“If you lie there much longer, I’ll be tempted to tie you to the table legs and try buttering your ass instead of the toast.”

“She squeezed her eyes shut. “No.”“Excuse me?”She sniffed, opened her eyes then looked up. “No. I don’t wish you to leave.”His eyes changed from lukewarm to hot.The iron of the seat met her back. Oh yes, definitely she was the keeper at the zoo and she’d just offered her own leg, medium-rare, to the lion.”

“As she reached back for the buckle, her fingers met Mr. Meisner’s. She jumped. “I can do this... Sir.”“Ah.” He brushed aside her fingers. “I see you’ve at least remembered the sir.”“One always calls gentlemen that, just as you--”With only a rustle of cloth to warn her, his teeth met in the lobe of her ear, sending a spark into her middle. Like the melt of winter snow, she felt heat pool in her lower body. Her fingers curled against her collarbone where her hands still rested either side of her neck.“I’m not a gentleman, Faith.”

“Everything about him enveloped her, made her crave exactly this. His possession. In her mind something relaxed; the balance shifted. She welcomed every way he could touch her, the heat from his body, the atoms of his breath. Everything.”

“She’d run over Dankyo in an instant to get to Theo. Be a darn big bump in the road, but she’d do it.”

“Not as much as it bothers me that you just grabbed me without even trying to warn me first. If you’re trying to undo ages of prejudice, maybe you should start by acting civil.”

“She surrounded him. Wet, hot. Indescribable. Spasms rocked her, and she lost herself in their rhythm, riding him so fast she was nothing but a blur. But as much as he wished it would never end, no times tables and no images of grungy linoleum floors could keep the flood of her orgasm from inciting his own.”