License to Thrill

desire bolted through her and she convulsed around his probing fingers, gasping. With feet and legs, they skimmed off each other's remaining clothes, at last lying on their sides fully naked against each other, mouth to mouth, hand to hand, sex to sex.
    Kat wondered if her face held the same expression of desire and blatant need as James's. His black eyes were hooded with passion, his smooth cheeks and forehead covered with a fine sheen of perspiration. His lips parted slightly, as if he wanted to say something.
    "James?" she whispered. "Is something wrong?"
    An unidentifiable emotion flitted across his face, then it was gone just as quickly. His mouth pulled back to reveal both dimples as he rolled her beneath him. "No, Pussy-Kat, everything seems to be in top working order." With his knee, he urged her to open to him, and she obliged almost involuntarily, readying herself for his swift entry. But he took his time, rubbing his hard staff against her slick folds, circling the sensitive nub of her desire with mind-blowing accuracy. A slow hum of pressure began building low inside her, like a swarm of tiny, vibrating bees. Then with a groan of raw passion, he thrust inside her.
    At the feel of him burrowing deep, Kat gasped and drew up her knees, squeezing hard, arching her pebbled breasts against the solid wall of his chest. He resumed the pleasure he'd set in motion between her thighs by massaging her with his thumb in time to his long, unhurried strokes. With soft, raspy words of encouragement in her ear, he coaxed her mounting orgasm to the surface until she succumbed to the white-hot flash of release, crying out in abandon and digging her fingers deep into the flesh of his back as he rode through the waves with her.

    *****

    As Kat trembled around him, James felt dangerously close to losing control, and not of his body. In the many times he'd lain with women and shared carnal pleasures, he'd always managed to distance himself from the intimacy by concentrating on the act itself instead of the person. Only now, he felt overwhelmed by Kat's es sence... of her beneath him, all around him, her scents, her cries, her hands, her mouth.... His muscles bunched, readying him for the terrific explosion building in his loins. He plunged inside her silken depths one last time and shuddered his release over and over as sheets of pleasure-pain coursed through his body.
    He slumped over her, smoothed back her hair and kissed her face around the smiles, nuzzling her neck and sharing low growls as their bodies pulsed with latent contractions. He'd suspected the minute he set his gaze upon her that she would be a luxurious lover. James sighed in satisfaction—at least his instincts in that department were still reliable.
    It was only after he rolled to her side, gulping air to slow his pounding pulse that a thunderbolt of realization struck in horrific clarity—he'd actually gasped her name in the throes of his ecstasy.
    Kat...my Pussy-Kat. Floored by his own lapse, and the possible implication to his emotional well- being, James lay stock-still.
    "James?" Propping up on one elbow, Kat tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear and stared down at him. "You look as if you have regrets."
    His mind spinning with revelation, he glanced up into her clear blue eyes and felt like a condemned man. But if he'd learned anything in the last twenty years, he'd learned not to allow the opponent to see the chink in his armor. Act normal, as if his world hadn't just turned bottom side up. So he conjured up a charming smile and gave her a wicked wink. "Just one regret, Pussy-Kat—that we wasted so much time last night sleeping."
    Her laughter filled the room, then she left the bed and walked toward the abandoned breakfast tray. "I'm starving." She lifted the lid and snatched a strawberry.
    "Then let's eat," James suggested cheerfully, glad she seemed at ease with her superbly curved body. Then he shifted as his erection began a slow climb — he only wished he could be so nonchalant about her rounded hips and heavy breasts.
    "I'll be right back," Kat said, then headed toward his bathroom with a wry smile. "I need to clean up your trail."
    James watched her walk away and wondered how she had managed to worm her way into his well-guarded heart in only a couple of days. But even more important, how the devil was he going to evict her from the premises?

Chapter Nine

    AS JAMES DELIVERED his theory in the cramped interrogation room, Kat wondered