Animal Attraction Read online

  “How long?”

  “Eighteen months.”

  “How does it feel?”

  She thought about it. “Good,” she said honestly. “But what about you—”

  He put his finger on her mouth. “I’m good, too, Jade. More than good. Don’t worry about me.” He ran his hand up and down her back until she relaxed again. At some point she realized her eyes were closed and she lifted her head in shock.

  She was curled up against Dell’s side. He was asleep on his back, one arm around her, his torso rising and falling with his slow, steady breaths, even with Beans sitting on his chest.

  “Hey,” she said, sitting up and poking Dell in the side.

  He mumbled something beneath his breath and didn’t budge.

  Jade scooped the kitten off of him, set her on the floor and poked Dell again. “Wake up.”

  Both arms came around her, snuggling her in close as he pressed his face into her hair. “Mmm. You smell good.”

  “Dell, wake up!”

  His mouth was on her neck now. “I’m awake,” he said, and licked the spot he’d just kissed. “You taste as good as you smell, did you know that?”

  Then he cupped the back of her head in one big hand and kissed her again, her mouth this time, and she gave herself up to it, to the heat of him, his taste. Their bodies were plastered together and he was rock solid against her, his arms flexed tight around her. “Are you really awake?”

  In answer, he tugged her even closer and deepened their kiss, taking his time about it, too, moving slow and almost unbearably erotic against her, his hands sliding under her shirt, his fingertips resting just beneath her breasts. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and when he discovered that he lifted his head and looked at her, his gaze sleepy and heavylidded, pulling her in, making her want to fall into him and drown.

  “Dell.” She sucked in an uneven breath, shockingly turned on. “Are you up?”

  “Yeah,” he said, and pulled her over the top of him so that she could feel exactly how “up” he was. His chest was hard, his abs were hard, his thighs were hard.

  Everything was hard.

  Her eyes must have gone wide because a low chuckle accompanied the slow rock of his hips to hers. A tug of her hair brought her line of vision up to meet his once more. She quivered and he urged her down to him, and then somehow she was kissing him again. God, she could kiss him forever.

  Beneath her shirt, his fingers stroked her skin and she thought, Up an inch!, and then in the next beat he’d done exactly that and the desire exploded.

  When they she came up for air, Dell had one hand palming her breast, his thumb gliding back and forth over her nipple, making her squirm with pleasure. Or maybe that was his other hand, inside the back of her pajama bottoms, gripping a butt cheek, his fingers gliding over the silk of her bikini panties.

  She was no better. She had both hands under his shirt, low on his abs, her fingers playing with the loose waistband of his jeans. She lifted her head and looked at him. “There’s this thing about sleeping with someone. It creates a false sense of intimacy and leads to . . . things.”

  “Things?”

  “Sleepy sex. It leads to sleepy sex. You know, the kind of sex you wouldn’t have if you were all the way awake.”

  He laughed softly, his eyes black with desire. His hands gripped her hips with a familiar possessiveness that maybe should have turned her off but instead turned her on. From his intense expression she knew that even though he hadn’t come here for this, it was certainly what he was going to do. “I don’t know about you,” he said. “But I don’t do a lot of sleepovers period. So this . . . sleepy sex is new for me.” His eyes lit. “Be gentle.”

  His hands went to her hips as he slowly arched into her, making her realize he was still incredibly aroused. “Dell—”

  He put a finger over her lips. “We’re done denying, Jade.” A statement not a question. He let his words hang between them for a long beat, then gently nudged her off of him. He rose and headed to the door.

  She stared at him. “Wait—” What? That was it? Dammit! He couldn’t leave now, not when she was all hot and bothered! To cover that, she sat up and pulled on her donkey slippers. She needed the armor. “No good-bye?”

  Dell was looking hot and bothered, too. And . . . yum. He checked the lock on her door and came back, standing over her. “There’s not going to be a good-bye,” he said. He pulled off his shirt and dropped it to the floor. Then he covered her body with his, pressing a muscled thigh between hers to spread them, making room for himself. “Not until dawn. Hell, maybe not even then because my first appointment tomorrow isn’t until nine.”

  Oh. Oh. She was surrounded by him, a bicep on either side of her face. She could turn her head and press her lips to his flesh and at just the thought she experienced a wave of desire that swamped her. “I have to be at work at seven thirty,” she said. “My boss is a real hard-ass.”

  He smiled. “I could make you forget him.”

  She nearly climaxed at just the sound of his voice rumbling in her ear. He could make her forget everything, including how he never kept the women he slept with. “Kiss me.”

  He gave her one last long look before lust completely consumed him and his mouth came down on hers. He devoured her. There was no other word for it. He stripped her out of her sweatshirt and pulled off her donkey slippers one at a time, and she would have sworn he was laughing as he tossed them over her shoulder. But then she slid her hands down his chest, over hard abs and then lower, cupping him.

  He stopped laughing.

  She outlined him with her fingers, impressed and also a little worried. It’d been a long time, a really long time, and he seemed . . .

  Big.

  She must have let some of her worry show because he cupped her face and kissed her deep, angling his head to get more of her until she was clutching at him in desperation. Shifting lower, he kissed her jaw, her throat, her shoulder, moving to the swell of her breast.

  A slow, warm heat began to fill her, building as he sucked her nipple into his mouth, rolling it between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. Gasping, she arched her back, lifting herself to him.

  He smiled as if he’d won a prize and then went back to his diabolical torture, leaving trails of fire on her skin everywhere he touched or kissed.

  Which was everywhere.

  Her breath was catching with each new caress as she lay writhing beneath him. She needed . . . God, she wasn’t even sure, she couldn’t think, she couldn’t form words, she certainly couldn’t stop herself from making sounds she’d never heard herself make before.

  But Dell didn’t appear to need words or direction. After all, the man made his living reading the body language of animals, and he was reading hers with shocking ease. His hands were on the move southward, caressing her stomach, her thighs, until her pj bottoms got in his way and he tugged them off. Now she was beneath him in just her panties, which he seemed to like because with a hand on each inner thigh, he took a good long look and growled deep in his throat. His fingers played with her through the silk and came away wet, making him groan. The sexiest sound she’d ever heard. The desire she was feeling was bordering on untenable, stronger than anything she’d ever experienced. “Dell—”

  “I know.” His hands slid down her hips, catching the tiger silk along the way and pulling them down her legs. “Christ, Jade. You’re beautiful.” He stroked a finger over her, then inside her, and it was all she could do not to levitate off the couch. At that moment she was so far gone he could have done anything, asked anything of her.

  But he didn’t.

  He wasn’t taking, he was giving, shifting down her body to do so, pressing his mouth to her hot center, teasing, reducing her to nothing more than a quivering, panting, begging boneless mass. Yes, begging. He had her begging, adrift in the sensations of the rough demands of his tongue, teeth, and hands, which were sending shock waves down her body until she felt her toes curl, until she burst.