Pleasure jolted up her spine. “Zach!”
“I’d tasted only what had coated my fingers all those years ago, but this . . .” He made a pass across the swollen glistening lips and, eyes closing, repeated several passes until he stopped at her center, lapped, and melded his mouth with that part of her. “I could drink you up, Paige. I could live on you, eat and eat and eat your sweetness all day.”
She arched her head in delirium, gasping, “Oh God, when you speak I go crazy.” Sexy, sexy voice. Wicked, wicked tongue. Dirty, dirty words.
Her hips moved to his mouth, her hands grasping his head, plucking and pulling at his satiny hair. “Zach. I want you up here.” As he came up, he kissed the tip of each breast before he readied himself, his cock glowing pink, his bronzed skin coated with perspiration.
Her mouth watered. “Strawberry,” she said, and spread her legs apart as he lowered himself above her. What did Zach taste like under the strawberry? What did his skin taste like there, and the moisture that came from him?
His hips sank between her thighs. As their heated flesh collided, her thoughts scattered. He smiled down at her, caressing her face with one hand as he trapped her ankle with the other and guided her leg around his hips.
She cried out anxiously, going rigid with anticipation, her leg tightening reflexively around him. “Oh God!”
He rolled his hips, prodding her with his cock. “Shh. Ease up. It’s just me here.”
He entered slowly, his hand opening on her cheek, pushing his thumb past her lips and beyond. She made a sound of relief as he filled her, latching on to his thumb, tasting it with the same fervor she’d wanted to taste that larger, more mesmerizing part of him, and eagerly swiveled her hips to take more of him inside of her.
He bent and caught her earlobe between his lips, savoring that little tidbit as he began to move. “Just me, Paige.”
Me.
Me . . .
Me!
CHAPTER 6
“THE EVENING of the accident, Paige.”
The day had come. Sooner than she’d wanted. Or perhaps later than it should have.
Her mother had had her reservations about “this kind of assistance,” but Paige hoped now she’d understand. That Mom would know she had to do this, that she owed it to herself, to her dad, to try.
She lay woodenly in a lounge chair— the sort you’d find at a psychiatrist’s office— inside the O’Neills’ home, where Sue Ellen had her practice. Their house was a small castle, in Paige’s opinion, furnished so tastefully, with sweeping draperies and artworks gracing each and every wall, that she’d at first been taken aback by such a lavish setting. How much would this woman charge?
Now she stared up at the crystal chandelier suspended from the ceiling. The crystals sparkled prettily with the light. Both her hands were fisted over her stomach; which, by the way, didn’t stop churning. “Not yet,” she gently pleaded to the middle-aged woman.
Relaxation seemed impossible at this point. Her senses were on high alert. She was aware of everything, aware of Zach in the other room, of Zach listening, Zach watching through the cameras . . .
Over a long console behind the hypnotist, a trio of incense sticks burned. The room smelled faintly of cedarwood.
“You aren’t allowing yourself to relax, Paige, you must let go.”
Paige nodded listlessly.
The lieutenant’s wife, Sue Ellen, had the pinched look of someone with little patience, or of someone working under dire stress. H
er voice was perplexingly flat, and this somehow increased Paige’s anxiety.
“Close your eyes now,” the woman said evenly, crossing her legs and linking her hands. “We will try this again.”
“Again. Yes.”
Paige tried easing her muscles. Zach had explained that the “procedure” had to take place with her in the room alone with the hypnotist.
The moment she had been guided into the room, Zach— strong, armed, delicious Zach— had been dialoguing outside with Lieutenant O’Neill, a bald, stocky man who looked to have spent the last couple of years without sleep.
“My husband has checked the perimeter,” Sue Ellen had soothed. “This is a safe neighborhood. And don’t worry, the men will be watching next door. Both rooms are set up specifically to enable forensic hypnosis. There are cameras in ours, and a monitor in the other. This allows the detectives to watch and tape your testimony.”