He sighed from deep in his chest as my tongue started a tentative trail across his skin. He found the clip in my hair and pulled it out, spreading my hair out with his hands. I hooked my fingers in the belt loops in his jeans to hold him close as I let myself explore his throat with my lips, my tongue, my teeth.

“Emily . . .” His voice broke off with a hiss when I bit down gently on that place where his neck met his shoulder, and his hands tightened in my hair. I teased him with my tongue until he pulled my head away and kissed me again, his tongue invading with an urgency he’d never shown before. And then we were moving again. The backs of my knees hit the edge of his bed and I sat down easily, putting a hand behind me for balance. I felt a smooth quilt under me; of course Simon was the kind of guy to make his bed every day.

I expected him to lay me back on the bed and, well, get on with things. I anticipated his weight pushing me down, his body stretched over mine. I didn’t anticipate him sinking to his knees on the floor in front of me.

“I want you to know . . .” He slipped off my right sandal, and his hands lingered on the instep of my foot, traveling up my ankle, my calf, learning my shape. “I’m not a one-night-stand kind of guy.” The other sandal thudded to the floor.

“You’re not?” My breath shuddered. Would I ever be able to breathe normally again?

“No.” His hair brushed against my skin, teasing, feather-like strokes as he turned his head to kiss his way up my leg. “Never have been. This means something. You mean something.” His mouth on my skin sent me to the brink of insanity, but his words were a dart of sweet pain. How did he know the exact thing I needed to hear, and how did he know to say it to me now?

“I’m serious, Emily.” His voice was hoarse, desperate, and he pulled away to look up at me. “If you want this . . . if we do this . . . I need for it to mean something to you too.”

Tears clogged my throat and I cradled his face in my hands. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the room. A trickle of moonlight I hadn’t noticed before fell across his face and I drank in his eyes drinking me in. I’d never seen anything in my life more beautiful than this man, on his knees in front of me in the moonlight.

I could see him well enough to see the vulnerability in his expression, the way he bit his lower lip as his eyes met mine squarely. His eyes reminded me of the vision I’d once had of him and me and a pirate ship at night, and the memory sent my blood racing. “I wouldn’t be here if it didn’t mean something.” I leaned down, taking his mouth and biting that lip myself. “If you don’t touch me,” I said against his mouth, “and I mean right now, I’m gonna lose my goddamn mind.”

His chuckle was low and dangerous. “Language.” But he skimmed his hands down my sides before tugging my underwear over my hips and down my legs, and I kicked them away. He captured the kicking leg and placed a lingering kiss on my calf before slinging that leg over his shoulder.

I fell backward with a low moan, catching myself first on my hands, then my elbows as Simon’s mouth moved up my leg, this time with purpose, to my knees and finally to my inner thigh. I knew what was coming, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready for it.

The first stroke was with his fingers. The second was with his tongue. I collapsed flat on the bed as he got to work. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. Every nerve ending, everything that made up every molecule of me, was focused on Simon’s mouth on my body. Nothing else mattered.

He kissed. He explored in slow, maddening licks. Fingertips dipped, stroked, discovered. He moved so slowly, so sweetly, that I didn’t feel anything build, there was no anticipation, and I wasn’t prepared for the orgasm that ripped through me. Before I was ready I was convulsing against his tongue and his fingers, gasping with breathless cries, fighting to roll my hips while he held me down with one hand and his mouth gave no mercy.

After what felt like a lifetime my body calmed, and Simon eased his grip on me. I stared up at the ceiling, which I could now see pretty well in the dark.

“Okay, I’m impressed,” I told the ceiling. “You’ve got quite the mouth on you.”

There was that chuckle again, and the bed dipped beside me as Simon crawled up to join me. Now thoroughly acquainted with the bottom half of my body, he seemed determined to do the same with the top, starting with my navel. He kissed a path up my sternum, licking his way to my breasts. If he had a problem with their size he didn’t let it show. In fact, he gave them plenty of attention, enough to make my breath come out in whimpering sighs. I struggled to sit up, grasping for him, needing his mouth on mine again. He kissed me slow and deep, and I caught his moan in my mouth. I rolled into him, twining my legs around and between his, when—

“What the hell?” I pulled away and looked down. “Why are you still wearing pants?”

“It’s not my fault.” Simon leaned in to kiss my neck, and one of his hands moved south again, where I was still a little sensitive. “I got distracted.”

“No, you don’t.” I squirmed out of his embrace and scrabbled at his jeans, popping the button and wrestling the zipper down. “Get these off.” Our laughs combined as we got him naked. When he pulled me back into his arms there was finally nothing between us, and we both sighed together at the feel of nothing but skin against skin. His cock pressed against my lower stomach, hard and hot and impossible to ignore. I snaked a hand between our bodies to curl around him, and he hissed at the contact.

“Wait.” His voice shook as I gave him a long, slow stroke. I ignored his plea and concentrated on learning the feel of him, heavy in my hand and slowly growing slick as I established a lazy rhythm. “Wait. God, Emily. Wait, please.” He leaned away to fumble in his nightstand, and I grinned and nibbled on his shoulder. Revenge was fantastic.

“Very nice,” I said in response to the rip of the condom wrapper. “I like a man who’s prepared.”

His laugh was harsh and desperate, and it made my smile widen. “Not even close. You have no idea how relieved I was that I had one in there. It’s been a while.”

“Yeah?” The thought warmed me, reinforced the feeling that this was right. I was where I was supposed to be.

“Yeah.” The laughter was gone from his voice now, and my heart thudded as he reached for me again, this time with purpose. But instead of rolling me under him like I expected, he pulled me into him, both of us still on our sides, and hooked my leg over his hip. We were face to face, belly to belly, and he took my hand and brought it back to his cock. “Please.” His voice was little more than breath now. His forehead was pressed to mine, and as I stroked him a sigh shuddered out of him. “Please.”

I knew what he was asking for. I guided him, teasing the both of us with the tip of him stroking my clit. Then he hitched my leg higher on his hip and he rocked into me, just a little. A strangled sound that could have come from either of us broke the night. He withdrew and pushed into me again, then again, each time a little deeper until finally he was buried inside me, our hips flush against each other.

He didn’t move at first. Instead his mouth sought out mine and I kissed him like I was trying to get even closer to him, pull him in deeper. He moved slowly, soft pulses like he couldn’t bear to pull all the way out. I was fine with that. Now that we were connected I didn’t want him to go away.

But not for long. As his breathing deepened his thrusts became more insistent, and I felt urgency rise in me again. Before long I rocked against him, meeting his passion with my own. His breath came in pants, hot in my ear. His hand was warm and sure at the small of my back, tilting my hips, changing the angle of his body in mine.

He was close. I could feel it in the way he moved, his rhythm stuttering. His hand fell from my back to my thigh, pulling it higher, tighter against him. Once my body was positioned like he wanted it he slid a hand between our bodies. “You can come again, love. I know you can.” It wasn’t a question. Not a request. It was a command, growled in my ear by a pirate, whose fingertips stroked me in short, quick circles. Heat coursed through me and I gripped the back of his neck, my fingernails digging into his skin. He growled from deep in his chest, and the rumble of it sent shivers across my skin. When he stroked me harder I bowed against him, wanting to escape the overwhelming feelings and trying to get more of him at the same time.

Everything built again, fast, from where he stroked me, where he rocked against me, building higher and higher until I tightened and broke in his arms. I clung to him and cried out as waves crashed through me and I spasmed around him.

He stilled his movements as I came, and before I could catch my breath he pressed me under him into the bed. Too weak to hold on, I dropped my hands to lie on either side of my head and he reached for them, threading our fingers together and holding on tight. I tilted my hips up to take him in as deeply as I could. His mouth drank from mine greedily as he drove into me harder.

“I’ve wanted you for weeks, Emily . . . weeks.” The words poured out of him between shuddering breaths and desperate thrusts. He dropped his head, his mouth on the side of my neck. “God . . . I’ve been trying to stay away from you, not touch you, not want you . . .” His eyes were closed and his words washed over me, spoken against my skin, and I gratefully let them soak in. “Then you show up here in that little dress, you make me crazy. Emily.” My name was a hoarse cry torn from his throat, his hands tightened impossibly on mine. “You feel so . . . I don’t know if I can . . .”