Badly wanting to touch him the way he was touching her, she reached for his shirt. His hands caught hers before she could lift the cotton up more than an inch.

"You’re not naked yet." His eyes ran, heated, hungry, over her partially exposed br**sts and waist. "Not even close."

"It’s not fair," she pouted. "You already got to taste me last night." Instead of letting her yank his shirt away, he slid his fingers through hers and lifted them to his mouth to press a soft kiss against each of her knuckles. "When you do that, you make me forget."

"Forget what?" His eyes were still dark with desire, but as he teased her, they also danced with a hint of the light she’d been wanting so badly to see in him again.

Somehow she managed to remember. "That it should be my turn now."

He leaned down to cover the side of her neck with his mouth. "Tell me how you make truffles."

With the blood rushing thick and hot in her ears, she could barely make sense of his words, could only repeat, "Truffles?"

"How long does it take to get them right? To whip the chocolate into just the right consistency?"

She might have been able to follow his questions more easily were it not for the fact that he’d just found another sensitive spot on the other side of her neck.

"Can you rush the perfect sweetness, Brooke? Can you rush the perfect smoothness?" Each word fell hot and damp against a different patch of skin on her neck, the underside of her chin, and then her mouth as he licked her once, then twice as if he hadn’t gotten nearly enough of a taste the first time around. "Can you rush the perfect taste of pleasure on your tongue?"

"No." She gave up her answer under sweet duress, the kind only Rafe could employ.

"You have to be patient with your truffles, don’t you?"

Again, wicked persuasion was the only thing that could have drawn the "Yes" from her lips that was sealing her fate.

"You and I aren’t going to rush anything, either," he told her as he slowly teased his fingertips down over her waist to the waistband of her shorts. "One slow, sweet orgasm at a time is how we’re going to do this tonight. All night long."

Thank God he at least had enough mercy to quickly unzip her shorts and let them fall to the floor. Before they kissed, she’d already been aroused, and every kiss had ratcheted up her need higher and higher. Now, Rafe’s eyes caught—and held—on her matching silk panties, no longer a light blue between her thighs.

"I got you all wet."

It was just what she’d said to him that first night when she’d hugged him in her wet bikini. But now, the words meant something else entirely. Something deliciously dirty that only made her wetter, especially when he put one arm around her waist to hold her steady while he reached out with the other hand to cup her through damp silk.

His eyes closed as he slowly moved his fingers over her. A muscle in his temple jumped. When his eyelids slid open again, the look he gave her was so full of desire he stole away what was left of her breath.

"How the hell am I supposed to survive this?" he asked her. "To survive you?"

"I could help make you feel better," she whispered against his neck, loving the brush of his stubble against her lips. She wanted to rub every inch of her body against him, and one day she vowed to take the lead and have him just the way he was having her now.

"So stubborn." He didn’t sound at all upset about it, more pleased by what he was learning about her. "So impatient."

As if to prove him right, she rocked her pelvis into his hand. Just a little harder, just a little longer, and she’d be—

But just as she was arching into the swell of pleasure, he took his hand away. She opened her mouth to protest, and he covered it with his lips. His mouth was hot and hard on hers as their tongues tangled again. She couldn’t even come close to getting enough of him as every kiss made her desperate for another, and then another. A half-dozen kisses later, she realized her bra was loose around her rib cage.

She kissed him again in a heated thank-you for stripping another piece of clothing away, and then gave a little shimmy that had the silk falling from her br**sts to the floor to join her shorts and tank top.

"Better?" he asked, six little letters that liquefied her insides.

"A little, but—"

"You want more?"

"Yes." God, yes.

He softly cupped her br**sts in his large hands. "Is this what you want?"

"Yes, and—"

Both of his thumbs stroked over her ni**les, and her breath came out in a hard rush at the exquisite sensations that rippled through her.

"Good?"

Somewhere in the back of her head, she knew he was using his sexy little questions in just the same way he was using his hands, to tease her even more, to take her even closer to the edge without letting her fall all the way over.

"It’s so good, but—"

"It’s not enough, is it?" The corners of his mouth curved up as she shook her head to let him know it wasn’t nearly enough. "Poor baby, you must be aching so bad by now."

No one had ever had this kind of power over her, to fill her with such need that her fists were clenching against his chest as she tried to control the urge to beg. It was what he wanted, but she already knew better, knew that he’d just eat up her desperate pleas...and then likely make her wait even longer.