its claws tipped with greed, tore at her. She whimpered, clung to him.
“Again,” she ordered. Begged. Didn’t matter. As long as he did it again.
“That’s it,” he praised against her throat, licking a path to her ear, where he nipped the outer curve. Hell, when had that become an erogenous zone? “Tell me what you want, what you need from me. I’ll give it to you, sweetheart. You just have to ask.”
Keep turning me inside out. Keep holding me like I’m wanted, cherished. Keep making me forget who I am.
But those pleas veered too close to exposing that part of her she’d learned to protect with the zeal of a dragon guarding a treasure.
So instead she gave him what she could. What she’d be too embarrassed to admit in the light of day. “Here.” With trembling, jerky movements, she yanked down the top of her dress, drew him to her bared breasts. “Kiss me. Mark me.”
He followed through on his promise, giving her what she’d requested. His tongue circled her nipple, lapped at it, swirled before sucking so hard the corresponding ache twinged deep and high inside her. She tried to hold in her cry but couldn’t. Not when lust arrowed through her, striking at the heart of her. He murmured against her flesh, switching breasts, and treating her other peak to the same erotic torture. Skillful fingers plucked and pinched the tip that was damp from his mouth.
“More,” she gasped. “Oh, God, more.”
“Tell me.” The hand on her hip tightened, and he delivered another slow, luxurious stroke to her empty, wet sex. “Tell me once more. I want your voice, your words.”
Frustration, the last stubborn remnants of shyness and passion warred within her. Her lips moved, but the demand make me come that howled inside her head refused to emerge. Finally she grabbed the hand at her waist and slid it over her hiked-up dress, down her inner thigh and between her legs. She pressed his palm to her, moaning at the temporary relief of him cupping her.
“You’re cheating,” he teased, but the almost guttural tone had her hips bucking against him. As did his, “You’re soaked. For me.”
“Yes,” she rasped. “For you. Only for you.” Truth. That piece of herself, she offered him. She’d never been this hungry, this desperate before. Not even for—no!
She flung herself away from the intrusive thought. Not here. In this hall, there was only room for her and this nameless, faceless man, who nonetheless handled her like the most desirable, beautiful creature he’d ever held. Or at least that’s what she was convincing herself of for these stolen moments.
“Touch me,” she whispered, grinding down against his hand. “Please touch me.”
The fingers still sweeping caresses over her nipple abandoned her flesh to cradle her face. He tipped her head down until their mouths met. “Don’t beg me to touch you,” he said, his lips grazing hers with each word. “You’ll never have to beg me to do that.”
He sealed the vow with a plunge of his finger inside her.
She cried out, tossing her head back on her shoulders as pleasure rocked through her like an earthquake, cracking her open, exposing her.
“Damn,” he swore. “So damn tight. So damn...” He bit off the rest of his litany, slowly pulling free of her, then just as slowly, just as tenderly thrusting back inside. But she didn’t want slow, didn’t want tender. And she told him so with a hard, swift twist of her hips, taking him deeper. “Sweetheart,” he growled, warned.
“No,” she panted. “I need to... Please.” He’d said she didn’t need to plead with him, but if it would get her what she craved—release, oblivion—she wasn’t above it.
With a snarl, he crushed his mouth to hers, tongue driving between her lips as he buried himself inside her. She moaned into his kiss, even as she spread her legs wider, granting him deeper access to her body. And he took it. He withdrew one finger and returned to her with two, working them into her flesh, working her.
Something snapped within her, and she rode his hand, rode the exquisite storm he whipped to a frenzy with every stroke, every brush of his thumb over her clit, every curl of his fingertips on that place high and deep in her sex. He played her, demanding her body sing for him. And God, did it.
With one last rub over that, before now, untouched place, she splintered, screaming into his mouth. And he swallowed it, clutching her to him, holding her tight as she crashed headlong into the abyss, a willing sacrifice to pleasure.
* * *
Isobel snuggled under her warm blanket, grabbing ahold of those last few moments of lazy sleepiness before Aiden cried out, demanding she come free him from his crib and feed him. She sighed, curling into her pillow...
Wait. Her pillow wasn’t this firm. Frowning, she rolled over...or tried to roll over. Something prevented the movement...
Oh, hell.
Not something. Someone.
She stiffened as reality shoved the misty dredges of sleep away and dragged in all the memories of the night before. Gala. Blackout. Finding a mysterious man. Calming him. Laughing with him. Kissing him...
She jerked away, her lashes lifting.
Weak, hazy pink-and-orange light poured in through the large window at the end of the hall. Morning, but just barely. So maybe about six o’clock. Still, the dawn-tinged sky provided enough light to realize the warm blanket was really a suit jacket. Instead of a mattress, she perched on a strong pair of muscular thighs. And her pillow was a wide, solid chest covered in a snow-white dress shirt.
Heart pounding like a heavy metal-drum solo, she inched her gaze up to the patch of smooth golden skin exposed by the buttons undone at a powerful throat. Her belly clenched, knots twisting and pulling tight as she continued her wary, slow perusal.
A carved-from-a-slab-of-stone jaw dusted with dark stubble.
An equally hard chin with just the faintest hint of a cleft.
A beautiful, sensual mouth that promised all kinds of decadent, corrupting pleasures. Pleasures she had firsthand knowledge that he could deliver. She clearly remembered sinking her teeth into the bottom, slightly fuller curve.
Suppressing a shiver that he would surely feel, as they were pressed so closely together, she continued skimming her gaze upward past a regal, patrician nose and sharp, almost harsh cheekbones.
As she raised her scrutiny that last scant inch to his eyes, his dense, black, ridiculously long lashes lifted.
She sucked in a painful breath. And froze. Except for her frantic pulse, which reverberated in her head like crashing waves relentlessly striking the shore. Deafening her.
Not because of the striking, piercing amber eyes that could’ve belonged to a majestic eagle.
No. Because she recognized those eyes.
It’d been two years since they’d coldly stared at her over a yawning, freshly dug grave with a flower-strewn mahogany casket suspended above it. But she’d never forget them.
Darius
