In wonder, I reach for him. “What are you?” I trace the lines of his face as though the answer is written there.
“I’m just me.” He touches his lips to my fingers.
I grab whole handfuls of his hair and kiss him. I’m too overwhelmed to think. All I want is to lose myself in him. He drops onto his back and pulls me down on top of him. I don’t wait for more cues. I throw off my borrowed t-shirt and sigh as his hands slide up my bare back. He breathes that same foreign-sounding phrase, so softly it’s impossible to make out the words.
He draws me down for another kiss, but I don’t have the patience. I want him now. He picks up on my urgency, and in seconds his clothes are off and my panties are once again on the floor. There’s no more struggling with the condom. He frees it from the package and rolls it on like he’s been doing it for years. And then he’s positioning me above him, pushing up as I lower down.
I love being on top where it’s easy to see him, where I can watch his muscles flex and his eyes roll back in his head. His parted mouth looks good enough to taste, so I do—bending down as we rock. I nibble and suck on his lush lower lip, then I move on to his tongue. Under my fingers, his face is all stubble and hot skin and sharp bones. When a low sound travels from his throat to my mouth, I grip his hair and answer back with moans of my own.
Pleasure is building layer by layer inside me, but I can’t stop watching him. His eyes are shut tight, his thick black lashes making feathery half-moons on his cheeks. He’s growling and groaning and clenching his jaw. He’s holding out. For me. When I pick up my pace, he matches it, controlling my hips with firm hands. I feel a vibration, starting from where we’re joined and pulsing through my veins.
I close my eyes and let my head drop back, unable to fight my body anymore. Leo growls my name, but I can onlyanswer with a gasp. The tension in my body mounts, working me into a frenzy. It snaps and I cry out, riding wave after wave of pleasure. Leo clutches my hips and a second later, his shoulders arch off the bed.
I’m panting hard, willing my heart to slow down and my lungs to fill.
“Come here.” He wraps his arms around my back and pulls me to him, holding me tight as we both come down. My chest is flush with his and our hearts are pounding.
But I don’t know whose heartbeat is whose.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
When I first wake,I’m not sure where I am. I slept so deep and so hard that my brain is lagging behind my body by a good ten minutes. It’s not until I roll over and see the man sleeping beside me that I remember.
Leo is awake. Barely. He winks a dark brown eye at me and lifts his head off the pillow, lips curling into a sleepy, ruthlessly sexy smile. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” I reply, even though the brightness of the light peeking through the blinds suggests it’s closer to afternoon.
He pulls me into a cuddly spoon, and he’s so warm and relaxed that I have to fight to keep from dozing off again.
Like a toddler, I wiggle out of his hold and flip to face him. “I don’t want to fall back to sleep.”
He stretches and glances over his shoulder. “Why not?” He gives me a lopsided grin. “It’s only ten-thirty.”
“Ten-thirty?!”
“You have somewhere you need to be?”
“I have a shark-wrestling match at eleven.” And a class at 1:00, but that’s eons away.
He laughs and wraps his arm around me again, luring me in. “Well, then you’ve got at least another fifteen minutes to spend with me.”
I stretch a leg over his and rest my head on his arm, content to simply look at him. His hair is a hot, sexy mess and his five-o’clock shadow is thicker and darker than it was just eight hours ago. He’s extraordinarily beautiful for a man who just woke up. I’m sure I don’t look half as good. My skin feels sticky and caked with the makeup I didn’t think to remove. I sweep firm fingers under my eyes, hoping they don’t look bruised.
“You’re beautiful,” Leo whispers, stilling my hand. I let him kiss me even though I have morning breath and a cottony mouth.
As we settle back on the pillow, he combs his fingers through my tousled hair. “You’re a natural blond, aren’t you?”
I nod. I love the color of my hair, but I’m ambivalent about the other features that are part of the natural blond package: pale lashes and eyebrows. And freckles. “My father’s maternal line is Norwegian.”
“So you’re a Viking?”
I grin. “Yep. I’m aValkyrie.”
His laugh is deep and warm and full of affection. “And you’re here to take me to Valhalla?”
“Are you worthy?”
“Not yet.”
