest to chest, hip to hip. "One more time, Grace. Come for me one more time before I make you mine."
He said the words between kisses against her neck and breasts, and when he slid his fingers back inside of her, he didn't let her set the pace this time, just took her up--up--up--so fast that all she could do was give both of them another climax.
She was so beautiful as she threw her head back to ride it out all the way that Dylan realized he'd never truly known just how powerful sex could be until tonight.