hands slipped into the hair at her nape, twisted there, immobilizing her head, tilting her face upward, the other trailing a heavy path of possession down to her buttocks. Then, as he held her prisoner, exerting no force but that of his will, he let her see it—the beast he kept hidden under the civilized veneer, its cunning savagery having assured his survival in hell, conquering of it, before being unleashed on this realm. The beast was hungry—and she was the meal it craved.
Holding her stunned gaze, his own crackling with the first unchecked emotions he’d let her see there, he lowered his head.
She felt as if she were in the path of a comet, that she’d disintegrate at impact. At the last moment before his lips took hers, she averted her face in an act of pure survival.
His lips landed on her cheek, at the corner of her mouth, with a chain reaction of insistent, escalating voracity. The feel of his lips on her flesh, the gust of his breath filling her with his scent and virility, left her suffering a widespread synaptic disruption. It was as bad as being a few feet from ground zero. Then he took his destruction to another level.
The hand on her lower back pressed her into him. Before she could deal with the blow of sensations at feeling his arousal against her belly, he relinquished his hold on her head, combed his fingers through her hair, over and over, sending pleasure cascading from every hair root, before that hand caressed her back, on its way to delving beneath her jacket and top.
She moaned a sound she’d never before produced, as the hard heat of his fingers splayed against her back, a part of her she’d never thought sensitive. Every inch of skin he imprinted felt moments away from the spontaneous generation of fire. She jerked away to escape, then pressed back for more. And he took his onslaught to the next level.
His other hand yanked up her skirt, cupped her buttocks through her panties and hauled her up against him. She gasped as she experienced weightlessness for the first time, then gasped louder as he ground the steel of his erection against her melting core. Something scalding rumbled from his depths as he tugged at one thigh, opened her around his hips for better access, splaying her for his thrusts. The hand at her back plastered her heaving chest against his, then he started rubbing against her. Her breasts swelled until they felt they’d burst, until the abrasion of her clothes, his shirt and the power it housed turned her nipples into pinpoints of agony.
She writhed in his hold, whimpered as he ravaged her neck in suckles that would leave their mark, that sent pleasure hurtling through her blood with each savage pull.
All existence converged on him, became him, his body and breath, his hands and mouth, as he tested her flesh and responses, tasted them, took over her will. She was no longer herself, but a mass of needs wrapped around him, open to him, his to exploit and plunder. There was nothing more to hear but his voracious growls and her distressed moans, their thundering blood and strident breathing as he raised her and slid her down his body in leisurely excursions, had her riding his erection through their clothing. Her top had somehow been peeled up and he dipped his head and took her nipples, one after the other, through her bra in massaging nips, sending ecstasy corkscrewing through her.
Her fingers buzzed as if they’d turned to live wires, and only digging them into his flesh could ground the excess charge. Her moans became a drone interrupted by sharp intakes of breath. The flowing throb between her legs escalated into pounding, needing something, anything, everything, to assuage it. When it tipped from discomfort into pain, she cried out his name, begged, she didn’t know for what. He shuddered beneath her as he snapped his head up, crashed his lips on her wideopen mouth in a hot, moist vice, and thrust deep.
She plunged into his taste, rode rapids of delight as his tongue invaded her, taught hers to rub and duel and drink deeper of the fount of endless sensation, as his lips and teeth mastered her, gave her and took her and finished her.
This was nothing like the slow seduction she’d fantasized about. This was an invasion, a ravaging, and it catapulted her into a frenzy of need, an inferno of hunger. She wanted…wanted him to never stop, to do anything and everything to her, to take more, all.
She’d dreaded him and dreamed of him for too damned long. In her dreams, he’d always told her how much he wanted her, couldn’t wait for her, but still lavished care and tenderness on her, in the only way she’d thought she could feel pleasure. Now he’d given her this. Overwhelming, no preliminaries, no boundaries, just raw need, unbridled ecstasy. Light years better, hotter than what she’d tormented herself with all these years, the insipid fantasies she’d thought the height of eroticism. She should have known he’d pulverize her expectations, as he took her and soared far beyond anything she could have imagined.
And if not for the debate that had finally pushed him to override her resistance, to no longer give her a choice…
Something cold and ugly seeped through her delirium. A memory. A realization. How this had started. As a measure to end that debate.
He’d gauged perfectly, as he always did, that this was the way to decimate her resistance, to take her over, mind and body.
And he’d been right. She’d succumbed to the hunger she’d been struggling against during all those years she spent escaping him.
He’d made her forget again why she had, how angry she’d been. At him, for pulling her strings when he didn’t see her as a human being, just an asset, and at herself for knowing that and still yearning for him.
But her resistance was about far more than refusing to be another notch on his mile-long bedpost. It wasn’t about pride. It was about bone-deep terror. She knew where surrender to him would lead. To a repetition of her parents’ dismal pattern.
She’d grown up witnessing what misery could be wrought when involvement in a relationship was one-sided. Her mother’s unrequited emotions toward her father had destroyed her mind, had led her—as Clarissa and her siblings believed—to end her life.
Not that she blamed her father. He’d done what he had to rule a kingdom. It had been her mother who’d been unable to understand the nature of their political marriage or accept it, who’d wanted to turn it into a love match and had only managed to drive her distant husband further away. Ferruccio was everything her father was—including whatever had driven her mother to destruction—a thousand times over.
The memory of her mother’s life scared her enough to douse the insanity.
She started struggling in his arms, as if fighting for her life.
He stiffened for a long moment, unable to make up his mind whether her struggle was an attempt to get closer or away.
He finally grunted something and tore his lips away from hers, put her down.
Panting, every muscle spasming with the slow poison of the need he’d infected her with—a need that would eat through her if it went unappeased—she stumbled away, searching desperately for her equilibrium.
For a few seconds, the flames blazing on the poles surrounding her made her feel like an animal trapped within a circle of fire. As her mind rebooted, she realized how apt that fear was. She might not be physically trapped or in danger, but she was in every other way.
And her trapper—her hunter—was closing in on her again.
She squeezed her eyes shut, bit down on her lip, hard, to stop herself from turning around and throwing herself into his arms and letting him finish what he’d started.
His hands descended on her shoulders, pulled her back against him. She couldn’t
