It Must Be Your Love (The Sullivans #11)(53)

She reached for his hand, loving the way he always tugged her against him. “Do you still have the same post-show ritual?”

She could see the combination of desire—and his attempts at control—as they moved across his face. “Yes.”

“Good.” She smiled up at him, certain now that they weren’t too far at all from finally getting naked with each other again. Thank God. “Let’s get into the shower, Ford.”

He groaned as he moved the hand he was holding behind her back to immobilize her against his hard muscles, then slid his other hand into her hair to kiss her. All her thoughts of control, of trying to lead him where she was so desperate to go, fled as the pleasure of his tongue slicking hot and needy against hers filled her. Just being with him like this made it feel like the ground was moving beneath them...but then when he drew back, she realized the ground was indeed already moving at a steady clip beneath the tires of the bus.

“You tempt me.” He traced the swell of her lower lip with his tongue. “So much.” He gently sucked it into his mouth. “Too much.”

She slid her hands beneath his T-shirt to the muscles that jumped against her fingertips. “Let me tempt you tonight, Ford.” She licked at his mouth just the way he had with hers, loving the way his hands tightened on her. “And,” she whispered against his lips, “you can tempt me, too.”

“A shower.” He started to slip the small buttons along the front of her silk shirt out of their holes. “That’s all we’ll do tonight, Mia.” Lust fought with determination in his voice as his unbuttoning revealed the lacy edge of her bra. “Soap,” he said in a hollow voice, as if he was trying to remind himself what one usually used in a shower. He looked momentarily lost as to what else might be in there until he finally said, “Shampoo.”

“And naked skin,” she reminded him in a husky voice. “I can’t wait to be naked with y—”

The rest of her sensually teasing words fell away as he reached out to brush the very tip of his finger over the exact spot on her chest where the swell of flesh met lace.

“Beautiful. So damned beautiful.”

Mia couldn’t shake the feeling that he was looking at her as if he’d never seen any other naked woman before, as if she were his first. His only. He was a rock star who could have any woman in the world and, rationally, she knew she wasn’t even close to his first. He wasn’t for her, either. But it had never been like this for her with any other man. And as he said again, “You are so damned beautiful,” she didn’t need him to tell her that it had never been like this for him with anyone else, either.

Not when she already knew the truth in every kiss he gave her, in every caress.

She was surprised to realize his hand was shaking slightly as he traced skin and lace from one side of her chest to the other, then back again. She’d assumed by now that if and when they were going to get naked together, it would happen in a race to tear off clothes and get at each other.

But yet again, Ford was surprising her with reverence where she’d expected only lust...and with sweetness where she’d worked so hard to tell herself all these years there had been only sin.

She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until he finally moved to undo the final buttons that held her shirt closed. It came out in a rush as he gently pushed the fabric from her shoulders, so that it fell to the floor behind her.

Taking a fistful of her hair into his hand, he tugged her head back so that he could put his mouth, hot and needy, into the curve of her neck. Her br**sts, covered only in lace now, became even more aroused as she pressed them against his cotton-covered chest. And as he began to run kisses from her neck down across her shoulders, then over the upper swell of her br**sts, she had to clutch at his shirt behind his back to hold herself steady.

Breathe. She needed to remember how to breathe. In. Out. In. Out. And as his lips and the bristles on his jaw moved over her skin, she almost caught the hang of it again.

That is, until she was rocked by the unexpected slick of his warm, wet tongue beneath lace and over one nipple.

“Ford. Yes. Please. More.” One pleading word after another fell from her lips as she arched into his mouth, needing him to take more, to run his perfect tongue over the rest of her. Thank God, he listened to her pleas as he found her other breast and made it just as damp and peaked as the other.

And then he was dropping to his knees, his mouth hot and desperate as he ran kisses over her stomach, dipping his tongue into her belly button before nipping at the soft skin just to the side of it.

“All night long,” he said against her stomach as she gasped with pleasure. “I could spend the entire night tasting you like this, every single inch of you.”

Oh yes, she loved that idea, of his teasing her with his mouth and hands all night long. But not tonight, not when she was going mad with the need to be skin to skin with him.

“I want to do that to you, too,” she told him, but he had on far too many clothes, so she grasped his shirt in her hands and pulled it over his head.

With Ford still on his knees in front of her, she could look down on his broad shoulders, his tanned skin that had been painted with intricate tattoos. She recognized some of them, remembered well the joy of tracing them with her fingertips as they lay together in his hotel room, and her fingers were drawn to do the same thing now.