She emerged from the shadows, looking sleep-tousled and wearing what he'd normally refer to as a modest nightgown, but on Christine it was anything but demure. The straps holding up the gown were thin, and the front V-neck was trimmed in lace, with a tighter bodice that molded to her small, firm breasts. The hem fluttered around her knees as she walked toward him, drawing his attention to her slender, bare legs.

Ignoring his body's instantaneous response to her irresistible, sensual allure, he lifted his gaze back to hers. "What are you doing up?"

"With the charity auction tomorrow night, I've got a lot of things going through my head," she said, and sat down on the couch a respectable distance away from him. "I was just going to make myself some chamomile tea when I saw that you were up, too. Is everything okay?"

Her concern warmed him. "Actually, this is pretty normal for me."

She tipped her head, causing soft, disheveled waves to fall across her bare shoulder. "What, not being able to sleep?"

He nodded. Sleep meant dreams, and not all of them were pleasant. Not since Iraq. "I'm used to getting by with very little sleep. A few hours, and I'm good to go." He smiled at her.

"I can't even imagine. Normally, I have to have my eight hours or I'm not functional the next day." She brought her legs up to the side and covered them with the skirt of her gown. "Have you always been that way? Only needing a few hours of sleep?"

"No, just since being in the service. Specifically, when I was sent to Iraq." He glanced back at the TV just as the host cut through an aluminum can with one of the Ginsu knives. "Hearing IEDs and gunshots going off in the distance has a way of making you sleep with one eye open at all times."

"That couldn't have been easy," she said softly.

"You get used to it." He shrugged, not wanting to get melancholy about his time in the military. "So, most nights, like tonight, are spent watching old reruns of I Love Lucy or cheesy infomercials, like this one."

"Ginsu knives?" She laughed and reached for the channel changer between them. "There has got to be something better than this on with all the cable channels I have."

Pointing the remote at the TV, she began flipping through the channels in search of something interesting to watch. The images on the screen blurred as she quickly jumped from one show to the next. She passed what appeared to be a couple in a heated embrace, and in the next instant she was hitting the reverse button and stopping on the Playboy channel and the soft porn movie in progress.

The man and woman were slowly stripping off each other's clothing as they indulged in deep, tongue-tangling kisses and provocative caresses as more and more skin was bared, until the pair was completely naked. It was evident to Ben exactly where this seductive scenario was heading… toward some hot and steamy sex.

Unsure why Christine had stopped on an adult skin-flick-possibly to torment him and remind him what he couldn't have when it came to her?-he slanted a covert glance toward the woman sitting on the opposite side of the couch. Her gaze was riveted to the TV, and she looked totally enthralled by the action unfolding on the big screen in front of them.

"What are you doing?" he asked, trying to sound casual about the whole situation, when he was anything but.

"Just watching," she said, never taking her eyes off the couple, who were now moving on to more erotic pleasures.

Ooookkkaay. If she could watch a porn movie with such composure and without getting flustered, then so could he. Except like most guys, the whole visual thing made his dick sit up and take notice-and wearing only a pair of sweatpants made it extremely difficult to conceal his growing hard-on.

The foreplay between the pair grew hotter, and more carnal as the woman in the movie dropped to her knees and focused her attention on her partner's jutting shaft. She parted her lips and took him deep inside her mouth, her cheeks hallowing as she slowly withdrew, sucking hard. The guy groaned and thrust in time to the woman's rhythmic strokes.

Christine shifted restlessly on the couch, her legs sliding against one another beneath her nightgown. "Now there's something I've always been curious about," she said huskily.

Her comment made no sense to him whatsoever. Being curious meant she wasn't all that familiar with what that woman in the film was currently doing to that guy. "Excuse me?"

"Oral sex," she said just as vaguely, her gaze still transfixed on the X-rated movie.

He still didn't get her point. But what he was beginning to realize was that watching the couple in the throes of foreplay was arousing her. He could see it in the way she was biting her lower lip, and especially how her nipples had stiffened into tight, hard peaks against the thin, cotton material of her gown.

Too damned intrigued by the direction their conversation was heading, he prompted her for a bit more information. "What, exactly, about oral sex has piqued your interest?"

"Everything about it." She finally tore her gaze away from the adventurous pair to look at him. "What it's like. How it feels to have an orgasm when a guy returns the favor."

Jesus. Her blue eyes were dark and dilated with excitement and fascination, but in a completely guileless, naive way. She wasn't trying to act innocent or sucker him in with feminine wiles like he'd known some women to do. Her curiosity was honest and real, and that put a whole different spin on the sultry, entranced way she was currently staring at him.

It was time to change the channel before this situation escalated to a more risque level. "Give me the remote." He stretched his hand toward her.

"I don't think so." She set the remote on the end table beside her, way out of Ben's reach. "This is just starting to get good. Maybe I'll learn a thing or two about oral sex and finally figure out what's so great about it."

Stunned by her comment, he had to ask the question foremost in his mind. "Are you saying that you've never had a guy go down on you before?"

Her cheeks turned pink at his frank, explicit description, and she shook her head.

The heat simmering in his gut kicked up a notch, because if Christine had been his, that would have been one of his all-time favorite ways of pleasuring her. "And you've never given a guy a blow job?"

Again, she shook her head.

His already hard shaft twitched at the thought of sliding deep into that warm, wet mouth of hers that had never taken a man's cock before.

Disbelief coursed through him. Christine was twenty-six, soon to be twenty-seven. How in the world had she gone her entire adult life without experiencing either intimacy? Unless… Oh, Shit.

"Are you a virgin!" His voice sounded strangled.

A small smile touched the corner of her lips. "I might as well be, but no, I'm not. I've had sex before."

He remembered her comment the other night about wanting to feel desire and taste passion, and felt more confused than ever. "So let me get this straight. You were engaged to be married, you even had sex, but the two of you never…"

"… did anything beyond your basic missionary position," she quietly finished for him. "It was always a quick, no fuss event. No hot and heavy foreplay. No oral sex. I wanted to, but Jason always got right down to business and it was all over with before I could get excited enough to have an orgasm. I guess he saved all the good stuff for those other women he was with." She drew a deep breath and released it just as slowly. "The best I can guess is that he just didn't see me as a sexy, sensual woman. And compared to the woman I'd caught him with, well, I certainly felt inadequate in comparison."

Her ex was a certified jackass, no doubt about it. "That's such bullshit, Christine. The fault wasn't, and isn't, yours."

A woman's breathy moan drew Christine's gaze back to the TV. At some point, the guy had laid his lover back on the big bed and he was kissing his way down her body, until he finally settled his broad shoulders between her widespread thighs, then lowered his head and slid his tongue through the woman's soft, dewy flesh. She gasped, arched against the man's mouth, then let out a long, unraveling groan.

The uninhibited display was hot and provocative and downright titillating, physically and mentally. But it wasn't the action happening on the TV screen that captivated Ben, but rather Christine's response to what the guy was doing to the woman that turned him on like no porn movie ever had.

He felt like a voyeur, but didn't care.

She was watching the scene intently, her skin flushed with arousal, the tips of her fingers touching the base of her throat. Her lips were parted, her breathing deep and shallow, and when the woman in the movie started to come with a high-pitched cry, Christine let out a small choked sound of her own.

That sexy little sound she made, combined with the look of longing on her face and the slow, sensual way those fingers of hers trailed down to her breasts, was enough to ignite a strong dose of heated lust in his veins, and elsewhere. God, he was so fucking hard, his entire body strung so tight he knew he'd never get any sleep tonight without some kind of relief. And a cold shower just wasn't going to cut it.

Christine turned her head and glanced at him, her eyes dark and glazed with the kind of desire that could bring a man to his knees. And, oh, Lord, was he ever tempted to do just that and make her come undone, then scream from the sheer pleasure and strength of her first orally induced orgasm.

"That's what I want to know and feel," she said, as if she'd been reading his mind when in reality she was referring to what had just transpired between the couple, which was pretty much the same thing. "I've fantasized about what it would be like… with you."