She sighed into his mouth. “We’re on a roll, J.T. Don’t stop now.”
He shifted his attention to her earlobe. “This is a nice spot,” he murmured, nuzzling until they were both dizzy. “But I suppose, under the circumstances, I can confess that I find your mind... intriguing.”
“Intriguing,” she repeated, as shudder after delicious shudder passed through her. “An interesting choice of words.”
“It seemed more apt than infuriating at the moment. And I...” His words trailed off when he spotted a line of faint bruises on her shoulder. He placed the tips of his fingers on them experimentally. “I’ve marked your skin,” he said, surprised and a bit appalled. If he had bruised her during a fight, he wouldn’t have given it a second thought. But in bed, while loving... that was a different matter. “I’m sorry.”
She twisted her head to glance at them. She certainly hadn’t felt them. “Are you?”
He looked back to see her lips curved in what he considered a typically female smile. “No, I suppose I’m not.”
“Under the circumstances,” she supplied.
“Right.” He started to speak again, to make some joke, but found himself suddenly and totally at a loss for words. Something in her smile, in her half-hooded eyes, in the tilt of that damn-you chin, turned his brain to mush.
Ridiculous, he told himself as he continued to stare at her. Absolutely and completely ridiculous. Whatever he was feeling, it couldn’t be love—not the kind of love that caused men to make foolish and life-altering decisions. It was affection, he told himself. Attraction, desire and passion, tempered with a certain amount of caring, perhaps. But love. He had no room for it. And no time.
Time. Reality struck him like a blow. Time was the biggest obstacle of all.
He started to push himself away, to put some distance between them until he could think clearly again. Still smiling, she wrapped arms and legs around him. “Going somewhere?”
“I must be heavy.”
“You are.” She continued to smile, then traced her lips with her tongue. Her hips moved gently, sinuously, against his. Thrilled, she watched his eyes cloud as he grew inside her. “I was hoping we could do a little experiment.”
He shook his head but failed to clear it. “Experiment?”
“Physics.” She trailed a single fingertip down his back. “You know about physics, don’t you, J.T.?”
He used to. “That’s Dr. Hornblower to you,” he muttered, and buried his face in her throat.
“Well, Doc... isn’t there this theory about an object in motion remaining in motion?”
His breath was ragged in her ear. “Let me show you.”
***
She ached all over. And she’d never felt better in her life. Bleary eyed, she winced at the intruding sunlight. Morning. Again, she realized.
She wouldn’t have believed it was possible to spend the better part of a day and all of a night in bed. With only snatches of sleep. With a grumbling sigh, she tried to roll over and met the solid wall of Jacob’s body.
He’d been busy since dawn, she mused. Busy working her over to the edge of the bed. Now he took up ninety percent of the mattress, along with all of the sheets and blankets. The only thing saving her from sliding onto the floor was the weight of the leg he had hooked around her hips. And the arm stretched carelessly, and certainly not amorously, over her throat.
She shifted again, met the unmoving line of resistance and narrowed her eyes. “Okay, pal,” she said under her breath, “we’re going to begin as I mean to go on, and I don’t mean to roll onto the floor every night for the rest of my life.”
She gave him an unloverlike nudge in the stomach with her elbow. He swore and shoved her another inch toward the edge.
Tactics, Sunny decided. She changed hers by sliding a hand intimately over his hip and thigh. “J.T.,” she whispered, trailing a line of kisses down his cheek. “Honey.”
“Hmm?”
She nibbled delicately at his ear. “Jacob? Sweetheart?”
He made another vague sound and cupped her breast. Sunny’s brow lifted. His movement had cost her another precious fraction of an inch.
“Baby,” she added, figuring she was running out of endearments. “Wake up, sugar. There’s something I want to do.” Gently, seductively, she brushed her lips down to his shoulder. “Something I really need.”
As his lips curved, she bit him. Hard.