“Just before Christmas.”

Awareness finally dawned. “My father must have said something to you, didn’t he? Did he draw you a picture of a bride and groom standing in front of a Christmas tree?”

Jack grinned. “Actually, I’m the one who drew him the picture. It seems your mother and I had the exact same idea for how to make this a perfect Christmas.”

Mary’s heart skipped a beat as she shifted against him so that she could look into his eyes. “You did?”

Jack’s expression grew serious. “I know I only just convinced you to wear my ring, and that most people wait a year between getting engaged and getting married, but I’ve been waiting my whole life for you.” He stroked the back of his hand over her cheek. “I don’t want to wait anymore.”

“I don’t want to wait, either.”

“So you’ll be my Christmas bride?”

Tears threatened even as she teased, “Just as long as you promise not to dress up in a red suit and long white beard for the ceremony.”

The next thing she knew, she was lying back on the bed and his big, strong body was levered over hers. “How did you know that’s what I was planning to do at our wedding?” he teased back.

“You’re not the only one who can read minds.”

“How about we do a little scientific experiment then?” he asked, her skin heating from the sensuality underlying his question. “Tell me, what am I thinking about right now?”

She made a show of mulling it over as she ran her hands down from his broad shoulders over his well-defined abdomen to his hips. “You’re thinking about kissing me right here,” she said as she lifted one hand to her face and lightly touched the tip of her index finger to the center of her lips. “Did I guess right?”

“You did.”

Running his hands back up her naked curves, he slid them into her hair. As he lowered his mouth to hers, she met him in the middle, more desperate for his kiss than she’d ever been for anything in her life.

The first touch of his lips to hers was gentle. Sweet. But the long hours apart had taken their toll on both of them, and though pure love was at the heart of every moment they shared, and they knew they needed to make love as quietly as possible in her parents’ house, desire’s demands couldn’t possibly be ignored.

Mary didn’t know who nipped at whom first, just that she needed more than gentle or sweet. She needed to devour and be devoured, needed to fill her senses with as much of Jack as she could take in tonight. With tongues and teeth, they both took what they needed so badly. There were no boundaries, no rules left between them, their passion so pure and true that they each gave more than they took.

They were both breathless when they finally pulled apart. He was hot and hard against her, and it would have been so easy, so good, just to open herself up to him and take him inside. But when he asked, “What else am I thinking?” she knew it would be even better to hold out just a little while longer, until anticipation hit its breaking point.

“You’re wondering what it would feel like if you ran your tongue over the swell of my br**sts—” she lightly swept her fingertip over her skin “—from here to here.”

On a growl of assent, he lowered his head to her chest. The warm, wet slide of his tongue across her very sensitive flesh sent thrill bumps running over her skin, and she clutched at his shoulders, trying to bring him even closer. But instead of just licking across her br**sts once, he followed the same path back and forth, one time after the next, until she was nearly delirious with need.

“Jack.”

He lifted his head to gaze down at her, his pupils dilated with his own need. “If you can guess my next move right, I’ll give you a special prize.”

Her brain felt fuzzy now, her limbs heavy with desire. Somehow she managed to reply, “I like prizes.” Her hands trembled as, feeling naughtier than ever, she slid them beneath her br**sts and cupped them. “You’re thinking of using more than your tongue now, but it’s driving you crazy trying to decide where to taste first.”

“You really must have ESP,” he murmured as he covered her hands with his. And then his tongue was laving an incredibly sensual figure eight around her ni**les, coming closer to them with each seductive trip. When he blew lightly over the tightly puckered, damp skin, she couldn’t remember ever feeling this aroused before.

When his lips closed over her ni**les. Mary barely remembered in time to tamp down on her moan of pleasure as he used the pads of his thumbs to caress the soft flesh in his hands at the same time.

Teetering on the edge of release already, she gasped, “Is that my prize?”

“No,” he said as he moved down her body to lay one kiss after another onto her overheated skin. “This is.”

His mouth was warm and hungry as he lowered himself between her legs. At the same time that the sensuality of what they were doing together rocked through her, he found her hands with his and slid their fingers together.

If she’d been close to coming apart before, it was the love that he gave her even during the naughtiest sex that sent her hurtling over the edge. Her lungs burned as she tried to gasp in air; her skin was slick with sweat, and her heart was racing as if she’d just sprinted from one end of town to the other.

The intensity of the final San Francisco photo shoot with Jack, combined with the anguish of her father’s phone call, the long red-eye flight to Italy, and then the emotional reunion with her mother and her trip into town, should have left her limp and exhausted. But instead of her climax using up the last of her energy, Mary suddenly felt stronger than she’d ever been.

Tugging on Jack’s hands, she pulled him back up her body, then rolled them over so that he was the one beneath her. Mirroring the kisses he’d given her, she started at his mouth, then moved from his face to his chest, then down lower still, mirroring the way he’d been loving her minutes earlier.

“Angel.”

She ran her tongue over him and his fingers clenched hers as she took, tasted, gave. She loved knowing how close she brought him to the edge, that she could make him lose control with every press of her lips against his hard heat.

But as he effortlessly dragged her back up to spin them again so that his heavy weight was over her once more, she knew the time for teasing, for ratcheting up anticipation to even higher heights, was long past.

She gasped as he slid into her, then lost her breath entirely as she arched to take him deeper. Her name was on his lips, a caressing whisper across her overheated skin in the moonlight that was streaming in through the window.