p; "Despite the amazing weight gain and the lack of symptoms," he interrupted, "you are going to see your regular doctor."
"I don't have much choice. My family's ganged up on me."
"That's what family's for. You gave us a scare."
"I know. I've been lectured by experts on my careless, selfish ways."
He smiled and patted her legs. "Sting?"
"Big-time. I'm thinking about just having 'I'm sorry' tattooed on my forehead so I don't have to keep repeating myself. And speaking of apologies." She blew out a breath, fluttered her bangs. "I was going to try to get out of here without bringing this up, but I'm trying to reform."
Her brows knit, as they did whenever she had to face a thorny problem or unsettling task. This qualified for both. "The other night, before I had my little… attack, we were…"
"On our way to the floor, as I remember." He reached over the puppy that had fallen asleep in his lap, brushed at the hair above her ear. "Looks like we got there after all."
"What I want to say is that things got out of hand. My fault as much as yours," she added.
"Fault's assigned when there's a mistake."
"That's my point." She should have known it wouldn't be simple. Nip or Tuck was draped across her thigh, snoring. She busied herself with stroking his head. "We don't—I don't jump into bed with men I hardly know."
"It was going to be the floor," he reminded her. He still had a hard time going into his own kitchen without imagining what might have been. "And I never assumed you did. Otherwise, it wouldn't be two years since you've had sex."
Her mouth dropped open. "Where did you get an idea like that?"
"You mentioned it," he said easily, "when I was trying to get your clothes off."
She closed her mouth, let air out her nose. "Oh. Well, that only strengthens my point." Uneasy, she watched him gently lift the puppy from his lap and set it aside, where it curled deeper into sleep. "What happened was just a moment." He repeated the procedure with the second puppy. Kate's heart began to thud. "A hormone burst."
"Uh-huh." He didn't even touch her, just leaned forward until his mouth slid expertly over hers.
Kate could almost feel her mind tilt and her brains flow out. Well, she needed a distraction, didn't she? An outlet for all this tension. It seemed like the most sensible thing in the world to unfold her legs, wrap them around his waist and dive in.
"This only proves it," she murmured. She threaded her hands through his hair and gripped. "Proves I'm right."
"Shut up, Kate."
"Okay."
It was wonderfully, brutally hot. She hadn't known until that instant how cold she had been. Until his unshaven cheeks rubbed roughly over her skin, she hadn't known how soft she could be. Or how gratifying it could be to be the soft one.
She let out a long, grateful moan when his hands streaked under her T-shirt to stroke her back, slid around to cup and squeeze her tingling breasts. The flick of his thumbs over her nipples shot a bolt of heat through her center that vibrated achingly in her crotch. Arching back, she pulled his head down until his mouth replaced his hands.
He suckled through cotton, tormenting himself with fantasies of what her flesh would feel like, taste like, sliding under his tongue. She was so… slight. That neat, almost boyish torso should never have appealed to him. There was no womanly flare of hip, and her breasts were small.
And firm, and warm.
The way she moved against him, that edgy eagerness of a woman already teetering on the edge, was viciously arousing. He wanted, needed, to shove her back, rip aside that denim and drive himself inside her until they were both screaming.
Instead he dragged his mouth back to hers, slid a hand between their bodies and sent her free-falling over the edge. He shuddered himself when she convulsed, ordered himself to breathe when her head dropped limply on his shoulder.
Well, he thought, that should hold one of us.
It took her a moment to realize that he'd stopped, was just holding her. "What?" she managed. "Why?"
The dazed questions nearly made him smile. "I decided I didn't want it to be a hormone burst. For either of us." He eased her back, studied her flushed face, the heavy, glazed eyes. "Better now?"
"I don't think—" Couldn't think. "I don't know—Don't you want to—?"