palms, binding her elbows with the silk and then with the grip of his hands.
He didn’t understand his own body’s power or the strength of his passion. He didn’t understand so many things about civilized behavior. Either that or he didn’t care.
Right now what she sensed was his struggle with the savage side of his nature, the very side responsible for the tingling dampness between her legs. She knew him well enough to recognize his desire to get her out of her clothing without a care for preserving the fabric or the fastenings.
He managed to hold himself in check as he moved his hands to her skirt’s rear zipper, though he still jerked it down forcefully. It would be a wonder if she didn’t have to send it out for repair, anyway.
The price, she supposed, of taking a pirate for a lover.
When he pulled off her skirt to discover her wearing panties and panty hose, he cursed. He wasn’t unkind toward her—never that—but toward the situation. He wanted her naked, wanted to bare the parts of her body to which he sought access. And like a child, he was often neither patient nor subtle when it came to getting his way.
She’d grown used to his demanding nature. It fit so well with her own, which made him work for what she wouldn’t be above paying him to take. She kicked out of her skirt, but that was the extent of her participation in her own disrobing. The fact that she’d betrayed her vow to stay clothed was humiliation enough.
He shrugged out of his black leather bomber jacket, whipped his white T-shirt over his head. Then he moved in behind her, his hands holding her waist, and fitted his knees to the backs of her thighs, her bottom to the bulge of his sex. She shivered from the contact, the anticipation, as well as from his image reflected in the dark window—an image that relentlessly captured her thoughts with the same intensity his body devoted to taking hers apart.
His skin still glowed from three years spent under the Caribbean sun. His hair, bronzed and wildly untamed, hung to his shoulders. His ropey muscles spoke of hard labor; his physique hummed with a lean perfection. He’d left the States a know-it-all frat boy and returned with the hands and the mouth of a devil—hands that were making quick work of sweeping her camisole from her body to the floor.
In the mirrored window, she watched those same hands settle on her ribs before pressing upward to cover her breasts. At his practiced, near artistic touch, her neck arched. She rested her head on his shoulder, slid her back against the smooth skin of his chest. His heat was already too much to take, and her nudity offered a respite.
She longed to know the origin of his inner fire, but he refused to share the details of his captivity or his prior life. That got to her at times, the way he had of holding back even while so generously giving. She wasn’t sure she understood the separation of his selves. She doubted even he was able to make the distinction.
Eventually he moved, his hips grinding in a way that brought to mind the sound of bongos and bass drums, his hands working their tortuous way down her torso to her panty hose. He slid one hand between her legs and fondled her sex until she swelled to the point of bursting. His other hand dug into his pocket.
The condom he came up with was followed by the production of a knife she was certain was illegal to carry. The click as the blade caught echoed like a shot. The reflection of the weapon in the window alarmed her only in that she feared he wouldn’t wield it quickly enough.
The metal was cold on her stomach when he laid it flat against her skin. He slipped it under her waistband before flicking his wrist to slit the fabric of her panties and her hose. Another second, another flick of his wrist, and the switchblade point quivered, embedded in the windowsill.
After that, getting to what he wanted was easy. Yet he took his time, peeling down silk and nylon so that the tattered scraps loosely bound her upper thighs. He moved his hands back up her body, over the curve of her hips, until he reached her rib cage. The heels of his palms nudged her waist. He spread his fingers, turned her to the side and slid one hand down her belly, the other over her bottom.
Leaning forward and bracing herself on her desk, she spread her legs wider as he began to play. His fingers were nimble and exact in their aim, both hands meeting at her slick entrance and urging her apart. He pressed pulse points, stroked the intimate skin behind her opening before pushing one long finger inside.
The sound she made was a low sultry cry, one that told him of her pleasure and her need. Wanting more, she widened her stance, leaned farther over the edge of her desk, raised her backside toward the fly of his pants and rested her weight on her forearms.
His responding growl told her how much he enjoyed her uninhibited nature, her willingness to expose herself for his taking. She would give him anything, had given him everything. He had been equally honest in offering her his body to use at will. Yet his body was all he’d given her, and there were times that got to her, too.
At this moment, however, the way her body wanted his was the only matter of any importance. He entered her fully, one finger, then two, then a third when she pushed back against him and begged.
He continued to tease her clit while expertly stroking her with his other hand, a smooth in-and-out rhythm that in the past—before she’d learned the beauty and the skill with which he wielded his cock—would have sent her over the edge. She was spoiled and selfish and she wanted it all. And she told him so with a desperate backward press of her bottom.
She heard his laugh, one of satisfaction, not of humor, one that never made it to his mouth, but rumbled in his chest as if trapped there. As if he’d forgotten the relief of pure laughter and no longer knew how to let himself go.
He released her and stepped back; she heard the slide of his zipper and the tearing sound as he opened the condom packet. She glanced to the window, where she could see his jeans coming down and his cock springing free in the dark reflection. She sucked in a breath at the sight.
His body never ceased to amaze her, the aesthetics of his lean musculature, the lack of body fat to soften his hard lines. She rarely saw him eat, even the fabulous food he cooked, which everyone around him devoured. Devoured. That was all she could think of, watching as he rolled the condom to the base of his shaft, which appeared even more impressively long and thick jutting out from his solid rock of a body.
He moved forward; she pressed her forehead to her fists on the desk and, eyes closed, waited. He held her hip with one hand, guided his cock with the other, rubbing the tip of the plumlike head between the cheeks of her bottom, teasing her with a seeking pressure.
Later, she wanted to tell him. They’d take time for kinkier exploration when her hunger wasn’t so fierce. But she didn’t say any of that because there wouldn’t be a later. After this, she still planned to send him away.
As the thought flickered through her mind, he drove home, filling her, nearly lifting her from the floor with the force of his first thrust. He paused, both hands on her hips, as if gathering his control, savoring the sensation of being buried alive.
He was hot, so hot. She squeezed him there where he pulsed in her body; his heat warmed her from the inside out. And then it began, the metered cadence she knew so well, the one he’d taught her to need. Leaning forward, he reached around to stimulate her clit, his fingers sliding down either side of the hard knot and tugging upward in time to the grinding rhythm of his hips.
The high heels she still wore provided the perfect angle and height for this raw mating of bodies. He pumped harder, faster, his fingers tightening on her clitoris, his grip on her hips sure to leave marks. She didn’t care.
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