Take a Chance on Me (126 page)

She frowned at him.

"How much do you weigh?"

"For God's sake!" Emma tried to get up off the bed but Thomas clamped down on her thighs. She looked at him, incredulous. "Really, Thomas—if this is your idea of foreplay, it's not getting me hot, just bothered."

Laughing, Thomas dropped his head and planted little kisses on her kneecaps. "I'm just trying to understand," he said, nuzzling her knee. "If you tell me how much you weigh, then you won't feel like you've got anything to hide, right?"

She groaned.

He waited. "I'll go first: I'm six-three and two twenty ."

Emma gulped. Yowzah! And it was nothing but muscle, power, and grace. In comparison, her stats sounded downright diminutive.

"Okay." She took a breath. "I'm five-five and about one forty-five. Aaron always said my butt was too big. Happy now?"

Thomas leaned back and reached up to run his fingers through her hair, looking into her blue eyes for a long, quiet moment. Aaron had done a number on her, no question about it, and it was now his job to correct the math.

"People can be exceptionally cruel, Emma," he said softly. "And people can be power-hungry and people can be stupid. Apparently, your ex-husband was cruel, power-hungry, and stupid."

Without warning, he rose up on his knees, grabbed a handful of her hair, and tipped her head back, then kissed her thoroughly. He slid his lips over her and his tongue into her, and bit down on that carnal lower lip of hers, sucking it into his mouth, all to illustrate the extent of Aaron's idiocy.

Then he whispered in her ear, "I think you are the sexiest woman I've ever known—especially your butt."

His fingers slid down around her bottom, working their way beneath her, cupping her, holding her. He pulled her like that to the very edge of the bed and held her there, tight in his hands. He nibbled on her neck as he continued to murmur in her ear.

"Your butt is like a neon sign that flashes the word SEX over and over in my brain. Your butt is like all the perfect forms in nature wrapped up into one little pair of lacy underwear. Your butt is my reason for being."

She snorted again. "Stop it. There's such a thing as overkill."

"Oh, I disagree." He kissed and suckled at her throat, her collarbone. "I think we're just getting started on our relaxation exercises, Dr. Jenkins." He pulled back enough for her to see his face, and he hitched up his lips mischievously.

"Roll over," he commanded.

Her eyes flew wide. "Pardon me?"

Before she could protest, he'd flipped her over onto her stomach and stretched her legs down and apart, her feet dangling off the bed. She felt completely exposed, the air hitting her bare back and shoulders and the inside of her thighs. She sensed Thomas hovering over her, close, his breath warm on the small of her back. She began to tremble.

"Stay." His command was deep and serious, but his voice shook with laughter.

Emma giggled, but a spark of real fear flared inside her. It seemed there was always a touch of fear in her response to Thomas, because it was too intense, too fast, and all unexplored territory.

What was he going to do to her?

She craned her neck to look over her shoulder. "Is this where you tell me to bark like a dog for you?"

Thomas laughed again, then leaned down and kissed the side of her cheek. "Maybe later. Right now, I'm going to redirect your attention—you're going to get so interested in what I'm doing that you won't remember what upset you in the first place."

Emma started to giggle—realizing she was about to get a taste of her own medicine—but abruptly stopped when Thomas slapped his two big hands down on her rump and ripped off her underwear in one quick swipe. She felt the fabric drag along the back of her legs and fall off the end of her toes.

His hands came back to her bottom, raising her until she was a few inches off the bed and her knees slightly bent. He held her there, his touch firm and unmoving. And hot—so wonderfully hot where he grasped her.

Then he moved his palms in delicious, rhythmic circles, caressing, then pulling apart, pushing together, and Emma could hear his breath coming as fast as her own. She could hear him make little noises in the back of his throat that were part grunt and part murmur, and she tried not to imagine what she must look like in this position. She tried not to worry. She simply tried to feel.

"I'm an ass man, Emma." His hands continued to caress her, cup her, grip her.

"That's good to know," she mumbled, half into the sheets. Half out of her mind.

"Well, actually, I'm a breast man, too. And a leg man. But mostly an ass man."

"Okay," she squeaked. "I got all those things."

"Hell yes, you do, Miss Marple." His hands slid up into the dip in her back, thumbs touching, then let his fingers slide down into her waist, around the swell of her hips to her bottom, where he grabbed on and started over.

"And my God, you've got one fine ass." His fingers began to stray down the furrow of her bottom and she felt the bed move as he came up behind her.

His tongue landed hot and wet on her flesh and she nearly screamed at the intensity of the sensation. He licked her, dragged his lips and tongue across her, and flirted with the crease of her. She felt his tongue flick and his teeth nip and then one of his hands was sliding hot and slow up the length of her spine until it grabbed a handful of her hair. At the same time, his other hand moved down, down, until he cupped her sex.

Emma knew instinctively that she'd just been claimed.

"Every inch of you is beautiful," he whispered, his breath hot on her skin and his lips vibrating against her flesh. He was such a big man that he could be every place on her body at once—her hair, her sex, her back—and Emma heard herself make little whimpers of pleasure, soft moans, then a startled cry when his long fingers tickled the opening to her body.

His fingertips separated her, slicked around the swollen tissue, but didn't enter her.

Emma lost it, just like the night on the front porch, and her body seemed to move of its own volition. Her hips began to circle slow and rhythmically, pushing against his touch, pulling away, until she was lost in it, suffocating in the pleasure, rubbing her face into the bed as she moved her hips.

For what seemed like an eternity, Thomas just let his fingertips play along the wet rim of her, spellbound by her greedy wiggle and the sight of his big fingers up against her beautiful little pussy—so puffy and sweet and so ready for him.

Emma was into sex. He'd figured that out by now and said a little prayer of thanks.

And being naked with her, so close to her heat, hearing those little noises she made, getting drunk on her scent—he couldn't remember experiencing this kind of buildup before, this kind of exquisite torture, pressure, agony.

Never in his life had he wanted a woman this much.

"Please," he heard her whimper. Her hips began to circle a bit faster and he smiled, keeping his fingers just on the outside of where she needed them, aware that he was teasing her.

It was time to end at least some of her discomfort.

He adjusted his touch, slowly pushing down into the liquid heat, and let his middle finger make contact with her stiff little clitoris.

Emma groaned low and deep. Thomas brought his lips to her ear as he let his finger flick over her slippery heart-beat. "I've been dying to get close to you, put my hands all over your body, make you come. I think you're going to come a lot for me, aren't you, baby?"

She moaned.

He wanted her to wait. He wanted her to go higher. He wanted it to be exceptional for her. He wanted only truth between them, right now and always.

He pulled his hand away, and with gentleness he picked her up and turned her around so that she sat on the edge of the bed again. He kneeled before her, pleased to see that she looked dazed by desire—sleepy and drugged and trembling with anticipation.

"Now you know how I feel about your little blue dress and what goes in it," he said, trailing a finger down her kneecap. "And you know exactly what I am and what I'm not. So what happens now?"

Emma exhaled, shuddering from his hot touch and his words and the intensity of her desire and sorrow.

"I'm so sorry you can't have children."

Thomas looked up into her wet blue eyes, her face and breasts framed by the fall of all that glorious, dark hair. She put her hand on the top of his head, like a benediction, and he let his chin drop to his chest in heavy relief.

"You really thought it would matter—that I wouldn't want you?" she whispered.

He nodded.

"Oh, Thomas." Emma reached for his chin and tipped it up. His eyes were closed and his face was tight with emotion. She leaned down and kissed the little semicolon scar, then his eyelashes, his temples, the golden skin over his cheekbones, his dimples, his lips. "I want you, more than ever, because you trusted me enough to tell me the truth. Thank you for that."

He nodded, his eyes still closed. "Can you forgive me for paying your fee?"

Emma let her hands stroke his soft, short curls. She cupped her hands around the hard curve of his skull and dropped a soft kiss to his forehead. "I forgive you."

"I want you, Emma."

"I want you, too. I want to know everything about you. I want to experience everything with you. I want more than I've ever had."

Thomas jerked as he felt Emma's small hand close around his erection.

"And man, oh man, do I ever want this bad boy." She swirled her tongue along his earlobe and then bit him, feeling the shiver course through his body.

"You're a sexy, funny, complicated man, and I've wanted you from the very first moment I saw you. I couldn't help myself."

"Oh yeah, Emma—"

She smiled with pleasure—the pleasure of hearing him say her name in that deep, resonant voice. In Thomas's voice, the two syllables of her ordinary name sounded like desire itself.

She drank in the vision of the man on his knees before her, head thrown back, eyes closed, jaw clenched.

She removed her hands from his erection and caressed his muscled ass, roamed up his back, slid her hands to his shoulders. It was a bittersweet place—a great ledge of muscle and sinew that seemed to be the home of both his strength and his sorrow.

"If she left you, she must not have loved you."

Thomas opened his eyes and looked right up into Emma's face. "I was closed off. Unwilling to commit."

He shrugged, his body rippling under her hands. "Finding out I was a spermless wonder made it easy for her to move on, and I don't blame her."

Emma moved her palms to cover the rounded muscles of his chest, lacy with blond wisps and dotted with silky, pink nipples.

"Did you love Nina, Thomas?"

"I realize now that I didn't."

She let her hands flutter down the ridged surface of his abdomen and ran a finger along the edge of the flat, smooth navel.

"Have you ever been in love?"

His stomach quivered and he breathed faster. "Just this once, I think—I'm still trying to figure it out, Emma."

Her heart skipped a beat.

"And you? Did you ever love anyone besides Aaron?"

She moved her hands over the sweet indentations near his hipbones and down into the darker, springy thatch of hair, then clasped him at the root.

"Only you."

He groaned and threw his head back. Emma stared in wonder at her woman fingers on the man flesh made red-purple and hard with blood. Without a doubt, it was the most shockingly beautiful sight the world had to offer.

She wished she were an artist and not a scientist, someone who could capture the graceful lines of him on canvas or in clay—the aching perfection of the physical. But she wasn't an artist. She was just a woman who had the privilege to touch him, see him.

Love him—if he'd let her.

Thomas's erection twitched in her hands, and she smiled. She brushed her fingertips over the plump head and its swollen, velvet edge, then let her fingers slip down to the rigid flesh again. Veined. Hard. Thick.

And it occurred to her that the man's penis was soft on the outside and steel on the inside—the exact opposite of the man himself.

"I'm sad, Thomas. I'm so sad about the babies." She leaned down to rain kisses along his cheeks and beard stubble and under the ledge of his jaw. "But it doesn't affect how I feel about you. It's scary how much I want you. I've never felt anything like it in my life."

She reached beneath to cup his testicles, and his eyes shot open.

"It's all right, Rugby Boy." She smiled at him, gently exploring his heavy sac in one hand while stroking his length with the other. "I know everything now. There's nothing to hide, right?"

Thomas shuddered, and Emma watched him flex his back and bring his hands up to hover before her—

then tenderly claim her breasts. It was the first time he'd touched her there since the front porch.

And for a long moment they simply closed their eyes and cradled each other, savored each other.

Until it wasn't enough.

Thomas was the first to move. He dipped his mouth to one of Emma's nipples and swore he heard a sizzle on contact with his wet tongue. Her flesh hardened and elongated in his mouth, begging him to suckle and tease and nip, first one, then the other, until both nipples were rock hard, glistening, and ruby red, and Emma was groaning.

Thomas widened his mouth to feed on as much of each glorious breast as he could. She was heavy with arousal and the flesh seemed to melt in his mouth.

Her breasts were perfect. Perfect for his mouth to suck and lick and bite. Perfect under his hands. Perfect for him. And he never wanted to stop making love to them.