Goes down easy: Roped into romance by Alison Kent

her pajamas, all there was for her to do was crawl between the sheets. But she waited, because she didn’t want to miss a second of watching him take off his clothes.
    He held on to the footboard for balance as he toed off his shoes, reached down to tug off his socks. His T-shirt was next. He whipped it over his head and off, and she was left standing there, looking at black denim and bare skin.
    She wanted to flip on the light because really, how fair was it that she could see so little of him after being tempted for two days by his T-shirts?
    When his hands went to the fly of his jeans, her breath caught, and she forced herself to climb onto the mattress. Sitting with her legs tucked beneath her, she pulled the blankets to her chin and listened to the flip of the brass buttons through the holes of his fly.
    And then his jeans came down in a scratch of denim over skin, and she saw the dark fabric of boxers before she felt the dip of the mattress beneath his weight.
    He was warm beside her, and his heat was as comforting as his smell. He reminded her of the big outdoors, the freshness of rain, the snap of the cold that had hit them in January after December’s unusual dog days.
    He dropped to his back, tugged the blankets to his chest, rested an arm over his eyes. He didn’t say a word, and it wasn’t three minutes before his breathing was deep and even.
    She sighed, scooted down and rolled to her side, her back to him as she faced the wall. She fought a twinge of disappointment that sharing a bed with her wasn’t enough to keep him awake.
    But then logic took over. The man hadn’t slept in days. She doubted he could stay awake for any woman at this point. Well, maybe Carmen Electra. Or Angelina Jolie.
    In the next moment, before she could come up with another well-endowed name, he rolled toward her. Draping an arm over her waist, he cuddled up against her, pressing the spoon of his body to hers.
    When he began snoring lightly in her ear, she realized how deeply asleep he’d fallen. He was so wonderfully close, so soothingly warm, so large and so comfortably…there, just there, that she found herself drifting off, content and relaxed beneath the weight of his arm.
    It was the movement of that arm that roused her. Her lashes fluttered. She blinked, glanced over her shoulder at the red dotted numbers on the face of her clock. They’d been asleep for less than thirty minutes. And it was obvious that Jack wasn’t sleeping now.
    He was breathing in her ear, shallow breaths, choppy breaths, all the while quietly working his hand beneath her top to her skin. Once he got past the fabric, once his palm lay flat on her belly, once his fingertips grazed the lower swells of her breasts, he grew still.
    And for several long seconds, he stayed that way.
    She, on the other hand, grew itchy and tight. Her nipples hardened. Her skin flushed. She contracted themuscles deep inside her sex, and slipped a hand between her legs to ease the tension.
    He chuckled. “Wasn’t sure you were ever going to wake up.”
    Humph. “If you’ve been trying for a while, then you haven’t been trying very hard.”
    “I’m not in any hurry. Besides, you were enjoying your beauty sleep.”
    Beauty sleep? “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “You purr like a kitten when you snore.”
    She supposed that wasn’t a bad thing. If she snored. Which she didn’t.
    “Kinda makes me wonder what other animal noises you make,” he said.
    “Well, let’s see,” she said, rolling slowly onto her back and taking care not to dislodge his hand. She liked the weight of it, the calluses, the warmth, as much as she liked his need to touch. “I can snap like a turtle.”
    He laughed. “That one doesn’t surprise me.”
    His noticing that aspect of her personality didn’t come as a surprise to her, either. “I can growl like a mama lion, or coo like a dove.”
    “Those work,” he said, cuddling closer, weighting her down with a knee on her thigh. “If