Back to Life Ch. 03

"Are you having a good time?" he asked, setting the drink on the waist-high stone wall that separated Jannie's back garden from the wooded lot behind it.

"Yes, I am," she answered, sliding her eyes away from his. "Your family is very special." She chuckled, and he asked,

"Care to share the joke?"

"I was just thinking how reserved Duncan appeared to be when we first met, yet now he seems to be quite relaxed. I guess he sees that I'm harmless," she concluded with another husky chuckle.

"I wouldn't say that," he demurred, turning fully to face her, and reaching for her, finally unable to resist the lure of her presence.

Karen felt the touch of his hands on her bare shoulders like electricity zapping through her body. It shook her to her core, and she raised her face to him.

"I have wanted to kiss you since the first time I saw you," Peter said, his gaze holding hers. "Please don't say no."

Karen stared bemusedly at him as he lowered his mouth to taste her. His blue eyes never left her brown ones as he opened his mouth over hers. His breath was hot, and smelled of the whiskey he had been drinking. It was sweet, and she felt herself trembling as he tasted her lips, one at a time, slowly, achingly, and then it occurred to her that he was waiting for her to invite him in, to open the way for him to take her mouth in a kiss she knew she had wanted for almost as long as he had. She sighed and let him in.

Peter felt the gust of her breath on his lips when she opened for him, and his blood roared in his ears. He had to remind himself that he was a middle-aged man who had been married for twenty years and knew how to kiss a woman without mauling her. He wanted to whimper and roar at the same time, so great was the emotion welling in his chest. He settled his mouth over hers, and thrust his tongue inside, catching hers and suckling it. She moaned, and his blood heated more. He kissed her deeply, wildly, hungrily, holding her face in his hands to draw her as close to him as he could. She tasted like nectar, and he drugged himself on her kisses, glorying in the feel of her mouth, in the way she kissed him back as though she were as ravenous for him as he was for her.

Their bodies fused together in an aching need for more, and Peter pulled himself away from her with with a Herculean effort, knowing if he let himself continue to feast on her, he would embarrass them both. He knew she must have felt the clear evidence of his desire for more than the taste of her lips when he had dragged her willing body into his own, and he knew equally well they could not yet go where his rampant flesh wanted them to.

"Much as I would like to continue to indulge myself, I think you had best go back to the party before you are missed, liefje." He forced the words between lips throbbing with the urgent need to devour her, and let her go. "I'll come in later, in case Jannie asks."

"All right. I'll tell her," Karen said, shaking with suppressed desire and tingling with unfulfilled need, and turned back to the house.

Peter watched her walk away from him and groaned. He knew it would be another long night, and from the way his body was clenched, he'd need relief. He wished he could take his relief with the woman who turned back just then to smile at him, as though she knew exactly what he was thinking, and wished it too.