“Is there only the one?”

It was all one image, just added to over time. “One tattoo. My coach was pissed enough about that one. He told me my body was a fine instrument, not a canvas for amateur artwork.”

“Good God, what would he say about David Beckham?”

“It would blister your ears off, for certain. But he’s passed on, so he’s not obliged to comment on Becks’ body art.” He’d skated past that one, but just barely.

“I’m sorry. I can tell you liked him.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.

He put his other arm around her and held her there against his chest. “You could tell I liked him from two sentences. And you wonder why I tracked you down.”

Frankie raised her eyebrows at him. “You sound like a bloodhound.”

He laughed. “Always the romantic.”

She was so small in his arms. And soft. Frankie, soft. She’d always seemed more like a fire-tempered rapier, flexible but razor-sharp, slicing through anything that got in her way. But she’d opened herself to him, given herself with a generosity and lack of reserve he hadn’t considered dreaming of. Her body had seared itself into his mind, into his skin, into his soul.

And he knew he had to fight for this with everything he had.

The heat from the fire soaked through the quilt, and he felt the beginning of sweat sheening his skin and hers. “How about we finish decorating the tree?”

“Nude?” She sounded intrigued, not shocked. She reached down and ran her palm over his cock, making it swell with pleasure. “Can I hang an ornament here?”

“They don’t make a hook big enough,” he said, running through his new team’s roster in his head to keep himself under control.

She chuckled, and stroked down the length of him again. He clenched his jaw to keep from groaning out the lust her touch sent torching through him.

“Let’s go to bed then,” she said, before giving him a heavy-lidded look and faking a yawn. “I find I’m exhausted from all the exercise and fresh air.”

When Frankie went after something, she never did it by halves. “You’re not fooling me with the yawn, woman. You’re after my elite athlete’s body, you are.”

“And are you complaining?” She ran her hand over his cock yet again, making it pull tighter.

“Well, one part of my body isn’t.” But he knew she would find the tattoo, and he would have to give her an explanation.

“That’s the only part that matters for my purposes.” Somehow she whipped the quilt away from him, so it was wrapped only around her. “Go ahead of me to the bedroom,” she said, her eyes lit by a lascivious gleam.

“So you can ogle my bum?”

“I’m going to ogle every inch of you,” she said.

“In that case.” He turned and sauntered toward the hallway.

He heard her sigh. “I love the way your muscles move under your skin. Like a Thoroughbred racehorse. All that power and grace.”

“I’m not sure I like being compared to an animal.” But her words made his cock rise higher. He could feel her gaze like a brush of fingers over the skin of his back.

“Not even to a stud?”

“Ah, when you put it that way.” He stepped through her bedroom door and turned to catch her and snatch the quilt away from around her. “Now, you have to walk in front of me to the bed.”

He watched in shock as a tint of pink flushed her cheeks. “Are you blushing?”

She lifted her chin but didn’t quite meet his gaze. “I’m forty-nine years old. And not an athlete.”

He couldn’t believe it. Running his hands down from her shoulders to her hands to hold them out from her sides, he let his eyes skim over the fullness of her breasts, the curve of her belly, and lower. The reaction of his cock was unmistakable. “Frankie, you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

She shook her head. “You’re blind, but I’ll walk to the bed for you because you blarneyed me into it.”

Frustration wedged in his chest. “It’s not blarney, ye gobdaw. And I’ll prove it to you.”

He turned her and gave her a nudge toward the big bed with its snow-white sheets exposed by the lack of the quilt he’d stolen from it. Being Frankie, she strode toward it with her head up and her shoulders back. Then she pulled the sheet back and climbed under it.

“No, a stór, no covering that gorgeous body. I want to worship it.” He tugged the sheet down to her feet and began there, massaging her high, strong arches, kissing the bone on the inside of her ankle, inhaling the scent of woman and evergreen and a whiff of arousal. But something was missing. He looked up to find her watching him through half-closed eyes.

“You don’t smell of chocolate anymore,” he said.

“Do you miss it?”

“It was part of you.”

“I’ll rub some candy bars on my skin next time.”

“No, I will. Melted candy bars. Then I’ll lick the chocolate off you.” He heard the hiss of her breath being sucked in.

Then he told her, in detail, where he would rub the candy bars as he kissed each place. And he told her, in detail, how lovely all those places were. The curve of her calves. The back of her knees. The soft skin inside her thighs. The convexity of her belly. The swell of her hips. Oh, dear God, everything about her breasts. The line of her clavicle. The vulnerable hollow at the base of her throat. The sensitive spot just behind her ears.

She was moaning and twisting and clutching at the sheets and at him before he skimmed his lips down the center of her torso, dipped his tongue into her navel, and then moved lower. He found the exquisite wet pinkness between her legs and licked, adding his moans to hers as he tasted the salt and musk of her. Her fingers combed through his hair and then held there. She opened her legs and let him suck and plunge and revel in the liquid heat of her response. When he slid two fingers inside her, she arched up and shouted his name as her inner muscles slammed closed and open, so that he could feel the pressure and the moisture of her release. He used his tongue and his hand to keep her orgasm going until she begged him to stop. “It’s too much,” she gasped. “I can’t….”

As he slipped his fingers out, her muscles clenched again. “You did,” he said.

He lifted his fingers to inhale the aroma of her, rubbed them against his tongue to savor the taste of her. Kneeling between her sprawled legs, he let his gaze roam over the delicious curves he was beginning to know intimately, the sexual flush on her creamy skin, the spread of her silver hair over the sheets. Her soft lips were parted and her chest heaved as she drew in deep breaths while she came down from her climax. He brought his fingers to his nostrils again, pulling her scent in so that it seemed to ripple down to wrap around his erect cock.