JACK TAYLOR was making love with the most beautiful woman in the world.
He couldn't see her, but Jack didn't need to. His hands caressed her silky skin and found it flawless. His fingers touched the hollow of her back, the delicate ridges of her spine. He stroked upwards, exploring her perfect curves of waist and ribs. When he took her breasts in his hands she gasped and then moaned as he teased her taut nipples.
The sound of her voice wordlessly describing her pleasure warmed the blood in his veins, sent his heart throbbing faster, matching the racing pulse that he could feel beneath the curve of her breast.
He had never been this turned on before. Ever.
And Jack Taylor had had a lot of experience with being turned on.
His lover turned her face toward him and he felt her soft hair brush his face. He tasted her mouth. Her lips and tongue were sweet, as if she'd been licking candy, but Jack knew that this taste was a part of her. As much a part of her as her hair, her voice and her body. And the feeling she gave him was part of her, too. All of it was infinitely, excitingly, astoundingly sweet.
"I want you now," she whispered. Heat shivered down his body again."I want you more than I've ever wanted anyone. Anything."
He spoke it aloud, and knew it was the truest thing he'd ever said.
And then her hand was on him, guiding him into her, and for Jack the darkness was filled with an ecstasy that was brighter than light.
She took his hand and brought it to her mouth. He traced her smile with his fingers and while she began to move beneath him, he began to move inside her. Exquisitely slowly, so perfect and arousing that Jack lost any sense of time. He caught her hand in his and laid it on his own smile, nibbling on each of her fingers.
There was nothing besides the two of them. Their movements quickened, and he plunged still deeper within her. God, it felt so good. The best in his life. He felt her shudder around him, felt his own climax building. There was only one thing he needed before he could let himself go over the edge, and that was—
"Jack!" she cried out, and the rich honey of her voice flooded his veins. Her voice in his ears, his body joined with hers, his mind and his heart overwhelmed like never before. Jack shouted out his own release and, with it, he suddenly saw her eyes.
Green. The green of springtime and summer. The green of life and eternal promise. They looked into his, and wrung from him a final, shattering wave of ecstasy.
And then it all went black.
Jack awoke panting. He ran a hand through his perspiration-soaked hair and sat up, damp sheets twisted around his waist.
"Wow," he said.
It wasn't quite dark. He could see the stars through his open bedroom window and the whiteness of the sheets around him. Still, he had to reach out and feel the bed beside him to make sure that it was cold and empty.
He disentangled himself from the bedding and went down the hall to the bathroom. The light in there was harsh, and as Jack splashed his face with cold water the mirror starkly reflected every detail. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes hooded and pupils dilated, a satisfied smile lifting the corners of his lips. He looked like a man who'd had the best sex in the history of sex.
Which, in a way, he had.
Jack's smile broadened. And then he watched it slowly melt away.
He'd had the most intense sexual experience of his entire life… and it had been a dream?
Jack turned abruptly and loped down the stairs. He walked naked into his dark living room. From touch and from memory he lifted scratchy handfuls of kindling and paper from the box on the floor and layered them in the fireplace. He stacked wood on top of the pile and lit it all with the long stroke of a match.
Jack watched as the fire licked at the kindling and curled around the logs. He remembered the taste of his dream lover and how her limbs had twined around him. The heat in their touching bodies.
He waited until the fire was raging before he stood and crossed the orange-lit room to his desk. Without looking, he found the palm-sized book in the top drawer. He knelt with it in front of the fire.
He licked his lips and thought he could still taste her sweetness. But of course he couldn't. She was a fantasy. And yet somehow more real than anything or anyone he'd ever experienced.
One by one, Jack Taylor tore the pages out of his address book and fed the names and telephone numbers of the women he knew to the flames.