Bones liquid from the heat in his eyes and nipples hard points rubbed by the deep timbre of his voice, Nayna just nodded.
Raj got rid of their drink glasses, then took her hand into his bigger, rougher one and weaved through the crowd. It was like the waters parted for his big, sexy body. Nayna stayed close to the hard heat of him, her blood roaring so loudly through her ears that she couldn’t hear much of the party anymore. Raj didn’t take them toward the front or the back door but to a small side hallway and out through a door no one else seemed to be using.
“I helped build this place,” he told her as he stepped outside. “Put in this door myself.” A pat at the polished wood.
Nayna felt a sense of wonder. “You must feel such pride when you see something you constructed with your own hands.”
Tugging her outside, he closed the door. “Yes,” he said with a quiet self-possession that sang to everything in her. “I can point out every house I’ve ever worked on from back when I first became my dad’s apprentice.”
They stepped off the path… and her heel sank in. “Oh.” She stumbled against Raj.
Who caught her with his hands around her waist. “You okay?”
“Yes, just my heels.” Pressing a hand against his chest without thought, she lifted a foot up. “I’ll take them off so I can walk on the grass.” Heat burned her, his muscles flexing as he helped her keep her balance.
She was thinking about panties again by the time she got her heels off, hanging them both on one hand. “Thanks.”
Clasping her free hand in his, he led her across the grass. “If you stand here,” he said, “you can see a view over the trees and across the water.”
When Nayna stopped and looked out along the line of his arm, she saw the moon rippling on the ocean, the sight so unbearably romantic that her heart clenched. She’d read romances since she was a teenager, but never had she dared believe she’d get a kiss in the moonlight from a tall, dark, and fascinatingly intense man.
Raj turned to her even as the thought passed through her mind and, releasing her hand, cupped the side of her face. Her breath caught, her heart thumped. And her lips parted. Zeroing in on that betraying act, he dipped his head and touched his lips firmly to hers. No hesitation for Raj, nothing tentative.
The man knew what he wanted—and it was her.
Nayna dropped her heels to the grass. Pressing her hands against his chest, she rose up on tiptoe. He deepened the kiss, one hand stroking down the curve of her waist to stop on her hip where he found a sliver of skin through her dress. When she shivered, he licked his tongue across the seam of her lips.
She parted them and the kiss turned wet and deep.
His stubble created rough friction against her skin and she thought, “He’s marking me.”
She didn’t care, it felt so good.
A moan sounded and she didn’t realize it had been her until he rumbled his approval, his chest vibrating against her fingers. Ready for more, for everything, she pressed in closer. Raj nudged her back, and she had a sudden stab of worry that she’d bungled it—she wasn’t exactly an expert on kissing.
But he bit lightly at her lower lip as he continued to walk her back until her butt gently hit a wall. Cornering her again. And oh, it felt good. His body was so hot and hard against her own, and he was so overwhelmingly big and strong. As for his mouth—serious, intense Raj knew exactly how to use his mouth to make her embarrassingly wet.
When he ran his hand up her body to close over her breast, she didn’t protest.
But he stopped, his hand in her hair, and said, “You with me, Nayna?”
Endorphins flooded her system at the sound of her name on his lips. Licking her lips, she nodded. “Yes. Please don’t stop.”
Dark eyes flashing, he pressed his mouth to hers once more, the bristles on his jaw scraping at her skin all over again and sending prickles of sensation all through her. More strokes of her body, his hands assured and holding a raw heat. His palms snagged at times on the fabric of her dress, his calluses hard from physical labor. All Nayna could think of each time it happened was what those hardworking and gifted hands would feel like on her naked skin.
She ran her own palms down his chest and up over his arms. Smooth skin and firm muscle, there was nothing about Raj’s body she didn’t like. And his scent… Nayna wanted to nuzzle and just breathe in, kiss his throat, lick him into her own bloodstream.
Hot breaths, hearts beating faster, bodies pressed closer.
Raj tugged down the wonderfully stretchy fabric of her dress. Her breasts popped out. She would’ve been mortified that he was seeing the pitiful mounds except that Raj had one hand over her left breast while he’d dropped his mouth to her right one. She whimpered at the first touch, biting back a cry of disappointment when he drew back.
“You’re short without the heels,” he muttered and scooped her up like she weighed nothing.
Nayna’s inner core clenched while her hands gripped at his shoulders. Never in her life had she dreamed she’d be with a man this strong.
Wrapping her legs around his waist was instinctive, his body heavy and solid between her quivering thighs as he pinned her to the wall in a dark corner of a moon-kissed garden. The position pushed up her dress indecently farther, until she was a mere inch or two away from total exposure.
A burst of shyness threatened to strangle her.
“That’s better,” Raj said roughly before she could surrender to the emotion, and then, one hand spread on her lower back, arched her toward him. He licked her nipple once, paused.
Whimpering, Nayna fisted her hands in his hair and tugged.
He gave her what she wanted, sucking her nipple and part of her breast into his mouth. He scraped his teeth over her flesh. Nayna’s head fell back, her breathing ragged. She’d imagined what it might be like, but this… “Raj.”
Releasing her breast, he came to her mouth. One hand still on her back, he fisted the other in the straight strands of her hair, gripping it tight. His chest crushed hers as he kissed her deep and demanding, her nipples rubbing against his T-shirt. That he was fully clothed while her dress was crumpled around her waist just amplified the wetness between her thighs.
Nayna kissed him back without finesse, driven by need.
He moved the hand on her back past her hip and to her thigh. Cupping her thigh from below, he stroked her skin as he kissed her like she’d always wanted to be kissed.
“You taste so good,” she blurted out when they came up for air, and wanted to wince at her lack of sophistication.
But Raj kissed her again, as if in reward for her confession. His bristly jaw continued to be rough against her skin, his hand even tighter in her hair. The small tugs sent pulses right to her clit, the tiny bundle of nerves aching for his touch.
Though if he did go there, Nayna wasn’t sure she’d survive it.
The next time Raj broke the kiss, he moved his hand back up to her breast, squeezing and petting it while he held her gaze. “I like how tight and firm you are,” he murmured. “Like biting into a just-ripe peach.”
Her skin flushed, her throat dry.
“What do you want?” A rough rumble of a question as he ran the pad of his thumb over her engorged nipple.
Her toes curled, her breath catching. “Take off your T-shirt.”
He rubbed the pad of his thumb over her nipple again. It was a jolt through her entire system each and every time. Eyes hooded, he watched himself touch her, distracted from her request by the visual eroticism.
So Nayna, bad girl to the core tonight, pulled at his T-shirt.
He got the hint, kissing her hard one more time before he reached down to tear off the T-shirt and drop it to the grass—while keeping her exactly where she was using the pressure of his body. Then she was skin-to-skin with him and he was kissing her throat while making rumbling sounds in his chest, and Nayna decided this was it. He was it.