Wild Invitation

sensation, so many layers of it since leaving the Net, but each time he touched Lara, he found there was more to feel, to explore.
    Kisses along her throat, her pulse thudding against his tongue, her breast taut and perfect in his palm.
    “Oh.” A hitch in her breath, followed by a husky, “Don’t stop.”
    He ran his thumb over her nipple. “Before,” he murmured against her mouth, “I comprehended the mechanics of this act, but I never understood.” That it could be lighthearted or intense,smoldering or wild…any of a thousand different moods, playing off his own and hers to create a new alchemy of pleasure every single time.
    Today, it was slow, lazy, a touch playful.
    Fisting her hand in his hair, she brushed her lips, soft and lush, across his cheekbone. “You know what I find sexy? These pajama bottoms you wear to bed.” She ran her foot over the fine blue cotton striped with black.
    He knew when he was being teased, nipped at her lower lip in sensual punishment. “Those,” he said, her unrepentant laugh tangling him up, “are so as not to shock our youngest child if she walks in after a bad dream.” Unlike after they first defected, Marlee rarely had nightmares these days, but she wasn’t totally free of the scars the PsyNet had left on her psyche. When the dreams did hit, she still ran immediately for Walker. Which was why their bedroom door stayed unlocked at night—except if he flipped the remote switch as he’d done a few minutes ago.
    Lara suckled kisses along his neck, spreading her thighs to better cradle his body. “She’s growing up in a changeling pack.” A graze of teeth. “I bet you it wouldn’t faze her.”
    He had the feeling she was right. Changelings were very respectful of one another’s personal space, never assuming even casual skin privileges with people they didn’t know, but nakedness was accepted as a natural state of being, a logical outcome of the fact that every changeling young and old, came out of the shift naked.
    “Well,” he muttered, “it’d faze
me
.”
    Lara laughed, breath hot against his skin. “So shy, my poor darling.”
    Tugging her up from his throat to claim her mouth, drink of her laughter, he moved his hand down past her navel to cup her over the lace of her panties, kissing her slow and deep until she grew damp against his palm, the scent of her an invitation. In no hurry, he continued the lazy seduction until she began to move restlessly against him, her delicate flesh plump against the lace.
    His mate was more than happy to cooperate when he tugged off the silky shred of cloth, sighed as she realized he’d stripped off his pajama bottoms before returning to her. Rubbing her partially bared breasts against his chest when he bent to hermouth once again, kissing her one of his favorite pleasures, she wrapped her legs around his hips, her nightgown bunched up at her waist.
    Silky and feminine and soft, she surrounded him, claimed him.
    Moving one hand between their bodies to grip his erection, position himself at the tight heat of her entrance, he said, “Yes?”
    “Please.” A sultry invitation, her body rising to welcome his.
    He shuddered as he pushed home. Bracing himself on one arm and controlling the urge to thrust, he used the fingers of his free hand to tug the straps of her nightgown all the way off and brush his fingertips over the bare mounds of her breasts. She moaned, drawing her nails up along his back in a light caress as her internal muscles fluttered around him, her flesh molten honey with welcome. “You feel so good inside me.”
    Her words were a caress as intoxicating as the possessive clasp of her body.
    Lowering his mouth to her throat, he kissed his way down to her breasts, teased her with his teeth, his lips…while rocking into her, slow and easy. They had only been mated a short period, but he knew how to listen to his mate’s body, never forgot a single detail of what pleasured her.
    “You’re thinking,” she accused.
    He tugged a sensitive nipple between his teeth, released it to her gasp. “For the moment.” He knew from experience he’d soon succumb to an overload of pure sensation.
    “You know this”—a soft moan as he drew back at leisure, pushed in as deliberately—“drives me crazy.”
    “Hmm.” Reaching down, he insinuated his hand between their bodies once more to touch her exactly where and how she loved it the most; knowledge he possessed because she’d whispered it to him when