Realizing the passion that glazed her beautiful eyes was all for him.

“‘Thy love is better than wine,’” he whispered against her softened, sexy mouth.

Better than wine.

He brushed his lips down the side of her cheek, along the clean, graceful curve of her jawline, and kissed her slender neck. Her skin. Dear God, was there anything else as perfect as her skin?

She cradled his head in both hands, her uneven breath sounding in his ear. “What was that? Were you quoting something?”

“Love poetry,” he muttered, kissing along her collarbone as he ran his hands underneath the hem of her sweater. “From the Song of Solomon.”

An exhalation of a laugh shook out of her. “You’re a romantic?”

“I was, once upon a time,” he admitted. He curved his hands around her narrow rib cage. She fit so perfectly against him. “I still am, on occasion. When life permits.”

“I’m not a romantic,” she confessed. Nuzzling his cheek, she slipped his jacket off his shoulders. He shrugged it off and let it fall to the floor.

“I forgive you,” he told her expansively, with a grin.

Another ghost of a laugh danced across her face. “Quote something else for me.”

As he coaxed her sweater up, she lifted her arms. He pulled it off of her and let it fall to the floor too. She wore a plain black bra, no lace, but the way it molded to the round curve of her breasts was extravagantly feminine.

He touched her temples. “‘Thou hast doves’ eyes,’” he said gently.

Her expression turned luminous. The emotion shining out of her face—that was all for him.

He felt it come into him, until it lit every corner of his soul and shone back out at her. “Of course, there’s also this one—‘I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh’s chariots.’”

She burst out laughing. “What on earth does that mean?”

“I have no idea.” Smiling, he stroked her graceful shoulders while she undid the buttons of his shirt.

“How much can you quote?”

“I was a young man with a completely normal sex drive, who was encouraged to study the scriptures,” he said. “I memorized all of it.” He stroked her lips. “‘Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet. . . . Thou hast ravished my heart.’”

Something stricken banished the laughter from her gaze. “Yes,” she whispered. “That’s what it feels like.”

All the words burned away, and he stood silent, without language or barriers, holding on to her bare, warm waist. He felt like he might drown if he let go. He might drown anyway, but if he did, he needed to bring her with him.

He shrugged out of his shirt, threw it and went down on his knees in front of her. Unbuttoning her jeans, he slid the zipper down and eased both her jeans and panties over her hips while she stripped off her bra. When she stood totally nude before him, he sat back on his heels and feasted on the sight of her.

She was panther-sleek, with toned, slender muscles, a narrow waist and a flat stomach, all of which served to enhance the feminine swell of her hips, and Dios, those full, round breasts. The dusky rose of her nipples were the perfect crown for those tender beauties, and the silken tuft of private hair at the juncture of her legs beckoned him with a siren’s lure.

Slipping his arms around her slim thighs, he rubbed his cheek against her, inhaling her scent, while he listened to her heartbeat gallop. It was good, so good, to scent the evidence of her arousal, and to know that her heart raced for him.

He had been stiff for some time, but now his cock hardened further until he felt desperately sensitized, unbearably erect. Desire might be an old friend whom he had met before, but with her, it came to him wearing a new face, sharp, bright and joyful.

He felt the blood coursing through her, such unimaginably precious treasure housed in the temple of her body, and her fingers stroking through his hair. She tugged gently until he tilted back his head to look up at her.

“Let me come down there with you,” she murmured.

It took a moment for him to understand what she meant. He loosened his hold around her thighs, and she began to kneel.

“No,” he said, standing to pick her up. “I won’t take you on the drafty floor, not when we have such a large, comfortable bed to explore.”

He walked to the bed to ease her down onto it, and he came down on top of her. Hungry for the rich taste of her mouth, he kissed her again as he stroked between her legs to finger the delicate, plump folds of her moistened sex.

Fire flashed in her eyes, and her breath sawed in her throat. As she fumbled at the waist of his slacks, her lips shaped unsteady words against his. “I can’t stand it.”

His, this urgency of hers was all his. The look in her eyes. The need he could feel in her. All for him.

Her body might be lovely, but the passion of her spirit was what drove it, and that was inexpressibly gorgeous. Intoxicated with beauty, he licked her mouth. “You can stand so much more than you think you can.”

Carefully, he parted the petals of her flesh until he found the small pearl of her clitoris. With a deep sense of pleasure, he explored the stiff little peak of flesh and circled it with his forefinger. She made an inarticulate, urgent noise at the back of her throat, her body arching up to his touch.

He needed.

He needed her.

“Touch me,” he said against her mouth.

She made another odd little sound, something between a growl and a whine, and hooked one leg around his waist as she ran her hands quickly, greedily down his back. Tracing the waist of his slacks to the front, she wrestled with the fastening.

Something thundered in his ears. With surprise, he realized it was his own roughened breathing. When she got his pants open, his stiff, aching penis spilled out into her hands.

As she gripped him, he threw his head back, face twisted. She ran her thumb over the broad, damp tip of his cock, and the pleasure was so extreme, it was agonizing.

“Oh, shit,” she muttered. She grabbed his wrist, held his hand against her and shook as though she had a fever.

It snapped him back into focus. He stared down at her as she climaxed, quivering rhythmically against his fingers. It was so surprising, he couldn’t stand for it to be over so soon. He slid down her body and parted her legs, and put his mouth on her.

Her head snapped back against the mattress, and she stuffed the heel of one hand against her mouth to muffle a scream.