Razed (Barnes Brothers #2)(39)
Her breath caught and he lowered his hand, relaxing against the stool, curling his hands around it so he didn’t grab her.
“You wonder weird things, Zane,” she murmured.
“No. I wonder the kind of things a guy wonders about a woman he really, really wants.”
*
He was going to turn her into mush if he kept this up. Determined to distract him, she laid her hands on his chest. Against her right hand, she felt the hard bump bump bump of his heart.
The light burned overhead and she sighed in satisfaction as she gave into the urge to study the tattoo at her leisure, the feathers, the wings as they swept up and curled over the canvas that was Zane’s body. The owl’s face, done in such detail. “He must have had one hell of an image to use when he did this,” she murmured.
“A picture,” Zane said, his voice a little rough.
She slid him a look.
His lashes lay low over his eyes. Her fingers flexed and she felt his chest rise raggedly under her touch.
Slowly, she lowered her gaze, stared at her hands. Her left one lay over his nipple. Her own were puckered into hard, aching points and she wanted, needed to feel something other than the silk of her bra rubbing against them.
Slowly, she stroked her thumb over the flat, brown circle of his nipple, listened to the ragged rasp of his breath.
“Hmmm . . .” Slipping him a look, she did the same on the other side.
“Damn it, Keelie.”
She stroked her hands down lower, feeling the ridged planes of his torso, his ribs, his belly. Wow. He was—
His hands grabbed her waist and her sudden, startled cry was lost against his mouth. Her hips landed on the edge of the island, but she barely processed that, her hands automatically going to the sleekly muscled shelf of Zane’s shoulders. His tongue licked at her lips, demanding entrance, and she opened, unable to do anything else.
He moved in closer and she parted her legs, instinctively seeking to get nearer, but when she would have gripped him with her knees, he stopped her. “Don’t,” he rasped against her mouth. “I’m . . . shit. I’m already this close to losing it here.”
He lifted his head and her heart tripped, then started to race at the look in his eyes.
Nobody had ever looked at her like that.
It wasn’t just desire.
It was something deeper—it was . . . everything.
His hand came up, cradled her face, his thumb sweeping across her lower lip. “You’ll drive me nuts.”
“It’s only fair,” she said, forcing the words out, fear starting to whisper through her. It was an unfamiliar fear, though. The fear of actually believing in those promises she saw in his eyes.
“Yeah? How is that?” he murmured, his mouth pressed to her neck, unaware of the thoughts racing inside her.
“You’re driving me crazy, too. Fair is fair, right?”
He chuckled, the sound vibrating through him.
“Fair is fair, huh?”
She jolted at the feel of his hand on her waist. “If fair is fair, then maybe I can . . .”
*
Stop. Didn’t we just establish that we were going to go slow?
Zane knew that calm, rational voice was only trying to help.
He gave it a minute. Yes, we did establish that. But that was right up until she looked at me that way, kissed me that way. I’m human.
She slicked her tongue across her lips, her eyes wide, nervous, the brown one all but black, while the pupil of her blue eye was so large, only a thin rim of color showed.
“Fair is fair,” she murmured as he stroked his fingers along the satin of her skin.
A rough breath tore out of him and he paused, closing his eyes. “You . . .” He opened his eyes and then eased his hand higher, splayed wide on her back. “You certain? I don’t mind being unfair here for a while longer.”
“We can just take it as it goes, right?” Her gaze dropped to his mouth and then she tipped her head back.
A hundred questions, a thousand doubts burned in that gaze and Zane knew the wise thing to do would be to wait. Just wait.
But he spent too much of his life waiting.
And if she wasn’t ready to call it quits yet? He wasn’t going to be the one to do it. So he caught the hem of her shirt, a form-fitting black T, and started to drag it, higher and higher. She sat still as he tugged it over her head, and continued to sit there, even as it hung from his fist.
Zane felt poleaxed.
Elegant. Delicate. He’d expected her to be just that and he still wasn’t prepared for it. Her breath came in harsh, heavy little pants that had her breasts rising and falling against a bra that had been designed with one intent in mind—to drive a man insane. Made of rust-colored red satin that shimmered just a little, it was edged with black lace and her pale skin glowed against it. It was one of those taunting little bras that pushed the breasts up and together and his mouth was already watering.
Zane was familiar with the female form and all its nooks and crannies, all those delightful curves. He spent hours capturing all those wonderful curves and lines on camera, obsessed with just how to portray the perfection of a woman’s body—and he didn’t care if his model was a size zero or a size twenty, nor did he care if they were a dewy-eyed nineteen-year-old looking to make a break or a forty-two-year-old divorcée who needed a better headshot for her website . . . and sometimes the divorcée was looking for more, a picture that would let her see she was still absolutely beautiful.