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Noah’s gaze lifted as his mouth lowered. He was watching her, she thought, excitement a booster rocket to her already speeding pulse. He wanted to see how she reacted when he took her bare nipple in his mouth.
Heat and wetness closed over her tight bud. His tongue stroked, drawing a delicate circle around her areola. She heard herself whimper. Surely he could see the plea in her expression.
Yet still he kept up the subtle strokes. Had she imagined that earlier bite?
Could she have imagined it? No man had ever touched her with less than gentleness. During lovemaking she’d always been treated like a breakable piece of expensive crystal.
She dug her fingers into Noah’s scalp and his gaze intensified.
“More,” she whispered the word this time, desire and the desire to be more than a precious object making her voice husky. Demanding. Would he understand what she needed? “More.”
His lips locked onto her flesh.
She bowed in his embrace and gave herself up to the fire and pressure of his mouth. A shiver raced through her, shaking her bones, her thoughts, her understanding of herself. After years of living with a dying husband, she’d considered herself a woman of mild desires and low-level libido, but now she only wanted strong sensation after strong sensation: the rasp of a beard, the clutch of strong fingers, the stinging edge of a man’s teeth.
Then she could be sure she was living.
Suddenly, Noah’s head jerked up. She jerked, too, startled by the movement and how much she already missed his mouth. The night air was cold against her wet nipple.
“Someone’s coming,” he said.
She whimpered, less disturbed about being seen than being cut off from this dark, delicious round of sensation.
A grimace crooked the corners of his mouth. He bent his head swiftly, and then there it was, that little sting.
She moaned, her nipple throbbed, Noah yanked her clothes back into place. Then he pulled her to him, tucking her face against his chest. “That’s what you want?” he asked, repeating the question he hadn’t let her answer earlier.
Her arms wrapped around his waist and she shivered again, reacting to all that she desired and all that she was being denied—at least for the moment.
“That’s what you want?” he said, again.
She lifted her face to look at him. “It’s a start.”
Noah pushed through the doors leading into the restaurant, towing Juliet behind him. He had to get her somewhere, somewhere private, before he woke up. Because if this was merely a dream, he intended to stay within it as long as he possibly could.
Juliet pulled back on his arm.
Should have known this was too good to be true. He closed his eyes a moment, then looked back.
Her eyes…the Iraq sky, the green of spring. Her cheeks were pink from the cool breeze and her mouth was reddened, the edges blurred from the scrape of his whiskers. He couldn’t stop himself from reaching out and using his thumb to outline her lips. “Second thoughts?”
Her tongue darted out to taste his skin. He hissed in a breath, then his hand shifted to cup her chin. “No second thoughts?”
She shook her head. “I came with Nikki and Jay. I need to tell them I’m leaving.”
“I’ll do it.” He was already scanning the crowd, looking for the couple. “You stay right here.”
Catching his hand, Juliet squeezed his fingers. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”
And wasn’t that just another sign he was asleep? But he wove through the crowd anyway, in case it really was Juliet he’d been kissing outside, in case it really was her unspoken demands that had caused him to tighten his hands and his mouth on her. Perfect, classy, golden Juliet had begged him in every way for a rougher touch.
Hell, his body was telling him he was well on his way to wild monkey sex with Juliet Weston. He must be dreaming.
But there were Jay and Nikki, dancing, and he shouldered past a Raggedy Ann and Andy to tap the mermaid on the shoulder. She turned her bicolored eyes on him, the ones so like her sister’s, and it halted his thought processes.
It was Juliet’s face he saw, full of frustration and unexpected anger. Is it too much to ask that I could have a man to hold me through one simple, single night? She’d said that.
A man I admire. She’d said that, too.
“Noah?”
He shook his head, and focused again on Nikki’s questioning expression. So that she could hear him over the band’s rendition of “Thriller,” he leaned in. “I’m taking Juliet.”
The younger woman glanced back at Jay. He was all innocence and no comment—practically gazing up at the ceiling and whistling. She turned back to Noah and narrowed her eyes. “Taking her?”
