teeth across her tender skin. She gasped. He muttered, “Not a damn thing.”
“I’m not an angel.”
“Yeah, you are.”
“Just for tonight, yeah?” She wrapped those slim arms around him, clutching him to her, tipping her head back, offering him more, offering him everything. “Just this one time...”
“However you want it.”
“Just kiss me. Just...hold me. Just make me forget.”
Chapter Two
Q uinn took her by the shoulders and gently set her at arm’s length. She swayed a little on her bare feet, gazing up at him, breathless, eyes starry with need.
He said, “First, I want to see you.”
A soft gasp. “Okay.”
“All of you.”
“Okay.”
He took her big pink shirt by the hem. “Raise your arms.”
She obeyed without hesitation. He lifted the shirt up over her head, past the pink-painted tips of her fingers and tossed it away. Her hair settled, so shiny and thick, spilling past her shoulders, down her back, over her breasts. She let her arms fall back to her sides and gazed up at him expectantly.
Impossible. Chloe Winchester, naked to the waist, standing right in front of him.
He cupped one fine, full breast in his hand and flicked the pretty nipple. His breath clogged in his throat, and the ache in his groin intensified. “You’re so damn beautiful, Chloe.”
“I...” She didn’t seem to know what to say next. Which was fine. He was getting one night with her. And it wasn’t going to be about what either of them might have to say.
He leaned close again, because he couldn’t stop himself. He stuck out his tongue and licked her temple. She moaned. He blew on the place he’d just moistened, guiding her hair out of the way and whispering into the perfect pink shell of her ear “Take off those little shorts.”
She whipped them down and off in an instant, so fast that he couldn’t help smiling. And then she stood tall again, completely naked in front of him, an answering smile trembling its way across her mouth. “Quinn?”
“Shh. Let me look.”
She widened her eyes—and then she shut them. And then she just stood there, eyes closed tight, and let him gaze his fill.
Touching followed. How could he help reaching for her? She was smooth and round and firm and soft. And she was standing right in front of him, Chloe Winchester, who had starred in more than one of his wild and impossible sexual fantasies when he was growing up.
He pulled her close again, wrapped his arms around the slim, yet curvy shape of her and pressed his lips into her hair. “Beautiful.”
She lifted her face and gazed up at him. “You, too, please.” He must have looked confused, because she added, “I want to see you, too.”
He chuckled and stepped back. “Yes, ma’am.” It took about ten seconds. He kicked off the mocs, reached back over his shoulders and pulled his shirt up and off. He eased the sweats over his erection and pushed them down, dropping them to the floor and stepping free of them.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, Quinn...” She reached out and ran her palm over his belly and then over the series of tats that covered his left arm. And then she touched the one for Annabelle, the angel’s wings and the green vines, the trumpet flowers and his little girl’s name, written right where it should be written, over his heart. “I never thought...you and me. Like this...?”
“Hey. Me, neither.”
“Life can be so awful.”
“Yeah.”
“But then there are surprising, magical moments—like this one, huh?”
He nodded. “Yeah.” He turned and shoved the tangled sheets and blankets out of the way. And then he took her by the waist, lifted her and set her on the bed. “Lie down.”
She obeyed, stretching out on her side with a sigh. He went down to the mattress with her. He kissed her, tasting her mouth for the first time, finding it as sweet as the rest of her. Her tongue came out to play and for a while, they just lay there, on their sides, kissing and kissing, as if nothing else
A. A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)