One Perfect Night (6 page)

"In that case, we’re going to have to make this quick," he said as he stared down at her with hungry eyes. "I’m thirty-three. I work for the Maverick Group here in Seattle. I play basketball a couple of times a week and you already know I love to ski. And I recently learned that I have a major thing for pretty brunettes with blue eyes. Your turn now."

She was just as anxious as he was to get on with the "making love" part of their evening, so she didn’t waste any more time than he had. "I’m thirty. I used to work for a gaming company, but I recently quit to open my own store on Lake Street in downtown Kirkland. It’s called
Indulgence.
"

"I like the name you chose," he said as he stroked his hand over her hair, and left it cupping the back of her neck. It felt good to be held by him like that, and also to be able to tell him, "Today was my first day in business." She couldn’t have held back her smile if she’d tried. "It went amazingly well."

"Of course it did," he said as if her opening day couldn’t have gone any other way.

She was so tempted to kiss him again, but first she wanted to add, "While I’m a much better ice skater than I am a skier, swimming is really my sport. And..." She paused to press her palm to his cheek, loving the way his rough stubble scratched her skin.

"And?"

She leaned in closer. "And I’ve recently learned that I have a major thing for green-eyed ski instructors."

Their mouths met again, another hungry exploration of desire that told her as much about Noah as anything he’d said. His mouth was at once rough and gentle, and he gave at least as much as he took. He knew what he wanted from her, and she knew he intended to have it, but even then she could feel him holding onto his control...until he knew that she was ready for him to lose it.

Any other guy would have taken her into the bedroom by the time they pulled apart, but when he ran the pad of his thumb over her tingling lower lip and said, "What about your family?" she was amazed to realize that he’d actually
meant
it when he said he wanted to get to know her better before making love to her.

He was still the best-looking man she’d ever seen up close and in person, but now that she’d had a chance to spend some time talking to him, she saw more than just his good looks. She saw strength—and sweetness—at the core of who he was.

"I used to wish for a sister or brother," she found herself telling him, "but my parents split up when I was really young. I grew up with just my mom."

"Did she remarry?"

"After my father walked out on her, I guess she didn’t trust men anymore. She dated, but once things got serious with a boyfriend, she always broke it off."

"Before they could hurt her the way your father hurt her," he said with immediate insight.

She’d never told anyone this before, not even Mia. How, she wondered, could it be so natural to open up to Noah so much?

"Yes," she said softly. "She warned me to be careful about trusting my heart to anyone."

"I’m sure she thought she was doing her best for her daughter, didn’t she?"

She heard what he wasn’t saying—that her mother had unintentionally led her astray. "But she was right. Because the one time I let down my guard, I—" She shook her head. "I should have known better."

"Who hurt you, Colbie?"

She shook her head, hating the way her mouth was starting to wobble at the corners. "We’d been dating for almost a year." She didn’t want to say his name aloud, didn’t want to let any part of Rob’s memory ruin this night for her. "I found him in bed with someone from work." She’d thought the woman was a friend, but she’d been wrong about both of them. "But do you know why I’m really angry? Not because he cheated on me, but because I already knew he wasn’t the right man for me. I should have had the courage to break up with him
before
he cheated."

Anger moved across Noah’s face. "Your ex-boyfriend was an idiot. How could he not have known what he had?" He pulled her closer into him, so gentle and yet so strong all at the same time. "I never want to hurt you, Colbie," he promised in that deep voice that sizzled up and down her spine before landing smack dab in the center of her heart. "Do you know what I’m going to do instead?"

Oh my.
She almost didn’t dare ask. "What?"

"I’m going to love you."

"Yes," she whispered, wondering if she’d ever be able to catch her breath all the way again. "Make love to me, Noah. Please, I can’t wait anymore."

Chapter Seven

As Colbie lifted her mouth to Noah’s and she kissed him, the ache inside him both deepened...and gave way to the greatest pleasure he’d ever known. He swept her up into his arms, hardly able to believe that he was finally going to get to strip off her clothes, to touch her soft skin, to learn every inch of her beauty. Even as he held her in his arms and kissed her lips, he ached for her.

When he finally put her down in his bedroom, letting her curves slide slowly over his muscles until her feet touched the floor, he put his hands on either side of her face and stared down at her. His chest clenched tight at the depth of her beauty. Just looking at her—without yet touching anything but her face—had his breath coming in ragged pants.

"I feel like I’ve been waiting forever for you," he said right before he finally gave in to the need to have her, the greed that had been eating him up since the first moment he’d held her in the snow in Lake Tahoe. He ran kisses from her mouth, over the arch of her cheekbones, to the gorgeous curve of her neck.

She smelled like rain and red wine and woman and his head spun with wanting her. Maybe if he were a better man, he could have held back longer, could have been more patient, could have given her more reasons to trust him.

But right now all that mattered was making her his.

He moved his hands to her shoulders and ran them over her silky shirt until he found three little buttons just behind her neck and undid them. A moment later, she was raising her arms for him so that he could slip the shirt over her head. Every inch of skin that he uncovered he had to cover with his mouth. As he slowly drew her shirt up and off and discovered the places that made her gasp with pleasure—the upper swell of her breasts, the indentation of her belly button, the hollow of her shoulder—he lingered
there
and
there
and
there
to please them both.

When he finally let her shirt fall to the floor and lifted his mouth from her skin, his breath caught in his throat again. She was wearing a pink lace and silk bra that was so fine it was nearly translucent. He wanted to leave it on her so that he could memorize her beauty...but primal need was urging him to rip it off her, too.

He lowered his mouth and flicked one taut peak with his tongue, and when she moaned and arched into him, her hands threading into his hair so that she could hold him close, he had to close his lips over her nipple on a moan of his own. She moved against him, pure sensual woman, and he drank in the sound of her shuddering breaths, the way she trembled with need. Unable to resist, he drew down the cups of the bra with rougher hands than he would have if he’d been less desperate for her, if he hadn’t spent the last week wishing for this moment.

Just looking at her like this had Noah forgetting every other woman he’d ever been with. Colbie’s skin was lightly flushed, and her full, rose-tipped breasts beckoned him. He cupped them in his large hands, stroking the soft flesh reverently...until his greed and boundless hunger for her took him over again.

With a harsh yank on delicate fabric, he pulled the bra completely off and let it fall. He lowered his mouth to her again, only this time there was no silk, no lace between them while he teased her, and himself, with long strokes of his tongue and the gentle slide of his teeth over sensitive flesh.

Noah wanted her so damn much, a wanting that went so far beyond desire that it could only mean one thing.

He was falling head over heels for her, had started falling the second she’d lifted her head from the snow in Lake Tahoe and looked into his eyes. One look was all it had taken for him to see not only how beautiful she was, but also how sweet.

With his hands, he cupped her exquisite breasts and when she arched into his hands and mouth, he couldn’t stifle a groan of pleasure. He moved his mouth away so that her nipples beaded against his palm. He couldn’t wait for other nights when he’d spend hours on her breasts, where he’d taste and tease her with his lips and tongue and teeth, when he could let the greed rest for long enough to play. But as she whispered, "I love the way you touch me," he knew savoring her, teasing and tempting her until she was begging for release, would have to come later.

Her lush curves had driven him crazy even on the ski slopes when he’d caught her as they fell and he’d held her against him to keep her safe. Noah wasn’t an ass man. He wasn’t a breast man. He wasn’t a leg man.

He was an
everything
man.

With lips and hands, he caressed every inch of her skin as he continued to undress her, sliding the zipper of her skirt down so that it, too, could drop onto his bedroom floor with her blouse.

"You look like an angel," he said when she stood before him in nothing but the sexiest lingerie he’d ever seen. "A naughty angel."

"I was wearing the same thing when we were making snow angels," she told him, "underneath my ski clothes."

"If I had known that—" He took her all the way to the bed and laid her on it, her hair spread out across the pillow, her body lush, her skin soft, his every dream come true. "—I wouldn’t have let you go."

* * *

Colbie knew her body wasn’t perfect. Her hips were a little too big. Her legs would never be long and lean like a model’s. But she also knew how responsive she was to touch.

And she knew how much desire there was in Noah’s eyes whenever he looked at her. Lust flared so powerfully from him that heat flowed all across her skin.

From that first moment up on the snowy mountain, he’d looked at her like that. Whether she was covered in a down jacket or was naked except for her panties and heels, he desired her.

And for the first time in her life, she felt absolutely perfect. As beautiful as he’d—repeatedly—told her she was.

She didn’t know how long he simply stared before he finally put his hands on her. All she knew was that it was too long. But whatever she’d expected from him, it wasn’t this slow movement of his hands over her face, his fingertips caressing the curve of her eyebrows, the arch of her cheekbones, the thrust of her chin. And then down her neck to the curve of her shoulders, the soft edges of her breasts, the bones of her rib cage, until he reached the soft swell of her stomach and hips.

She tried to keep her eyes open, tried to hold onto rational thought, but oh, it felt so good, and ultimately she had no choice but to sink into the pleasure of his touch, her eyes fluttering closed as she drank in the shocking sweetness of his hands on her. Slowly, he ran his hands down her thighs, skirting past the extremely sensitive skin at the backs of her knees, to press his fingertips into her calves so perfectly that she groaned aloud at the pleasure of his touch. He slipped off her heels and when her feet were bare, he stroked them, too, with the pads of his thumbs, as if he wanted to give every part of her pleasure, leaving nothing out. And then, finally, he drew her panties from her body, too.

"Beautiful." The one word from Noah’s lips was more of a caress than any other’s man’s touch. "So beautiful."

She opened her eyes just in time to see him lick his lips at the sight of her sex, slick and wet and completely bared to his gaze...and she finally realized he still had all of his clothes on. Immediately, she reached for his jacket and slid it from his broad shoulders.

She could feel the heat of him, the barely leashed strength beneath the pressed dress shirt, as her hand moved to the buttons that ran down his chest. She wanted him naked, wanted to see all that power without anything covering it up. He could take off his clothes much faster than she could do it for him, but there was something so sensually satisfying about her being the one to uncover him, about being able to run her fingertips over his skin, his bones, his muscles, the dark hairs on his chest that curled against her knuckles as she undid one button and then another.

But when she finally had his shirt pulled out of his pants and all the way open, she had to stop...and stare.

Only, looking wasn’t enough. Touching wasn’t enough, either.

She needed to taste him, too.

She leaned up and put her mouth over his collarbone. It was natural—so perfectly instinctive—to slide her tongue into the hollow just behind the bone.

"Mmmm." He tasted clean, but a little spicy, too. She needed to taste him again, needed to memorize not only his scent, but also his taste, so she moved her mouth lower, down over one of his pectoral muscles. She found his nipple with the tip of her tongue and as his hands threaded through her hair, she put her teeth on him, the light scrape against his hardened flesh causing him to groan with pleasure.

Or maybe it was her own groans she was hearing, because Colbie had never done anything more pleasurable than taste—and tease—Noah.

She pushed his shirt off and together they worked to strip him of the rest of his clothes until he was wonderfully, beautifully naked…and she couldn’t wait to get her hands, her mouth, on every new hard, tanned inch of skin that she’d uncovered. His muscles jumped beneath the stroke of her fingertips, the lash of her tongue as she explored him with a greed that rivaled his for her. She wasn’t even close to getting enough of him as, on a groan, he pulled her back up his body and took her mouth again with his. She didn’t know when he’d pulled a condom out, but when her fingers brushed against the package, she immediately picked it up, ripped it open and reached for him. She felt him stiffen and was surprised to realize that he was holding his breath as she rolled it down his thick length.