Page 25 of Ace (The Deuces Wild #4)

It wasn’t mere comfort she passed to him then. It was the sweetest feminine need, raw, new, and delightfully rare. Keller was done fighting. The only question was where and how fast he could get there. He wasn’t about to nail her against the nearest barn wall. She deserved better.

“I’m not hurting you, am I?” she asked.

“Uh uh. No way,” he growled. He hadn’t meant nail . No, no, no. That was entirely the wrong word choice. This brave woman deserved soft, tender loving while surrounded by decadence and luxury, silk and candlelight, not dogs, kennels, and kibble .

“To hell with the gap,” Keller growled when Savannah’s other palm flattened under his shirt on his spine, shocking him with a stinging current of lust that felt so damned good.

She had to be standing on her toes. He leaned over to accommodate whatever this amazing woman wanted to do next.

If she said no, then no it was. He’d stifle and he’d quit, no questions asked.

But suddenly she was in his hands, at least her ass was.

He’d had to grab hold where he could. She’d climbed his body like a woman on a mission, dragging her open mouth over every patch of bare skin in her path.

Inhaling him. Licking and tasting his neck as if he were her mission.

Like a heat-seeking missile, her mouth collided with his chin, her wet tongue sweeping over his lips before he wholeheartedly obliged and let her in.

God, yes. Yes, yes, yessss! He knew she’d taste sweet, but her mouth was heaven. Her lips, manna, honey and spice. Ambrosia! More.

Keller didn’t remember pressing her against the wall beside the barn door.

He didn’t recall angling his chin for better access to her mouth.

The little sounds she made drove him crazy, but there they were.

Him standing with his belt undone and clutching her ass in his thrumming fingers.

She was still dressed, but he knew her blood had to be on fire for maybe the first time ever.

And him with her beguiling scent in his nose.

“Are you sure?” he asked before he stripped her bare. “I mean, your house is burning, and we’re not doing a damned thing to put the fire out. ”

Her nose wrinkled with the cutest petulance. “I’ve got a brand new fire suppression system, sprinklers and all,” she mumbled around his lips. “Let’s see if it works.”

“How on earth do you have enough money to do all that?”

She lifted one shoulder. “Simple. Gran Mere. I helped her and she helped me.”

Who really cared? Keller didn’t. By then he’d lost track of where and when, so focused on the exquisite who in his hands.

Somehow, she had his zipper down by then.

She was still dressed; he was still undecided.

He’d never treated a woman like this before, not with his pants slipping over his thighs and her fingers gripping him, steering him toward heaven. Or...

Holy. Hell. No.

He ground to a complete stop, sweating like a beast and close to being out of his damned mind with lust. His legs were shaking.

Things were moving too fast. He hadn’t been with a woman in years, much less one this enticing.

His body demanded release, the quicker. the dirtier, the better.

Yet he knew the second his hand slipped down her belly to her core, the instant his fingers breached her most intimate secrets.

Aw, shit. She was too small. Too tight. Was it even possible—?

Knowledge hit him like a bucket of ice water thrown in his face. Quick and dirty wouldn’t be good enough. Not for her. Savannah Church was one of the rarest treasures in the world. She was beautiful, yes, but unsophisticated. How could she be untouched?

He gulped back a hearty dose of WTF. “Are you…?” But how could she be—that?

Savannah seemed to know pr ecisely how things worked.

She certainly hadn’t minded touching him.

Fondling him. Leading him into temptation.

“Have you ever done this before?” he asked the woman who, even now rubbed her nose up his neck and growled like a sexy feline in heat.

“No, have you?” she asked, the innocence in her question the final breaking point.

She was a virgin. Damn it. She was pure.

“Ah, yeah,” Keller replied, oddly more aroused by her quick, unabashed reply. But ever honorable. Always the perfect gentleman. He couldn’t do it, not like this. Not to her. He was everything she wasn’t. His ardor shrank in her hand.

Breathing hard, she leaned back far enough to bump his forehead with hers, still fondling his manhood with the gentleness of a saint while panting like a wanton woman.

Still as enticing as hell whether she knew what she was doing to him or not.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered. “Please. I’ve never done this before, but I’ve wanted to—with you—since the moment you…

” She swallowed hard enough he heard it.

“…since the moment back at the houseboat when you…”

“When I what?” he asked evenly, peering into the deepest, darkest, sexiest eyes he’d ever been caught by. This was Mother Nature’s oldest, truest snare—the heart of a pure and honest woman.

Tilting her chin, she blinked at him, her lashes thick and glistening with tiny teardrops. Drawing him back to the flame. Filling his view with the only thing in the world that mattered. “When you didn’t think I was watching you. When you wouldn’t. ”

“When I wouldn’t what?”

“Leave me,” Savannah whispered, the tips of her fingernails scraping over the top of his head, soothing him.

Possibly, enthralling him, too. But you can’t enthrall the willing, and Keller was no fool.

Since the first moment he’d laid eyes on her, he’d been drawn to her, also.

And it wasn’t just her long legs and taut backside.

“You were about to explode, remember?” she breathed.

“Pain hung over you like an anvil the moment you stepped onto Gran Mere’s porch.

I knew then. You’re an empath with unique, almost otherworldly skills.

But you were ready to crash, and you would’ve suffered for days if I hadn’t touched you when I did.

I didn’t touch you until later, yet still you stayed.

You would’ve suffered for me. Why’d you do that? ”

“You needed me,” he corrected, uncertain if Savannah knew how desperate he’d been then.

He’d only planned to shake her hand for the release he’d needed.

But now he needed an entirely different kind of release.

“I could see it in your eyes. You were in worse pain than me. You’d just lost the woman who’d raised you. Gran Mere was everything to you.”

“Yes, but you didn’t know me. I was a stranger.

You didn’t have to stay. You could’ve walked away.

” Her fingertip caressed the curl of his ear, melting the last of his resistance.

Keller’s hips automatically jutted back toward her heat.

“You could’ve left while the leaving was good. It would’ve been easy.”

“But it wouldn’t have been right.” Yes, he wanted her.

Just one taste. One more kiss. Yet even as he welcomed the thought of spending the night with Savannah, Keller knew one kiss wouldn’t be enough to quench the hunger crackling to life inside.

He’d never felt more alive, yet still so hollow.

Was any of this real or was he simply bewitched?

She traced the tiny star-shaped scar at the corner of his eye, the one Queen Elaine had given him the morning he’d caught her with Carol Marie. The moment he’d nearly killed his mother.

“I’m ready now, Secret Agent Man,” Savannah murmured huskily against his lips. Licking him. Tasting him. “My house isn’t the only thing on fire.”