Only one hour left, thank God.
Rafe hadn’t come back to her house, but she’d seen him out the kitchen window, working even harder than he had the previous day, a look of intense focus on his face. He hadn’t looked her way once, which left her free to stare all she wanted whenever he came outside.
Her mouth watered even now just thinking about how beautiful he was, the way his muscles rippled and tensed as he moved. She’d had a couple of nice men as lovers over the years, but although she had a perfectly fine time in bed with them, her world had never spun off its axis, either. Some people, she’d assumed, were meant to give their passions to other things. Her parents had the law and economic theory. She had chocolate, and she’d tried to be satisfied with that, even though she’d always had a sense of it not being enough.
With nothing more than a handful of kisses, Rafe had stirred up her deeper passions in a way she hadn’t believed could be possible. And Brooke now knew she’d never be satisfied with anything less.
When the clock ticked down to the final forty-five minutes, and she finally left the kitchen to go back into her bedroom to strip off her clothes, Brooke shivered at the thought of Rafe melting on her tongue the way one of her chocolates did. It wasn’t hard to guess that she probably wasn’t like the women Rafe normally slept with. Not only because he’d used the word innocent to describe her, but also because tall, dark, handsome men like him were always with the sleek, exotically beautiful female equivalent.
She didn’t need to step in front of her full-length mirror to know that she was anything but sleek and exotic. Deliberately reminding herself that Rafe had already seen her in a bikini and had clearly liked what he saw, she went to take a shower. She’d never been a high-maintenance woman, but tonight she shaved and smoothed lotion on nearly every inch of skin in heady anticipation of his touch.
Wrapping a towel around herself, she blow-dried her hair, then opened her closet door and stared at her clothes.
What does one wear to be kinky? Especially given that her wardrobe was entirely lacking in leather and chains.
Well, she definitely didn’t want to look like she was trying too hard. Good thing that would be hard to do, with a wardrobe that consisted almost entirely of sundresses, shorts, jeans, and tank tops. In the end, while she chose a simple white cotton dress with spaghetti straps and a fitted bodice, it was what she chose to wear under it—or not wear under it, to be more specific—that had her feeling truly sexy. Maybe even borderline kinky.
She couldn’t wait to see how Rafe reacted when he realized that she’d left both her bra and her panties in her dresser drawer.
Because no matter what he’d said about being more than she could handle, she knew she was safe with him. Only a true friend could give her such a great gift: the chance to play with fire, knowing all the while that he’d never let her actually get burned.
She was reaching for her makeup bag when she looked into her bathroom mirror and realized that her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were already bright enough without any blush or mascara. Even her mouth was pink, as if just thinking about Rafe’s kisses had been enough to give her a just-kissed look.
Five minutes left.
Her heart had been beating a little bit faster all day long. Now, it pounded like crazy.
All night, all day, her brain had kept replaying his words: "Last night, you called me wild. You’re right. I am wild." Brooke took one last look at herself, but barely saw her reflection in her rising excitement.
How had she possibly lasted twenty-four hours?
She opened her bedroom door and walked barefoot into the living room. The way the soft cotton of her dress slipped and slid over her naked curves only increased her breathlessness, especially when she realized Rafe was already there.
He turned from the window, his hair still damp from a recent shower. He smelled clean and masculine and utterly delicious and looked beyond gorgeous in his jeans and T-shirt. Even his bare feet were tanned and beautiful.
For a long moment, they stood and stared at each other across the room, just as they had two nights earlier when he’d arrived on his motorcycle and she’d just come from swimming in the lake.
Finally, Rafe broke the heady silence. "The way you look tonight. In that dress. Jesus, Brooke, you’re beautiful." He seemed to lose the breath for anymore words at that point, and then they were both moving toward each other.
She didn’t know who reached whom first, just that her hands were suddenly in his and he was tugging her close. Every single movement, every touch, felt so right. So perfect.
So meant to be.
"It’s been twenty-four hours." He slid both hands up her arms and shoulders and neck until he was stroking her cheeks with the pads of his thumbs. "How do you feel?"
"I ache." Her confession was barely more than a whisper.
His dark eyes flashed with so much heat that the breath she was barely able to take caught in her throat.
"You ache," he repeated in a raw voice. "Where?"
"Everywhere."
On a groan, he was lowering his mouth to hers, and she could almost taste him when he stilled barely an inch from her lips. "Last chance, Brooke."
God, she could hardly think straight when she wanted to kiss him this badly, but she knew it was important that she make sense of what he’d just said. "For what?"
"To change your mind." A muscle jumped in his jaw. "Tell me to let go of you, and I won’t touch you again."
Just the thought of his not touching her made her gut twist painfully. "Don’t you dare let me go."
She clenched her hands in the fabric of his shirt to pull him closer, and their mouths met in a hot, borderline frantic kiss. She was desperate to make up for the one thousand, four hundred and forty minutes they’d lost, badly needed to fill in all the kisses they’d missed out on.
As if he could sense she needed soothing, he slid his hands into her hair and lifted his mouth just far enough away from hers so that their lips were barely touching. She could feel his warm breath on her damp mouth, and she shivered even as he kissed her again, more gently this time, just the barest press of his lips against hers.
His kiss was at once sweet...and commanding. Without a word, with just the barest of touches, he was slowing them both down, letting them savor each other rather than simply devouring without thought or appreciation.