him—and herself—the sexual jolt his tense body expected.
When she leaned toward him, his expression expectant, he looked shocked to see her. Releasing his breath in a whoosh, his body went limp, except for the tic in his locked jaw muscle.
“You okay?” she asked.
He narrowed his eyes. “ Why did you do that?”
“Hey, you see a fine piece of a . . . art, and you wanna touch. I’d ask if I took any of the starch out of you, but—” She sat back to admire his backside, and lower. “But from this angle, you seem generously starched.”
His eyes were no less intense when he looked back at her. “I mean, why did you stop?”
“I’d never take advantage of a wounded man.”
“My luck. How about I lie on my side and give you full permission to take advantage?”
“I think you’re delirious.”
“I am . What would you do if I copped a feel of your backside?”
“What did I do when you copped a feel of my boobs?”
With a head tilt, he granted her the point. “I think you purred.”
And she damn near came, if only he knew.
He leveraged himself on his side, his zipper tented with his slacks so loose, and he pulled her down against him. “You’re trouble, Cartwright.” He made another meal of her lips, nibbling her top lip, then her bottom, and when she opened her mouth to return the favor, he Frenched her and surged against her with the energy of a bull out for stud, his man brain primed and thinking hard .
“Wow,” she said, coming up for air. “Wounding your pride didn’t hurt your kissing skills. You’re still good at it.”
“Thank you, but I can’t take all the credit. An equally greedy partner helps,” he said, swooping in for another, cupping her bottom, and pulling her pulsing center against his pulsing rod.
When they took to rocking against each other, and Harmony thought she was gonna come just like that, Paxton pushed her away, and she nearly slipped off the sofa.
He saved her and held her, his brow against hers, while he caught his breath. Brow to brow, breath to breath, Harmony tried not to cry, or scream, or rant, or deck him, just for the fun of it.
King sighed. “Help me, will you?” he asked, words she suspected he’d never strung together before. “Another minute,” he said, “and I would have been up to my . . . man brain . . . in trouble.”
“Your point?” she snapped.
“We’d be sorry. Me for taking advantage, and you for letting me.”
Harmony mocked him with a laugh. “That was mutual !” She shoved a finger into his chest so he winced. “Look, you brass-ass humanzee. I’m a big girl, responsible for my own sex life and my own orgasms. I’m not some throwback to the dark ages. If I were staying longer, you’d need protecting from me. I’d get you in the sack, sooner or later, and you’d plucking love it. The name’s Harmony. Remember it, because you’d be screaming it in ecstasy under other circumstances. Now shut up before you piss me off.”
She helped him stand, and he was too shocked not to lean on her. She held his pants together in the back, and by the time he took over, he had himself in control, which couldn’t be said for her.
“Harmony?” He put an arm around her shoulder to turn her his way. “For the record, I thought if I took advantage of you, you’d ‘deck me’ or ‘strike me with a sharp object in my good cheek.’ ”
Harmony wilted. “I’m sorry. I have been sending mixed signals. Not intentionally, and not that I haven’t gotten a boatload of those, myself, today. So let’s say we forgive each other and start fresh? The statement I just made stands. This is the new millennium, Paxton, and I’m the queen of my own sex life. Got it?”
She’d gotten through, she saw. He looked at her in a new and more enlightened way, as if she—as a sex partner and a proponent of the spontaneous—might be his equal. An obviously new concept for him. “Thank you,” he said. “For a proud-to-be-awesome seductress, you
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