Death is Forever

sound. The gliding caress was unexpected, exquisite, unlike anything she’d ever known from a man. Slowly her body relaxed and softened, lifting subtly toward Cole, wanting more of his warmth. He repeated the gentle touch, tracing her whole mouth, enjoying the chaste caress with an intensity that surprised him.
    When Erin felt the tip of his tongue along her lower lip, she shivered and instinctively closed her eyes, wanting to focus only on the sensations radiating through her from his touch. When he slowly outlined her lips again and yet again, lingering to probe the sensitive corners of her smile, everything shifted around her, fear vanishing, nothing existing but the warm caress.
    Even when she felt the resilient heat of his biceps beneath her palms, she didn’t realize that she had reached out and was holding on to him.
    “Cole…”
    “Yes, like that,” he said, his tongue sliding between her open lips, touching the tip of her tongue with his own. “Let me taste you. Just a taste, honey. That’s all. I won’t hurt you. You know that, don’t you?”
    As he spoke he caressed her mouth again and again, not holding her, not forcing her, touching her with nothing but the tip of his tongue and the warmth of his breath.
    And because it was the only way Cole permitted himself to touch her, his senses narrowed down to the tip of his tongue. He felt the heat and textures of her mouth with a sensual intensity that was as new to him as it was to her. The vividness of the experience intrigued him. He traced her tongue again, dipping into the heat and softness underneath, tasting her as he had never tasted a woman in his life, savoring and caressing until he felt like every nerve ending in his body was concentrated in the tip of his tongue.
    Finally Cole forced himself to stop. He eased away and came to his feet in a lithe motion, not trusting himself to stay close to Erin any longer without trying to mold her to the hungry length of his body. He wasn’t used to kissing a woman and not having her. The experience was as new to him as discovering the astonishing sensitivity of his own tongue.
    Her eyes opened slowly. Her palms felt cool without his heat to warm them. So did her lips, her mouth, her tongue.
    “Cole?” she asked huskily.
    “Time for that walk, honey.”
    She looked at the big hand he was holding out to her. When she took it, he pulled her to her feet and slowly, deeply, interlaced their fingers. His palm was warm and hard. The inner surfaces of his fingers were smooth and hot. She caught her breath at the sensations shivering up her arm when he flexed his hand.
    When he would have let go of her, she protested. “Wait.”
    Cole froze.
    Erin touched the cut on his lip with a fingertip that trembled very slightly. When she traced the edge of his mouth, the rasp of his stubble was pronounced, underlining the surprising smoothness of his lips. While the silence lengthened she traced his black eyebrows, his cheekbones, his chin, and then his lips again. He closed his eyes, permitting the gentle, exploratory torture for as long as he could trust himself.
    “No more,” Cole said finally.
    Erin saw the pale blaze of his eyes as they opened and automatically stepped back. He didn’t release her hand.
    “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I thought you liked it.”
    “That’s the problem. I like it way too much.” He looked at her, making no effort to disguise the elemental hunger he felt. “I wanted you the first time I saw you. Nothing that’s happened since has changed my mind. But I’ve never kissed a woman without having her, even when I was fourteen, and—”
    “Fourteen?” Erin interrupted. Then, as realization hit, “Never?”
    “She was nineteen and she knew exactly what she was doing. So did I, after she was through.” Cole smiled and put his finger under Erin’s chin, closing her parted lips. “Don’t look so shocked, honey. Where I came from, I was a slow starter, but I caught on real quick. I didn’t want to marry so I didn’t go looking for the kind of girl who kissed and said no. The girls I went out with didn’t know the word no. Dinner, a movie, and the backseat of a car.”
    “The movie, no doubt, was optional?”
    Cole smiled crookedly and flexed his hand again, rubbing his palm over Erin’s, drawing her closer to him without meaning to. “Most of the time, so was the dinner,” he admitted.
    “Are you bragging or complaining?”
    “Neither,” he said, bringing