hair stood on end. She unclasped her bra, releasing aching breasts, and tossed it on top of the blouse.
‘Fuck…’ Alex hissed, eyes almost black, staring blatantly.
Libby felt his gaze slide over her nipples as if he’d touched her with those slightly callused hands of his. Her knees buckled. She could almost feel his mouth on her breasts, his bold tongue laving and lashing. In denying him, she denied herself, but the reward would be worth the wait.
She unzipped her skirt with trembling fingers and hooked her thumbs into the waistband, pushing both it and her panties to the floor in one swoop. Every second she tortured him, she tortured herself. The need to see him naked, to touch him, clawed at her, stifling the breath in her lungs until her head buzzed with lack of oxygen.
He teetered towards her, rocking on the balls of his feet.
‘Keep the shoes.’ Gruff. A command.
Libby raised one brow, a twist to her mouth. ‘Is that what you want?’
His command thrilled her. Hers to concede or deny. She’d love to see the excitement flare in his eyes as it had when she’d unclasped her bra. But this was her game. Her rules.
He nodded, his stare travelling the length of her naked body, stopping to linger on her breasts, the juncture of her thighs and the four-inch heels. When his eyes detoured to the scars on her left hip, she shifted her arm, hiding them from his view. She couldn’t go there.
His chest rose and fell, his fingers clenching and unclenching at his sides, and Libby guessed she didn’t have long to enjoy the power trip. But it was worth it. Any scrap of command she held over the scorching chemistry between them kept her grounded, reminding her that this was a game. No feelings allowed.
With a small smile she steadied herself on one of the simple posts of his contemporary four-poster bed and removed first one shoe and then another, her challenging glare pinning him to the spot.
The muscles of his jaw bunched as he lost the battle to meet her eyes and flicked his gaze over her nakedness once more.
‘What do you want?’ His sexy voice held an almost desperate edge.
Libby exhaled. He was still with her. His reactions matching her own.
‘I want you naked.’
She’d barely finished speaking before he’d heeled off his shoes and reached behind him to tug his T-shirt up and over his head. He tossed it away, his other hand tugging at the button fly of his jeans, and with rapid jerky movements pushed his jeans and tight cotton boxers down his muscular thighs, kicking them away.
Libby’s mouth had forgotten how to make saliva. She’d been right. His body was a magnificent display of long lean muscles encased in golden skin and scattered with a liberal sprinkling of dark hair, and it stole her ability to think. Her eyes followed the dark scatter of hair covering his pecs, touched on the ink decorating one shoulder and one side of his ribs before dipping to the trail of black hair below his navel that merged with the thatch at the base of his spectacular manhood.
Her brain shut down completely. Alex Lancaster, a specimen of male perfection in his prime, was completely at her disposal.
Awareness returned, and the slight chill of the dimly lit room countered the fire raging inside her. Her nipples pebbled, and moisture gathered between her thighs, She pressed them together to ease the hollow ache inside.
He rolled on the balls of his feet, every muscle tense as if he was forcing himself to stay away from her, at the distance she’d set.
‘What do you want?’
More desperation, mimicking the same thing firing along every nerve ending in her body.
‘I…’ Him. She wanted him. ‘What do you want?’
His stare burned into hers. ‘Everything.’ His voice a low rumble. ‘I want all of you.’
As if slapped, she sobered. His stark declaration brought her back to her senses. She couldn’t give him that. She’d done that once. Loved. Planned. Built a future. And she’d lost it all.
The floor solidified under her feet and resolve returned. ‘I want you to fuck me.’ That’s all.
In two long strides he reached her. His mouth crashed to hers, guided by her tug to the back of his neck, and she moaned, the relief so overwhelming that if he hadn’t banded his arms around her waist, she’d have collapsed to the floor. Her fingers tunnelled through the silky strands of his hair and she parted her lips, welcoming the surge of his powerful tongue with one of her own. Her hands roamed, glorying in the smooth fragrance of skin stretched over hard planes of taut muscle, every inch of him a tactile feast for her fingertips.
He slotted one thick thigh between her legs, the spring of his chest hair grazing her nipples as he pressed closer. Libby rubbed her wet sex on his leg, the friction sublime, but not nearly enough. She tore her mouth from his, her head spinning with an oxygen-deprived head-rush.
‘Now, Alex. Now.’
She reached between them, her hand circling his hard length, the satiny skin sliding over the steel beneath as she worked him from root to tip.
He stared, his chest working furiously, his mouth swollen and his eyes heavy-lidded.
She wanted him inside her. Yesterday.
With a grunt, he lifted her, depositing her in the centre of the bed and following her down. But rather than settling himself between her spread thighs, as she craved, he dipped his head to her breast, his mouth covering her nipple, sucking her inside the moist warmth.
Libby cried out, her flash of disappointment banished by sublime pleasure. Better than she’d imagined… the fantasy a poor relation to the reality. His cheeks hollowed as he drew more of her flesh inside, his tongue flicking the nub erect and then his teeth scraping with just a bite of pain—enough to shoot sensation to her core in a prelude to the spasms she hoped would soon follow.
As if he’d seen this arc of sensation he spread her thighs wider with his knees, his fingers finding her slick centre, homing in on her clit with pinpoint accuracy and the perfect amount of pressure.
She whimpered, her fingers frantic in his hair as he abandoned one nipple in favour of the second. There was no reprieve from his relentless barrage. His tongue laved, his fingers swirled and plunged, and Libby forgot to breathe as coils of rapture wrapped around her from the inside out.
His dark lashes fluttered open, his stare finding hers as his mouth curled around her breast.
‘Alex…’ She was close, so close. She wanted him inside her, but she wouldn’t make it.
He growled—a feral noise from the back of his cultured throat, as if encouraging her over the edge. Libby latched on to the dark swirls of his irises as his mouth and fingers continued to drag every drop of bliss from her strung-out body.
Her orgasm blindsided her, slamming her back into the mattress with a ragged cry. The spasms rocked her. Alex kept her thighs spread with his, his hand working furiously and his mouth relentless at her breast.
She shoved at him, the
