Since I Saw You (Because You Are Mine #4)(13)

Ian.

A vision of Ian’s laserlike, blue-eyed gaze and impenetrable expression flashed into her mind’s eye. It set off a prickly feeling of anxiety that broke through her delicious lassitude. Realizing her hands were still above her head, she cautiously lowered them, glancing sideways at Kam all the while. Was he sleeping? His breathing had certainly become slow and even.

He reached up and grabbed one of her lowering hands. She started at his touch.

“I thought you were sleeping,” she said softly, her voice thick with relaxation.

“I’m awake.”

She turned her head fully and saw his stare on her. He certainly was. His facial muscles looked relaxed in comparison to how rigid they’d been when he’d been inside her—pounding, pulsing, demanding—but his gaze was sharp and alert. He kept her hand in his grasp and moved it to her waist, his arm draping her.

“You may have fried half my brain cells just now, but I don’t want to sleep. Not yet,” he muttered thickly in his rough, French-accented voice. Her heart throbbed back to life. Had there been a thread of suggestiveness in his tone? He moved the pad of his thumb over her wrist in a gentle quest. “I wanted you so much, I never got a chance to appreciate you. I was too busy combusting.”

She swallowed, feeling the weight of her pearls on her Adam’s apple.

“I certainly felt appreciated,” she assured.

A smile flickered across his lips as he continued to touch her wrist. “Still, it was hardly a savoring experience. More like a gorge-fest.”

She returned his grin, warmed by the laughter in his eyes. The pad of his thumb moved subtly on her wrist.

“Are you feeling my pulse? When you touch me there?” she murmured. Their faces were only inches apart. She could clearly see the black ring that surrounded his irises and flecks of midnight in the silvery-gray of his eyes. His eyelashes were surprisingly thick for a man, further highlighting his magnetic gaze.

“Yes.”

“You’re using your knowledge of biology, the same knowledge you used to make your biofeedback mechanisms, in order to read me?”

“The human body has a language all its own,” he said, still feathering her pulse with his thumb. “It’s usually more honest than the kind that comes out of a person’s mouth.”

“What’s my body telling you right now?” she whispered, unable to stop herself from asking.

His gaze moved slowly down over her chest. She felt his stare on her breasts like a touch. She shifted restlessly an inch or two, increasing her contact with his body. Her shoulder pressed against a dense pectoral muscle. She inhaled deeply, making her breasts rise. Her nipples tightened beneath his weighty stare.

“The leap in your pulse along with the increase in your muscle tension could mean anxiety. Or it could mean you’re heating again.” He glanced up into her face and caught the burn in her cheeks. His gaze had grown heavy-lidded, somehow both satiated and aroused at once. Heating again. How aptly put. “In combination with the rest of the signs,” he said with a quick glance at her erect nipples, “I’d opt for the latter, though. Am I right?”

She licked at her lower lip nervously. “I think it might mean both anxiety and . . . the other thing.”

He released her wrist and cupped her waist, his large, warm hand and long fingers stretching from back to belly.

“What are you anxious about?” he growled softly.

“I don’t think Ian would approve of this, for one.”

His nostrils flared slightly. “He sent you to me, didn’t he? What right has he got to complain if we like each other? What’s it got to do with him?”

“You know it’s not that simple,” she chastised.

A frown pulled at his mouth. “Right. Let’s consider what Ian would want in this situation, by all means.”

He released her suddenly and rolled off the bed. She started at his abruptness—not to mention his simmering sarcasm—but then immediately became distracted by the image of him almost entirely naked, save for his jeans and underwear bunched around thighs that were long and solid as young oaks. Hadn’t Ian told her that Kam had built a sophisticated workout area in his underground home that took into account his intuitive understanding of the subtle mechanisms and physics of the human body? Ian was supremely in shape, but had wryly told Lin after he’d joined Kam in one of his workouts that he practically hadn’t been able to move for three days afterward.

Kam’s back was beautiful—all lean, defined muscle, a narrow waist that angled up to broad shoulders. He had more color in his skin than Ian, a swarthy gilt. There didn’t appear to be an ounce of fat anywhere. Lin supposed he wouldn’t have had much of a chance to acquire any, living a solitary, meager existence for so many years in the country. Arousal flickered in her sex at the vision of him carelessly jerking his underwear over his ass. The skin there was as smooth as his back, the buttocks powerful, round, very . . .

. . . grab-worthy.

She’d been mad to follow his demand and keep her hands out of the action.

“Bathroom?” he asked gruffly, breaking the settling spell of lust . . . and disappointment.

“Oh, there,” she pointed at a door to the right.

He came around the foot of her bed. He hadn’t buttoned his fly. As he walked, his hand cupped his exposed cock from below, sliding off the condom. He wasn’t as rock hard as he had been earlier, but his penis was still beautiful—shapely and slightly distended from his body.