His sliding hand reached her fingers, which were still tightly knotted around the railing, and lightly stroked over them before reversing direction and moving up her arm as slowly as it had descended. When he reached her shoulder he didn’t stop, but continued on to her neck, where he moved the mass of her curls aside and slid his fingertips over her throat, the curve of her jaw, following the slender threads of muscle and tendon and sending chills chasing over her entire body. After a moment he moved his attention to the wide shoulder strap of her silk tank top, playing with it, sliding his fingers under it, tracing the line of fabric downward. If he hadn’t realized before that she wasn’t wearing a bra, he had to know it now.

“Breathe,” he said, the first word he’d ever spoken to her. His low, slightly rough voice made the word a command.

She did, gasping in air and only then realizing, by the acute relief in her lungs, that she’d been holding her breath for so long that she’d been in danger of passing out.

Slowly, still so slowly, he moved his hand down her side, the heat of his touch searing through the thin silk. He reached the bottom of the garment and his fingers dipped under it, exploring the elastic waistband of her flimsy, billowy pants, slipping beneath and around. Now he also knew that she wasn’t wearing panties, either. Drea swallowed the lump in her throat and squeezed her eyes shut.

Closing her eyes was an instinctive move to shut him out, to distance herself from the here and now, but instead her action seemed to make all her other senses even more acute. Leisurely he moved his hand up her stomach and, with nothing else to distract her, her focus latched on to the touch with almost painful intensity. Her muscles contracted, her entire body tightening as he moved up, up, while she waited, once again holding her breath.