Face-Off. Nancy Warren

      “You let me be the judge of that,” he said, and then, because he couldn’t resist, he pulled her in and started kissing her again.

      He thought he could kiss this woman all day and all night and never grow tired of it.

      While they were mouth-to-mouth, he slipped his hands under the hem of her dress, raising it and reaching under. Her skin was warm and soft and as he touched her she made soft little sounds in her throat, like unspoken words of encouragement. He felt his blood start to heat as his hands trailed up to the edges of surprisingly sexy panties.

      He’d planned to go so slowly, take it easy, but he sensed a heat coming off this woman, and a need that he felt in his caveman’s heart. Abandoning caution, finesse, he turned her so her back was to him, dragged down the zipper, exposing her back and the lacy strap of a black bra. And her long, beautiful neck.

      He kissed his way down, from bump to bump of her spine. He could feel her excitement, feel her moving against him as he followed the zipper’s path with his lips, breaking contact between his mouth and her skin only long enough to slip the dress off her shoulders and let it drift to the floor.

      He turned her around, took her mouth again. She still wore those crazy green-and-black shoes, and nothing else but a lacy black bra and panties. He had her bra unsnapped and sailing into the corner of the room in seconds, and then he pulled back to look at her.

      “You are beautiful,” he said, meaning it with every fiber of his being.

      “No, I’m not,” she sighed. “I’m so ordinary.”

      There was such sadness in the words, but how could she even think that about herself? Her neck was long, her shoulders elegant and her breasts high and firm. Her belly was slender, but slightly rounded as a woman’s should be. Her stomach didn’t sport a six-pack, but then he’d never thought a woman’s belly should be indistinguishable from a guy’s, not that he’d ever said that aloud.

      She reached for his shirt and he helped her pull it off, then pulled her close again, enjoying the rub of her skin against his. “Am I too hairy for you?” He felt like an animal with a pelt, but she buried her face against his chest, licked his nipples.

      “I love it,” she said.

      He pushed her back on the bed, toppling her so she fell laughing onto the mattress. He traced the waistband of her panties then dipped inside for a tantalizing touch of her soft sweetness.

      All he did was touch her and she gasped, her back rising off the bed. And it was as if a bomb went off inside him. He needed to touch her, lick her, take her. He wanted to take her every possible way he could think of and maybe they’d invent a few new ones.

      He was panting, already wanting to pound himself inside her body when he hadn’t even begun to pleasure her yet. Steady, boy, he warned himself. He tried to remember that he’d planned to take this slowly, but then he hadn’t known that Sierra would be so unbelievably responsive, or that her eyes would half close and she’d look at him the way Cleopatra must have looked at Anthony. Or that her skin would smell like honey and taste like rain-washed waves.

      She was, in a word, gorgeous. And real.

      He stripped her panties off because he simply had to see her, taste her.

      While he was at it he stripped the rest of his clothes off too so they were both naked.

      When he joined her on the bed, he could see her eyeing him, her eyes big and trusting and sparkling with excitement.

      She reached over, ran her hands over his hairy chest, then down over his belly. Her hand was so small and yet so sensuous when she touched him. Before he’d even realized her intention, she’d closed her hand around him. He felt the slight quiver in her fingers, excitement or nerves, he had no idea, but it was like a hot, vibrating glove and he knew that if she clutched him like that for much longer he’d embarrass himself.

      So he flipped himself on top of her, kissed his way down her body until she was squirming, then he pushed her legs apart and put his mouth on her. Right there. Right where she was so hot and honey-sweet.

      She cried out when he licked her, and once he got her going, he practically had to hold onto her hips to keep her earthbound.

      When he pushed his tongue all the way up inside her, she grabbed his head, clutching his hair with her fingers and pretty much screaming as her orgasm shook her. Her inner walls spilled honey on his tongue and pulsed around him as the aftershocks shook her.

      SHE. COULD. NOT. BELIEVE. What. Had. Just. Happened. To. Her.

      Each thought word was more like a pant.

      Oh, oh. Oh. He was so good. It was all she could think. He was soo good. Naturally, he’d had decades of practice with supermodels, but right now she didn’t care. It was as though he’d been designed with no other purpose than to give her pleasure.

      He was kissing his way back up her body and her skin was so supersensitized that she experienced little shocks of pleasure everywhere his tongue touched her.

      When he got up close enough to kiss her, she tasted her own pleasure, and wondered how she’d ever got so lucky as to find herself in this amazing man’s bed.

      Sierra had never thought of herself as a tiger in bed. Hah. More like a stuffed animal when she’d been with Michael. Now, tonight, she wanted it all. She wanted to try everything she’d ever dreamed of, every passionate, crazy, fantasy she’d ever imagined.

      Jarrad had probably done it all a thousand times, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t imagine a man more fun to try things with.

      His hands were all over her. Jarrad touched her as though he loved the feel of her. As though she were the most amazing woman in history.

      When he’d kissed her mouth for so long she was lightheaded, he moved south. Kissing her chin, her throat and her chest. He spent a long time on her breasts, kissing and sucking them.

      She tried to hold on to sanity long enough to remind him of the importance of protection, but he was already reaching for the night table and she relaxed, knowing that he might take chances on the ice, but he wouldn’t take chances with her.

      The sound of the tearing condom wrapper reminded her that she hadn’t anticipated sex in a long time. Hadn’t wanted a man inside her as much as she wanted this one in longer than she could remember. Maybe ever.

      In a second he was ready, and she opened for him as he pushed slowly inside her.

      The long, slow friction was heaven. And hell. She wanted him inside her so badly, even as she realized he was a big man, and holding himself back so as not to hurt her. But she was so hot, so needy, that she couldn’t wait. She pulled him into her even as she thrust up against him.

      “Oh, honey, you feel so good,” he groaned. Oh, he had no idea how good she felt. Her body was melting from the inside out, and the more he thrust into her, the more she wanted.

      She was mindless, crazed, and he soon caught her mood and joined in, not taking it easy but giving her everything he had.

      She cried out, she was exploding, gripping and grabbing at him as they surged and bucked against each other, hard and strong and needy.

      With a helpless groan, he followed her, stretching the incredible sensations out with a few long, slow strokes that left him shuddering until he fell limply on top of her.

      A drop of sweat splashed onto her breast. “Oh, baby,” he said. He turned onto his back, pulling her with him, she snuggled against him, loving the tickly feeling of his hairy chest against her cheek and the sound of his heart pounding beneath her ear.

      When they’d both calmed a little, she said, “I saw your commercial tonight on TV.”

      He grimaced. “My condolences. I’m no Robert DeNiro.”

      “No. But you are the kind of man who is so famous he can move shaving cream.”

      He