Her lips barely brushed his, just enough for her to know that he tasted a little like the chocolate from their dessert and the wine they’d had during dinner. But mostly he tasted like Chase…the beautiful man who had brought her soul back to life.

She slid her hands through his soft, dark hair, then down the back of his neck to his shoulders. “I wanted to undress you and see if you were as perfect as you looked.” She could feel his heart beating against her palm as her fingers went to the buttons at the top of his shirt. “I had a hunch you would be,” she whispered as she uncovered his chest, one glorious inch at a time.

She had to press her lips against his bare skin and a low groan rumbled from his chest, but he didn’t try to take charge of her night with him.

She couldn’t keep her hands from shaking as she worked open the rest of the row of buttons, pulling the hem of his shirt from his pants before slipping it off his shoulders and letting it fall to the floor behind them.

“I’ve never really had a chance to just look at you.” Even as she said the words, his muscles across his chest and abdomen were flexing and tightening. “You look a little tense,” she murmured, enjoying being in control like this so much more than she ever would have guessed.

She moved close again and pressed her palms flat against his chest and began to stroke over his pecs, the indentations of his abs rippling as she caressed him. “Does that help?” she asked him in a naughty voice.

“Yes.” His lie was raw.

Hungry.

Borderline desperate.

She leaned in, pressing her lips to the curve of his neck and shoulder. “Then I’ll have to do it more.”

She licked at his skin, wetting it before she nipped at him with her teeth. For a moment, she knew how a vampire must feel, how hard it must have been for Edward not to sink his teeth into Bella’s sweet flesh in those vampire movies she’d watched alone this year.

He groaned again, his skin and muscles vibrating against her outstretched hands.

Somehow, she dragged her mouth from him to continue what she’d started.

He was hers for the night.

Hers.

Chloe planned to wring every ounce of pleasure, of joy, from these precious hours, from every sweet minute with Chase.

Placing her fingers over his belt buckle, she began to work the leather. His skin was warm everywhere she brushed against it and her little hum of happiness sounded in the silent room.

“Lovely.” Chase’s compliment resonated through every cell in her body, coming to a stop right behind her breastbone. “The way you look when you’re undressing me.” He paused, waiting until she lifted her eyes to his. “You undo me, Chloe.”

She swallowed at the look in his eyes, at the fact that she felt like he was caressing her, stroking her, without ever needing to touch her.

His mouth was a distraction from her plan to strip his clothes off the rest of the way, but such a wonderful one. With her hands still on his belt, she went back up on her toes and kissed him softly again.

They both knew this kiss was a promise of what was to come, a promise that he’d know exactly what he meant to her by the time the sun rose in the vineyard outside.

Her breath came in short little puffs as she drew back and turned her attention to his pants. His zipper came undone a moment after she drew his belt apart, and then she was pushing his clothes away, watching with pleasure as his trousers dropped to the ground. Chase stepped out of them, moving closer to her as he did so, close enough that she could feel the heat of his thick erection against her belly.

He was gorgeous, sinfully so, standing before her in only his boxers. But she wouldn’t be satisfied until she had stripped him bare, just the way he always stripped away all the layers of protection she’d tried to wrap herself in. Every time they’d made love, Chase hadn’t just removed her clothes, he’d slowly begun to strip away her fears. Her hesitations. Her long-held belief that she couldn’t ever have the love of a man as good as this one.

She wanted to tear the cotton from his hips…but at the same time, she wanted to go as slow as she could to savor every moment of discovering Chase.

In the end, her hands took over from her brain, moving to hook a thumb into each side of his boxers. She had to lift the cotton over his erection, and once she’d cleared it, she stopped, mesmerized. “You make me want to do things I haven’t wanted to do in a long time.”

He didn’t need to say the words, Then do them, for her to hear it. She didn’t need his silent urging to help her move to her knees before him, either. And she certainly didn’t need his encouragement to lean forward and press her tongue against his hard flesh.

“Chloe.”

His hands, which he’d kept so carefully at his sides until now, came into her hair.

She felt hungry, wild, and so damn happy to be right where she was with Chase against her lips. If anyone had told her a week ago she’d love being like this with a man again—with any man on the planet—she would have known them to be certifiably insane.

But, oh, it was beyond lovely to taste Chase, to feel his hands tighten on her hair, to know that she was driving him insane with pleasure with her tongue, with the slightest scratch of her teeth over the flared head. As she opened her mouth wide enough to suck him in between her lips, his thigh muscles tightened, hardened almost to stone against her hands where she was holding on to him.

His pleasure was hers, too, as she drew him in deeper inside her mouth, down her throat. She could feel how careful he was to let her lead and though she loved him for it, she wanted to feel him lose control, wanted to know that she was the woman responsible for breaking his control to pieces.

Pure feminine instinct driving her every move, she moved one hand from his thigh to cup the tightening flesh below his erection, and then the other to wrap around the base of his thick shaft. Her tongue lashed circles on his sensitive skin.

“You’ve got to stop,” she heard him say as if from a long distance away. “I can’t hold back much longer.”

She didn’t want him to. Despite the fact that her body was crying for his touch, regardless of how good it would feel to drag him down on the floor with her so that she could climb over him and take him into her, she wanted this more.

So instead of stopping, she simply gave over everything she was, gave everything she had, to pleasuring the man who’d shown her that there didn’t have to be a limit to joy.

She could feel him growing bigger, thicker in her hand, could taste his arousal on her tongue. But she needed more, needed all of him, and as she took him in deep again, she moaned over his hard flesh without thinking about what that vibration would do to him.