better question is, what do you want?”
Becca laughed then, surprising herself. It was the laugh of a dedicated wanton, low and rich, and came from some deep, feminine place inside of her she’d never encountered before. Some place where she was not conflicted about this man at all. A place where she simply wanted him, no matter how much she struggled against it. And so she laughed, sensual and suggestive, and watched his eyes narrow with desire.
“I think I made myself clear,” she said.
He reached out then, and wrapped his fingers around the end of her ponytail, tugging on it gently, making her head dip toward him.
“Be more clear.” It was a command. Clear and concise. Why should that make her melt all the more?
“I was the one who kissed you,” she reminded him. “But you didn’t seem to care very much for the experience.”
What if there was a reason for that? Suddenly, her confusion flooded her. What if she was imagining this fire, this breathlessness? What if it had nothing to do with her and everything to do with who she looked like? And what did it say about how far she’d fallen that she might not mind as she knew she should—as she clearly would, if she had any self-respect left at all?
“I want you to be certain about what you’re doing,” he said in that ruthless way of his, that purely masculine command ringing out in his voice. Strong. Certain. And soothing her that easily. “You need to be absolutely sure, Becca. Because I won’t be satisfied with halfway. Or once.”
A prickling sort of heat broke out all over her skin, making her clothes feel too tight, her breaths too shallow, as if she might burst. Into flame. Into pieces. She wasn’t sure she cared which.
“Typical,” she managed to say, despite the heat and the ache and the riot in her head, deep in her blood and between her legs. “You’ve barely kissed me and yet you demand that I decide whether or not I want to sleep with you right here and right now? Is this how you negotiate your business affairs, Theo? All or nothing, based on the faintest and least illuminating of examples?”
“Let’s see if you find this more illuminating,” he said, with the faintest hint of a smile his eyes glinting, and then he bent his head and took her mouth with his.
Theo did not merely kiss. Theo … possessed.
His mouth opened over hers, hungry and demanding, and he angled himself closer, his hands spearing into her hair to hold her and guide her as he took his time with her mouth, tasting her, teaching her, making dark, sensual promises with every touch of his tongue, his lips.
And Becca went wild.
Her arms were around him, testing his wide shoulders and anchoring behind his neck. He bent into her, making her arch toward him, finally pressing her swollen breasts against the hard wall of his chest. He angled his mouth for a better, hotter fit, making her groan against him, and then he undid her completely by pulling her hips flush against his.
He was hard and big, and she felt herself melt all around him.
She could not get close enough. She could not break away. She had the frenzied notion that her whole life had been leading right here, to this kiss. To him.
“Theo.” she murmured, and he shifted, lifting her high against his chest. With a touch, he encouraged her to wrap her legs around his lean waist, bringing her hips tight against his. She felt his hardness against her softness, and moved against him, making them both shudder. He dug his fingers into her hair, pulling out the ponytail holder and tossing it carelessly aside. Freed, her hair fell around them, shielding them in the scent of musk and flowers. And again he took her mouth, with such devastating skill, such resolute mastery, that she felt herself shuddering against him. So much want. So much need.
He made her mindless.
“So tell me,” he said against her mouth, his maleness hard and proud against her, making her want to move, to be as wild as she felt, to writhe and scream and find herself in this hot, bright fire. “Have you seen the light?”
“You know I have,” she whispered, her voice broken, her lips slightly swollen from his. “It turns out you are a very illuminating man, after all.”
Theo only smiled. Hard. Satisfied. Male.
And then he shifted her in his arms, and carried her up the spiral staircase to his bedroom.
Becca barely noticed the details of the room, all masculine colors and shades, everything dwarfed beside the sweeping floor-to-ceiling windows that dominated the far wall. She only had the faintest sense of the city beyond them, and then she was on her back in the middle of the wide, platform bed, and Theo was beside her.
Any teasing had fled somewhere on the walk from the floor below, and Becca could feel the silence all around them, making the fire inside of her burn brighter, hotter. Making the way he looked at her, the way his hands traced patterns along her body, feel something very close to sacred.
He pulled her boots from her legs and let them clatter at the side of the bed. He stripped off his coat and the light, cashmere sweater he wore beneath. And then he came over her, resting in the V of her thighs, making her sigh in some mixture of desire and satisfaction.
He did not speak. He kissed her face, moving from her forehead to her jaw, then down along her neck. His hands tested the weight of her breasts through the silky material of her dress, dragging thumbs over her painfully hard nipples until she arched up from the bed against him.
She felt as if she’d been waiting forever to touch him, to trace his long, lean muscles with her palms, her fingers, her mouth. He was hot to the touch, and smooth, his skin against hers making the world seem to spin around them.
Theo sat back, and looked down at her, his face almost harsh with passion. He pulled her to sitting position and with little ceremony, pulled her dress off and over her head. He let out a small sound when she sat before him in nothing but her bra and panties, and then he reached over and took her face in his hands, guiding her mouth to his.
He kissed her again and again, passion and promise, and this time when his mouth moved from hers he found her breasts, tasting one and then the other through the sheer silk and lace, making her head drop back and her eyes drift closed. His hands smoothed down her abdomen, then around to her back, and she hardly noticed when he pulled the bra from her body. But a jolt of fierce pleasure rocked through her when his lips closed over a hard nipple, pulling the hard peak insistently into the hot, wet depths of his mouth. He did the same with the other, inflicting his delicious torture until she was truly mindless in his arms, bucking against him, trying to ride his hardness as he pressed against her.
He laughed slightly, and tilted her up and toward him, so her legs fell on either side of where he knelt on the mattress. Then he let one hand find its way to her softness. He held her for a moment, making her pant with desire and impatience. She could feel the heat of his hand through the scrap of lace—and could not help the way her hips rolled against his palm, demanding that he end this torture.
But instead, he kissed her, taking her mouth with dizzying skill. Again and again he tasted her, and then he slowly, achingly, worked his big hand into her panties, until he could trace her femininity with his clever fingers. One stroke, another, making her sex flood with heat, making her gasp against his mouth, and then he twisted his wrist and drove one finger deep into her. Then another. Then, still kissing her as if he would never stop, he set an easy,
