Oh, wait, he was.

His mouth was hard and hungry. Possessive. Demanding. His hands slid down her back, the size and warmth of them sensuous through the silkiness of her pajamas, tracing the arch of her body, molding her to him, making her tremble, making her cling. Heat radiated through his clothes. The urgency of his arousal was impossible to mistake. The sexual charge he gave off was as electric as the lightning that flashed through the night outside. It sizzled between them, igniting the air. Suddenly dizzy, Charlie pressed even closer and kissed him back just as fiercely as he was kissing her, abandoning herself to the moment, to the darkness, to the way he was making her feel. He kissed her breathless, kissed her stupid, kissed her until her heart pounded and her blood raced and her body melted.

“We’re in your house, right?” he asked in a husky murmur as his mouth left hers to press burning kisses across her cheek.

“Mmm.” So turned on she could hardly think, Charlie managed a nod.

“Ah.” It was a sound of satisfaction, uttered as he bent her over his arm and dragged his mouth down the sensitive side of her neck. His hand found her breast through the thin camisole, and her knees practically gave way right there. She made an involuntary sound of pleasure as her nipple puckered instantly and her breast surged against the hardness of his palm. His hand tightened, caressed, and then was gone, leaving fire in its wake.

Bereft at the sudden withdrawal, Charlie opened her eyes in protest as he scooped her up in his arms and started walking.

“What? Where …?” Her voice failed her. She was so bedazzled by lust, by the steam the two of them were generating, she couldn’t get the rest of the question out.

But he knew what she was asking. His eyes gleamed down at her, dark and hot. “Upstairs.”

Knowing what his answer meant, knowing where he was taking her, Charlie felt an explosion of desire so intense, so hot and clamorous, that it raced through her in undulating waves. Her heart pounded. Deep inside, her body pulsed with need.

He reached the bottom of the wide, old-fashioned staircase and started up.

“I can—” she began with determination, battling to keep from losing her head completely, meaning to protest that she could walk, because the idea of him carrying her up a steep flight of stairs with an eye to screwing her senseless at the top had way too many Neanderthal-esque connotations for her, but he stopped her voice with his mouth. The point that she had meant to make, that she was a grown woman, absolutely responsible for her own sexual pleasure, and certainly not the type who ever needed or wanted to be swept off her feet, was lost in the torrid eroticism of that kiss. It was drugging in its sensuality, in its promise of unspeakable pleasures to come, of dark, erotic vistas waiting to be explored.

Dry-mouthed, Charlie gave up on trying to take back her personal power and tightened her arms around his neck and kissed him back. He climbed the stairs with her easily, like she weighed nothing at all, kissing her all the while. As primitive of her as she knew it was, she reveled in his strength.

God, he excites me.

Clinging to his broad shoulders, made dizzy by the fierce possession of his mouth and the skyrocketing of her own desire, Charlie was startled enough by a clap of thunder to pull her mouth from his. Even as she registered what the sound had been, she realized that he had reached the landing at the top of the stairs. There she had one final moment of clarity.

This is a mistake.

She absolutely knew it. Knew some kind of cosmic line was being crossed, and there would be no going back from what she was about to do. The thing was, though, she decided as he walked into her bedroom with her in his arms, right at that moment she simply didn’t care.

She wanted him so badly, she would have walked over hot coals for this.

Lightning flashed, and by its brief burst of light she drank in the fierce masculine beauty of his face, the hot glitter in his eyes as they met hers, the passionate curve of his mouth.

“I’ve been having fantasies about this bed all day.” His voice was hoarse, almost unrecognizable. His lips slid down her neck and across her shoulder as he set her on her feet beside her bed. With its pure white coverings and the subtle gleam of the brass headboard, it was visible even in the darkness between lightning flashes.

Turning into his arms, she slipped her hands under his T-shirt, moving them up over the flexing muscles of his back, dislodging his shirt in the process. His skin was warm and smooth. She stroked it, loving the hard masculine contours. His reaction was instantaneous. His eyes flamed at her. He went tense, perfectly still, while heat radiated from him in waves. Then in a single fluid movement he pulled his T-shirt off over his head.

“You’ve really been having fantasies about my bed?” The question was meant to be coolly teasing, to keep him from realizing how very turned on she was. It was not. In the end, Charlie just tried not to sound as breathless as she felt. But now that he was stripped to the waist, there was nothing she could do. He was so sex-on-the-hoof gorgeous she could barely look away. Merely the sight of the powerful-looking expanse of his shoulders, his broad chest, the corded muscles in his arms, his sinewy abs above the low waistband of his jeans, made her heart pound. Her hands lay flat against the firm flesh right above his hip bones. She slid them sensuously upward to settle on his chest, loving the feel of the warm, smooth skin overlying sleek muscle, loving the fact that he was hers to do with as she would.

Just for tonight.

His jaw turned to granite as his hands came up to tilt her face to his, smooth her hair back from her cheeks. She met his eyes then, and shivered at the hot blaze of passion for her she saw in their depths. Electricity leaped between them, so raw and powerful that it put the lightning streaking the night sky outside to shame.

Her arms went around his neck as his mouth found hers again. The kiss was fierce and deep and dazzling, and when he broke it off Charlie was shaking.

“I’ve been thinking about you in your bed,” he clarified in a rough whisper as he pressed tiny, burning kisses along the base of her neck. “About everything I would do to you if I ever got you here.”

Charlie’s breathing went hopelessly erratic as his hands slid under the hem of her camisole. It was a loose, filmy garment of silk and lace, with spaghetti straps and tiny, useless silk-covered buttons marching down the front.

He pushed it upward, his hands stroking over her rib cage, over her back, after he bared her breasts. He lifted his head and looked down at her then, at the full round globes with their dark, eager tips, and his face tightened and his eyes burned. Her breasts swelled and lifted, yearning for his touch, but his hands didn’t go where she wanted them. Instead he pulled the camisole off over her head and let it drop to the floor. She was still sucking in air from that when he found the satiny drawstring that secured her pants at the waist, and with unerring accuracy tugged on the end that loosened its bow. As quick as that, her pants slithered down her body to the floor.

She was naked. And his eyes were touching her everywhere.

Charlie made a little sound deep in her throat. Her bones melted. Her knees went weak. She swayed against him, and was instantly dazzled by the feel of them skin to skin, by the softness of her breasts against the wall of his chest, by his warmth and solid strength. Moving against him voluptuously, she pressed her lips to the sturdy column of his neck, then opened them to taste him with her tongue. His skin was hot and tasted of salt.

“You’re beautiful.” Trailing fire in their wake, his hands slid down her back to cup her ass.