chapter TEN
IT SHOULD MEAN something. She wanted so much to disagree with him, she wanted to argue the case for the affirmative. Except with her body jammed tight up against his and his mouth locked on hers, his seeking tongue like an inferno to her senses, it was hard to think straight. It was hard to remember why it was so important.
And in the end logic got swept away by the tide of need. Making love with this man wasn’t just a contract condition—an obligation. Making love with Alesander was as inevitable as the constant whoosh of the tide or the falling of the night or the rising of the moon. There was no stopping it. It was always going to happen.
She was in the lift before she realised they’d somehow crossed the road, barefoot and locked in each other’s arms, lost in sensation. She was consumed with heat and him and a need that threatened to engulf her.
The lift was slow.
Alesander was faster.
He had her backed against the wall, one hand tangled in her hair, the other sweeping aside the layers of her skirt in a bid to reach her heated flesh. She gasped, the touch of his hand on her thigh searing, electric, and her body pulsed and ached and vaguely she thought that if the lift didn’t hurry up he might just take her here and now.
His hand glided higher, his thumb skimmed her mound and a million nerve endings screamed inside her and she wished he damned well would.
But before he could the lift doors opened and they tumbled out together across the private lobby. He pulled off his jacket while he fumbled for the key, still locked in their kiss. His tie followed as the door opened and he put his hands to her shoulders and put her away from him, his dark eyes almost black with need, his breathing choppy. ‘I was going to do this slowly,’ he said, ‘but I don’t think I can wait that long.’
Her simmering blood rejoiced. She didn’t want to wait. She couldn’t. Now that she was on this course, now she had made her choice, she didn’t want time to reflect or analyse or allow logic to intervene. There would be time for reflection later. Maybe even time for regret.
But that was later.
Right now she had other priorities.
‘I don’t want to wait either.’
And he growled as he swept her up into his arms and kicked the door closed behind them on his way to his bed.
If he noticed her weight in his arms, he didn’t show it; he was so strong and powerful as he strode purposefully through the apartment, and she was nervous, her heart pounding, knowing and yet not knowing what was to come. She was no innocent. She’d had sex before and there had been times it had been good. Essentially it was the same act of intimacy. There was nothing new.
And yet something told her that this time was different.
Maybe because this time she was with a man, who made Damon seem like a boy in comparison.
Was it wrong of her to imagine just for a moment that this was real? Would it hurt to pretend, just for a little while, that she was a real bride and that this was a real wedding night?
His room shared the same magnificent view as the living room, the waters of the bay dark with a foaming white edge, framed by the lights of the city and the mountains that stood guard, and all frosted in silver from a lovers’ moon.
Her view was better.
Dark-featured and olive-skinned, he was beautiful, this arrogant Spaniard, his hot mouth ripe for pleasure, his body built for sin.
He let her down slowly and set her on her bare feet without letting her go. Almost—she wanted to believe—almost, as if he couldn’t bear to. His eyes locked with hers, dark eyes storm-tossed and brimming with need—need for her—and the knowledge was as precious as it was empowering.
When she was back home in her tiny flat in Melbourne, where San Sebastian and arrogant Spaniards and endless sunshine would be nothing but a distant memory, just knowing she’d had a man like Alesander wanting her would be something to pull out on a cold wintry night to warm her frigid bones.
His dark eyes burned for her. And she might be nothing to him, she knew, but she was the one with him here now. She was the one he wanted now.
His hands slipped over her shoulders and down the bare skin of her back. Hot. Seeking. She felt the slide of the zip and her strapless gown loosened around her. It was all she could do not to reach for it as it fell away from her breasts. It was all she could do to let the weight of her skirt drag the gown to the floor without trying to cover herself. Until it was too late to do anything and she stood nervously before him, naked but for a lace garter meant for stockings abandoned somewhere with her shoes upon the sand, and the tiny scrap of silk that was her underwear.
Breath hissed through his teeth as his eyes raked over her, her nipples hardening at the cool caress of air after being constrained by her tight bodice. Her breasts firming, her nipples peaking more with his heated gaze. ‘Beautiful,’ he murmured and she let the word sink in and float down like a leaf to some special place deep inside. He touched the pads of his fingers to her throat and like an echo she could feel her heartbeat in his touch. Their gazes locked as he followed the line of her collarbone to her shoulder. His touch was electric, torturous and yet simultaneously exquisite, too damned good to bear, too damned good to stop.
And when his knuckles drifted lower, her world waited, breathing hitched, her nipples aching to be touched, as his fingers skimmed the curve of her breast.
It was ecstasy.
It was agony.
‘I thought you were in a hurry.’ Her protesting voice sounded thin and desperate and trembled like her knees.
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘Do you know how perfect you are? I am in awe.’
She closed her eyes to stop the words getting in. In case she believed them. ‘What you are,’ she whispered shakily, ‘is overdressed.’
He laughed, low and deep, that way he did, and her nipples peaked with pleasure. ‘Don’t they say patience is a virtue?’
‘Virtue is overrated.’
He growled and she felt the jolt at her core. ‘Is this what you want?’ he asked, rolling her nipple between thumb and forefinger, teasing it mercilessly before he curled his fingers around her breast and squeezed tight.
She whimpered, her eyelids fluttering closed, and he took her hand before she knew what was happening. ‘Or is this what you want?’
She gasped when she realised what he had planned. Gasped again at what she felt, the size of him, the strength, and it was her turn to be awed.
Awed, and grateful too, because she knew she could not have been so bold and he had given her licence.
He shrugged off his shirt as she tested his length in her fingers. He was so big. Long. Thick. She felt a growing dampness between her thighs. Inner muscles clenched and unclenched in anticipation.
‘Is that what you want?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she confessed, a germ of fear that he would be too large for her no contest for her willingness to try. She licked her lips, hungry at the prospect, already sliding down his zip to slip her hand inside. She squeezed them gently through his silk underwear, so sheer the fabric hid nothing of him, before gliding the back of her nails up his length. ‘Yes, please.’
He groaned and grabbed her wrist in a hand made of steel. ‘Then you will have me,’ he said, his voice thick around the edges, ‘but not like this. When I come, I want to be inside you.’
He wasn’t slow after that. He wasted no time lifting her from the circle of her fallen dress and spinning her onto the cloud-soft bed, laying her down almost reverentially upon the coverlet. His trousers lasted no longer than a second after that. His underwear but a blink.
She caught her breath. Before her stood a god, broad-shouldered and hard chested and sculpted from flesh that had been fired in the kiln of burning need. A flame still flickered in his dark eyes, while his thick erection swayed proudly before him. Hungry. Seeking.
Magnificent.
No mere boy like that other one whose name had suddenly vanished from her mind, but a man, fully—no—perfectly formed.
And she knew what he was seeking and her mouth went dry as he knelt with one knee on the bed and every drop of moisture in her body headed south.
He leaned over her, smoothing the tangle of her hair. ‘Suddenly I’m not the one who’s overdressed,’ he murmured and remedied that inequality with a smooth sweep of his hands that bared her totally to him. She revelled at his swift intake of air, before his mouth fell upon hers, his tongue plundering her mouth while his hands plundered her body, seeking treasure, giving pleasure. Spreading heat.
Every touch, every kiss, every stroke of skin against skin building the heat, so that she thought she would self-combust.
‘Alesander,’ she gasped when his fingers circled that tightly wound bud that seemed right now to be the centre of her existence.
‘I know,’ he said, lifting his mouth from her nipple, simultaneously soothing her with his words, only to build on her distress with his clever fingers and heated mouth.
But he didn’t know. He couldn’t, or surely he would do something. ‘Please!’ she begged, breathless and burning up in a firestorm that threatened to overwhelm her.
And he left her for a moment, a moment where air rushed in against her heated skin and she could catch her breath. A moment before he was back, his body poised over hers.
‘Tell me what you want,’ he said, stroking her sex more purposefully now, the tips of his fingers venturing inside, teasing her, driving her inner muscles wild.
Oh God, she thought, as momentarily relief evaporated in another heated surge. ‘I want you.’
He smiled. ‘Then you shall have me.’ He dipped his mouth to hers as their bodies touched in the most intimate of connections.
He was big. She had known that from her first touch. When his tip nudged her entrance and lingered there, she feared he was too big. She was determined he wouldn’t be. She was determined …
‘Open your eyes,’ he ordered, withdrawing from the kiss, ‘and look at me.’
She blinked her eyes open, confused. ‘Relax,’ he said, dipping his head to kiss her lightly on the mouth. ‘Relax and breathe.’
‘You’re so big. I don’t know if I can—’
‘Of course you can,’ he whispered on another light-as-air kiss to one hard nipple this time, as his fingers joined the gentle assault, working their magic again around that tiny bud of nerves.
She moaned at the sudden spike of pleasure and felt the pressure shift and deepen and closed her eyes, rolling her head back on the pillow.
‘No,’ he commanded. ‘Keep your eyes open.’
‘I can’t.’ Her protest was little more than a breath, the fever inside her mounting, the feeling of fullness inside her building as he edged inside her another delicious fraction. She gasped.
‘Open them! I want to see your eyes when you come.’
She fought the compulsion to close her eyes and go with the sensation and did as he commanded, panting hard, opening her eyes to his darkly intent gaze. His brow was slick with sweat, his features achingly tight, and the need she saw so clearly etched upon his straining face only magnified the pressure of what he was doing to her and how he felt inside her and she knew she was on the very cusp of losing herself.
‘Alesander,’ she gasped, her fingers curled into his muscled flesh before she tipped over the edge and with one final thrust he drove himself home.
Dios, she was tight! She exploded around him like fireworks, muscles contracting in the most intimate of massages, and it was all he could do to grit his teeth and hang on. He wasn’t ready for this to be over just yet.
He waited for her to wind down, whispering kisses over slick skin that glowed like satin in the moonlight. ‘Better now?’ he asked, his lips gliding over the shell-like curves of her ear. ‘Feeling more relaxed?’
She nodded. ‘Mmm,’ she murmured. ‘Lovely.’
‘Excellent,’ he said, slowly pulling back, waiting at the brink before powering back in. Her eyes opened—wide.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked as he drew back again.
‘Giving you more of what you want.’
‘Oh,’ she said, surprise and a little wonder turning to delight in her eyes. ‘Oh!’ she cried, as he plunged to the hilt inside her, groaning at the feel of her hot body, a tight sheath around him as he pumped. He would not last long like this. There was no way …
He heard her cry out, a wild sound of release, before his own was rent from him, the note raw and savage and wrenched from a place deep inside—some place he’d never known existed.