She’d take him the herbal supplements she’d brought, though. Fishing them out, she started toward the door. On the way she happened to look down at her feet.
Now, there was a sorry sight. She paused to consider her unpainted toes, clipped with a toenail clipper. Not buffed,not filed, not pampered. Her last pedicure had been before she’d had Elizabeth. Nat had always loved her feet.
Stop it, she lectured herself. He probably didn’t love any part of her anymore. What she looked like didn’t matter. Elizabeth was the only person who mattered in this whole mess.
“Jess?” Nat rapped on the door. “Are you sure you’re okay in there?”
“I’m okay.”
“Then what’s taking so long?”
“I was, um, thinking.”
“Well, could you do that out here? We need to talk.”
“Yes, we do. We most certainly do.” Drawing in a bracing lungful of air, she opened the bathroom door. She found herself staring at his shirtfront. He stood right outside the door, crowding her, invading her space. She would have to walk around him to move any farther into the room.
His masculine scent surrounded her, making her quicken in all sorts of strategic places. She gathered her courage and looked up into his eyes. Her heart stuttered at the fire burning there. “Nat?”
“What’s that?” He glanced down at the two bottles of supplements.
“Herbal stuff for you.”
His gaze lifted. “Why?”
“Because…” Because I love you and worry about you. She didn’t dare say it.
He made an impatient noise deep in his throat. “Jess, I have to ask you something.”
“Okay.” Her heart hammered.
His words were as intense as his gaze. “Is there anyone else?”
Joy rushed through her. Hallelujah. He still wanted her. “No. No one else.”
With a gusty sigh he took the vitamin bottles and tossedthem on the floor. Then he pulled her into his arms. “Excuse the beard,” he murmured. Then his lips crushed hers.
Overjoyed as she was to know that he still cared, she was distracted at first by the beard. Kissing him was like smooching a stuffed animal. But then…then he coaxed her mouth open. She forgot all about the beard as she rediscovered why kissing Nat had been one of her all-time thrills. He could pack more sensuality into a kiss than other men could manage in an hour of whole-body sex.
A few moments of kissing Nat beat a day at the spa for making her tingle all over. One kiss from him and she was so awake, from the tips of her curling toes to the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck. His fingers stroked there, and she turned to melted butter in his arms.
Boiling butter might be more like it. She wriggled against him, trying to get closer.
He shifted the angle of his mouth and tugged at the bathrobe’s sash while he muttered something that sounded like have to.
Oh, so did she. Had to. She started on the buttons of his shirt. But wait. She hadn’t planned on this.
“Need you so,” he breathed, backing her toward the bed as he continued to kiss her senseless.
“Wait,” she said, gasping.
“Can’t.” He pushed open the terry cloth and closed his hand over her breast with a groan.
“Nat—” She tried to tell him she wasn’t on the Pill. He kept coming, thrusting his tongue in her mouth, making her crazy with wanting him. The back of her knees hit the edge of the bed. She fell against the quilted spread and he came right with her.
Panting, she tried again. “I’m not—”
His mouth silenced her once more.
Oh, God. How many times had she fantasized about his weight pressing her into the mattress, his hand between herthighs, his mouth at her breast? Both of them going wild. If this was a dream, she’d kill whoever or whatever woke her up.
Even his beard was wonderful, brushing her skin like the pelt of some exotic animal. She’d never realized kissing a bearded man could be so erotic. She pulled him closer, arched into his caress, moaned his name.
“God, I need you,” he groaned.
“I need