The Way You Look Tonight (The Sullivans #9)(43)

Something swelled beneath his breastbone, an emotion that was bigger than this night, bigger even than the way Brooke was healing him one kiss at a time.

She reached for the zipper of his jeans, and he let her pull the denim down, but when his erection jumped beneath the light stroke of her fingers over cotton, he knew better than to let her pull off his boxers, too. All it would take was the slightest touch of her fingertips over him, and he’d lose it.

A few seconds after removing his boxers himself, he kicked off his last piece of clothing and both of them were finally naked. He kissed her and reveled in the amazing feeling of her bare skin sliding against his for the first time.

His.

She was his.

The thought was echoing over and over in his head when she told him, "I’m ready now."

Slowly caressing her gorgeous curves, moving his hand over her br**sts, waist, hips, and inner thighs, he finally slicked his fingers through her wetness. She arched into his touch, and he bit down on her earlobe.

"Baby, you’re more than ready."

He stroked her again, moving his fingers inside of her in just the right way to make her grip his shoulders more tightly as her inner muscles clenched hard over him. Her mouth was sweet against his as he kissed her with the ferocity that he wouldn’t let himself use in the thrust of his hand up against her.

"Soon," he promised her, knowing what she really wanted...his body moving into her, hard against soft. "But only after you come again for me at least one more time."

He matched the rhythm of his tongue against hers with the plunge of his fingers into her incredibly welcoming body. He’d always loved women and sex, but nothing he’d ever experienced before compared to being with Brooke. No woman he’d ever been with had been so pure in her sensuality, so willing to give herself over to his touch, to the press of his lips on her, to the stroke of his fingertips across every sensitive patch of skin, both inside and out.

She was still trembling, still pulsing over his hand as she said, "That feels so good, Rafe." She cupped his face in her hands and pulled his mouth back down to hers, kissing him in her sweetly seductive way.

He could have watched, listened to, felt her come all night long. But both of them had been more than patient for the past two days. Shifting away from her just enough to reach the condoms he’d pulled out of his jeans, he was about to rip one of the packages open when Brooke said, "Now that I did what you told me to," she said with that sexy spark in her eyes, "I can’t wait to be kinky with you."

Forgetting all about the condom in his hand, Rafe almost exploded right then and there. God, she had no idea how close he was to taking her hips in his hands and thrusting into her to lose himself in her softness, in her beauty, in the look in her eyes that told him he could do absolutely anything he wanted with her.

No. Damn it, he needed to stay in control. Somehow, some way, he needed to remember that Brooke was different. Special.

And far more precious than any woman he’d ever been with.

"I told you," he somehow managed to grit out, "I’m not going to do that kind of stuff to you."

Her full lower lip pouted slightly at him, and he had to nip at it, even as she said, "But I want you to." Sweet Lord, she needed to stop saying those things, but then she added, "You told me last night you’d make me beg."

"No, Brooke," he pleaded with her, "don’t beg me."

Everything stilled between them in that moment as she looked up at him, her eyes full of desire, but also clear...and decided.

"Be wild with me." She stroked her hands down his chest, her nails lightly scoring his chest. "Please."

Rafe had never been particularly gentle in bed, but he wanted to be gentle with Brooke. Tender, too, because of how special she was to him.

Of course, the irony was that just when he was trying to be gentle and tender, she was asking for wild. For kinky.

Still intent on doing whatever he needed to do to resist her pleas, though he wanted that wildness just as badly as she did, when she reached for his shaft, the only way he could keep the game from being over right then and there was to grab her wrists and pull them as far away from his erection as he could.

It was in that exact moment that he gripped her arms tightly above her head—a throaty moan leaving her lips as if he were already inside of her—that Rafe realized the power Brooke had over him.

He’d vowed not to let himself go crazy, had sworn that he wouldn’t let himself forget to be gentle. He could never forgive himself for stealing Brooke’s wide-eyed innocence, for sullying any part of her sweetness.

But the way she was begging was more than enough to drive a guy crazy...and to have him losing what was left of his patience.

Needing her now, Rafe used his knees and thighs to push her legs open wide, and then wider still. She writhed sensuously beneath him, her eyes cloudy with desire, her pretty mouth plump from the kisses with which he’d ravaged them, her skin flushed with arousal, her br**sts so full and soft and sweet that he had to close his mouth over one peak again.

He pulled back from her breast with a scrape of his teeth over her sensitive flesh that had her begging again. Her words shouldn’t have made any sense—Need. Please. Take. Want—but he had no trouble deciphering them at all because they were the same ones playing on repeat in his head.

He’d planned on taking her slowly. He’d warned himself to be gentle with her. But as her heat, her scent, the sweet taste of her mouth pushed him to the edge, with her wrists still tightly restrained above her head in one of his hands, Rafe used the other to shove on the condom. He pushed into her in one hard stroke, so deep that she gasped aloud.