Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

would look like that, a hot silver glitter. “Technologically,” she said, “I was innocent. But in other ways, I wasn’t innocent at all. I knew more about life, death, and sheer human endurance than most technological types ever have to learn. I also knew about the other world, the civilized one out there beyond the rain forest, because Mother and Father kept telling me how evil it was, how decadent, how godless, how riven by greed and malice.”
    Archer turned Hannah’s hand and began to taste each one of her fingers in turn. “Didn’t it scare you?”
    “The outside world?” she managed, despite the vise of desire squeezing her throat. The velvet rasp and gentle suction of his tongue were a sensual revelation. The contrast between his neutral conversation and elemental sexuality made her dizzy. His control was utterly unexpected. Len would have had her on her back by now, driving toward his own satisfaction.
    “Scare me?” Hannah repeated, her voice as raspy-sweet as Archer’s tongue. “No. The world beyond the rain forest fascinated me. A place where you could go thousands of miles in a few hours instead of a few miles in days. A place where every book ever written could be conjured up on a screen and read. A place where people looked like me, yearned like me, needed like me.”
    He tasted her little finger, decided that he liked it best, and tasted it again, deeply, before slowly letting it slide free of his mouth. “What did you need?” he asked finally, looking at her, focusing only on her.
    “I . . . ” Her breathing frayed as a shiver trembled through her body. She had never been looked at like that, as if she was the very center of life. “I don’t know. But I knew I wouldn’t find it in the rain forest.”
    “Did you find it beyond the rain forest?”
    She closed her eyes. “I grew up.”
    “That’s not the same thing.”
    “It has the same result.”
    “Which is?”
    “You stop looking.”
    When Archer would have asked another question, Hannah put her fingers against his mouth. He kissed them and waited.
    “Turn around,” she said in a low voice. “One of those bruises looked deep enough to need attention.”
    Slowly he turned his back to her. Again he felt her cool, light fingers smoothing over his skin, probing gently, testing the bruises. He tried not to think how good it would feel to have her hands all over him. Not soothing him. Measuring him. Teasing and arousing, enjoying and demanding.
    A decade of remembering her voice, her laughter, and her grace had been bad enough, but this was the most exquisite kind of torture he could imagine. Standing nearly naked, breathing in her cinnamon-and-sun scent, feeling her delicate touch on his skin, thinking what it would be like to pull her arms around him and kiss her until neither one of them could stand up . . .
    He could barely breathe, barely think, only drown in a combination of lust and tenderness that was like nothing he had ever felt for a woman. Eyelids half lowered, aching and oddly at peace, he steeped himself in the moment. When her breath washed warmly down his spine, he couldn’t prevent a shiver of pure sensual pleasure. She was a dream he had never allowed himself to have, a warmth he had always needed and never known, the essence of everything he yearned for that had no name.
    “Does that hurt?” she asked when he shivered again.
    “Yes.”
    Without stopping to think, she bent and brushed her lips over the bruised skin. “I’m sorry. When I asked you to come here and help me, I didn’t think you would be hurt. I thought you were too hard to ever be hurt.”
    Slowly Archer turned around. “Don’t be sorry.” He eased his fingers into her wet, dark hair and tilted her face up. “It’s the best hurt I’ve ever felt.”
    Hannah started to ask a question, but the words never formed. His mouth was brushing hers, his tongue was tracing her lips, and all she could think of was getting closer to him. Whispering his name, she stood on tiptoe, wrapped her arms around his neck, and buried her mouth in his.
    With a thick sound of pleasure, Archer pulled Hannah hard against him and returned the kiss as deeply as she gave it. His teeth nipped at her tongue before his own tangled with it, teasing and tasting her until she had no thought but to get more of him, get it deeper, get it now. What she needed, a kiss couldn’t provide, no matter how hot and greedy the mating of mouths. Whimpering, demanding, she