"Ten?"
His eyes opened. They were a burning silver.
Diana's thoughts scattered, and with them her ability to speak coherently. "Can I-that is, would you- could we-?"
"I thought you'd never ask."
Large hands closed around Diana's face, bringing her closer. Their mouths fitted together smoothly, seamlessly, and at the first taste of each other they both made low sounds of pleasure. Ten's hands shifted, lifting Diana, easing her across his chest until most of her weight was pressed against him. The shiver that went through her was as clear as lightning at midnight. He groaned and released her.
"Dammit, honey," Ten said heavily. "I didn't mean to frighten you. I didn't think how you would feel being on a man's bed again, and me half-naked at that."
Diana shook her head. "It wasn't in a bed. It was the front seat of a car. That's why I always sit so far away in the truck. And he never-never completely took off his clothes. Or mine."
Ten closed his eyes so that she wouldn't see the rage tugging against his control. He held her gently against his chest, stroking her head and back, kissing her hair, wishing that he could change the past.
But he could not. He could only hold Diana and want her until it was a kind of agony.
The slow stroking of Ten's hand sent currents of pleasure through Diana, making her breath sigh out. She smoothed her cheek against his chest, encountered a resilient cushion of hair instead of cloth, and made a murmurous sound of discovery. Ten's hand hesitated, then continued its languid journey from the silky hair of her head to the intriguing line of her back. Though the pressure was unchanged, the caress was different, sensual rather than soothing, enticing rather than calming. He felt the heat of her breath on his breastbone as she kissed him lingeringly. Then he felt her lips open. She hesitated.
"Go ahead," Ten said. "Find out if I taste the same there as I did on my neck."
Diana lifted her head until she could see his eyes. "You won't mind?"
His smile was slow, hot, infinitely male. "Baby, you can put that sweet mouth anywhere on me that you want."
Deep blue eyes widened in shock and…curiosity. The shock he had expected. The curiosity made him want to pull her hard against his body and show her just how much he wouldn't mind any damn thing she wanted to do to him.
The first, exploring touch of Diana's tongue made Ten's breath stick in his throat. He had expected a darting taste followed by a smart comment about the limitations of camp baths. He hadn't expected a sleek, hot foray through the thicket of his chest hair. He hadn't expected her purring sounds of pleasure as she tasted him. Most of all, he hadn't expected her nipples to harden against him when she found and caressed his own nipple to a tiny, aching point.
Ten lay rigidly, fighting his own arousal and the sudden, violent need to touch Diana, to hold the sweet weight of her breasts in his hands, to taste and suckle and tease her until she writhed in an agony of pleasure. But all he permitted himself to do was slide the lingers of his left hand deeply into Diana's hair, holding her mouth against him while his right hand kneaded her back from nape to waist, pressing her even closer to the growing heat of his body. When he could bear no more he eased her mouth back up his chest until he could slide his tongue between her teeth, kissing her deeply, drinking her, mating with her in the only way she would allow.
By the time Ten released Diana's mouth she could barely think, much less speak. Her lips felt flushed, full, sated, but the rest of her body ached.
"I want-more than kissing," she said. "But I don't know how much more."
"It's all right," Ten said, kissing Diana's lips gently. "We'll take it slow and easy. The only rule will be the oldest and best one of all. Anytime I do something you don't want, tell me. I'll stop."
"That isn't fair to you. Yes, I know," she said quickly, before Ten could speak. "Life isn't fair. But I don't want to make it any harder on you."
The left corner of Ten's mouth tugged up. "Honey, it can't get any harder than it already is." He brushed another kiss over Diana's mouth, scattering her objections. Moving slowly, he lifted her from his body and stretched her out on her side with her back to him. "You'll feel safer this way, nothing in front of you, nothing holding you down, nothing trapping you. Just me behind you, and you know I'd never take you by surprise, don't you?"
"Y-yes," Diana said. It was the truth. If she hadn't trusted Ten at an instinctive level, she wouldn't even be in September Canyon with him, much less still shivering from his kisses. She let out a long breath that she hadn't been aware of holding and realized that Ten had been right about another thing. She did feel safer lying on her side with nothing in front of her but the view of a canyon slowly succumbing to the embrace of twilight. The setting couldn't have been farther from her memories of being wedged between cold machinery and Steve's relentless body. "Ten?"
"Hmm?"
"You're right. I feel safer this way."
"Good," Ten murmured, glad that Diana's back was to him, for it gave him the freedom to look at the line of her waist flaring into her rounded hips and then tapering slowly to her ankles. If she had seen the hunger and male approval in his eyes as he looked at her, she might have felt less relaxed with her back to him.
Ten's long index finger traced the line of Diana's body from the crown of her head, over her right ear, down her neck, over her right shoulder, down her ribs to her waist, up the rise of her hips, then down every bit of her right leg to her ankle. The primal ripple of her response followed his caress, telling Ten that her whole body had become sensitized to passion.
"That," he said, kissing the nape of Diana's neck, "broke every one of the high school rules about collarbones and waist. Feel like bolting yet?"
13
Diana laughed shakily, wondering at the curious weakness that had followed Ten's caress. He had broken the rules, but in such a way as not to touch any of the forbidden areas.
"Does that little laugh mean I can do it again?" Ten asked.
The subdued humor in Ten's voice was another kind of reassurance to Diana. Steve had been deadly serious whenever they had been alone, intent on getting as much from her sexually as he could, as quickly as he could.
"Yes," Diana whispered.
A shiver of response followed the seductive movement of Ten's fingertip from Diana's head to her heels. This time he slid beneath her arm, as well, caressing the sensitive skin.
"You're a pleasure to touch," Ten said, kissing Diana's nape again. "Soft, resilient, alive." His tongue traced the line of her scalp to her ear. He smiled to hear the sudden intake of her breath. "You have the sweetest curves. Here," he said, biting her ear gently. "And here." His fingers curled around her arm caressingly. When his fingers moved on, his mouth lingered. He kissed the bare skin of her arm, biting softly, drawing tiny sounds from her. "And here."
Ten's hand shaped the tightly drawn line of her waist, kneading lightly, then more firmly. Slowly, inevitably, his palm moved over the full curve of Diana's hip. "And here." His fingers fanned out, shaping her. As his teeth closed over her nape, his hand flexed into her resilient flesh, luxuriating in the feel of her.
The unexpected caress drew a ragged sound from Diana. Currents of sensation rippled through her, making her want to shift restlessly. She stirred, and her movements acted to increase the pressure of Ten's hand. When his palm smoothed down her bare thigh, she forgot to be worried that he would slide his fingers between her legs. Only when his hand had stroked over her calves to her ankles did she realize that the danger zone had been bypassed once more.
Ten continued the slow, undemanding sweeps of his hand up and down Diana's body. The long caresses were punctuated by his teeth biting gently at her nape, her shoulder, the elegant line of her back; and each time his hand traveled back up her body, he skimmed closer to the shadowed secrets between her thighs and the fullness of her breasts. He explored the smooth curve of her belly with slow pressures that eased her hips back into the muscular cradle of his legs. The pressure of her against his fiercely aroused flesh was a sweet fire that made his hands shake.