Sometime during the dance last night, after the first deep kiss they had shared, he had drawn his mouth away from hers and planted feather kisses on her brow, her lids, her nose, her cheeks. Meanwhile, his hands had crept around her waist and his fingers had found themselves under the hem of her tank top. He moved them slowly and deliberately up her rib cage, feeling each ridge of bone, flesh and bare skin. Her nipples had hardened in immediate anticipation, her mind recalling a similar move in the eraser room on the week of the heatwave. One hand moved swiftly to her back to unfastened the clasp of her strapless bra, and deftly whisk it away. She shivered slightly as the rough fabric passed over the sensitive buds and raised both arms behind his neck to pull his face towards hers, their bodies still swaying to the beat of the music.

“Not yet,” he whispered, cupping his hands under her bare breasts along her rib cage, letting his fingers caress the soft, smooth skin on each side. His mouth continued to plant feather kisses around her mouth, inching ever closer to her full and quivering lips, which were parted slightly in anticipation, but never quite capturing them.

“Michael!”, she ground out in frustration, her eyes blazing. “Stop teasing me, dammit!” Her hands were at the small of his back now, supporting him as she crushed her hips against his. Michael groaned inwardly but kept his control. “Tell me what you want, Maria,” he breathed in her ear, his hands moving up her breasts and encircling the areolae. And stopped just there. Her fully erect nipples strained against the fabric of her top, and she arched her back involuntarily just so the tight little buds could feel the sensation and offer her momentary relief. Michael’s mouth was on one of her earlobes now, capturing it with a moist flick of the tongue before planting more wet kisses along her jawline towards her lips. Almost.

Ok, if that’s the game he wants to play. Maria was impatient. She would fight fire with fire. Her hands moved down from the small of his back to the waistband of his jeans, and pushed her fingers inside his boxers to touch his bare skin. She smiled with satisfaction at his small gasp, and answered his question, her voice husky with desire, barely getting the words out: “What -- I -- want?” She didn’t say another word but worked her hands around the waistband towards the front. And while one hand kept its fingers on the inside of the garment, the other had come out to pass over and cup the hard bulge that had formed in the front of his jeans. Alien or no, Michael was still a . . . guy.

She had the button-fly half undone, before she heard Michael’s voice again in her ear, “You’re a witch. Don’t stop.”

“Where’s my incentive?” she blinked innocently, pulling her occupied hand ever so slightly away.

“You drive a hard bargain,” Michael growled from deep within his throat.

At the exact moment his mouth met hers in full contact, his palms slid up to fully capture their prize, rubbing their rough texture back and forth against her tight nipples. The combination of the moist heat of his mouth against hers, his tongue fighting hers and tasting faintly of Tobasco sauce and chocolate, and his kneading hands, was just pure . . . exquisite . . . tor-ture.

Maria squeezed her eyes shut and had to bite her lip to hold back a scream as each palm was soon replaced by thumb and forefinger, tweaking the little knobs back and forth without mercy and his mouth was tracing a hot path down her neck, her collarbone, the valley between her breasts . . .