He lifted her into his arms. Only when he lowered her onto the bed, on top of the covers, did she open her eyes again. He stood over her, his tight features set into a stony mask of spine-tingling...resolve. That was the only word for it.
What she saw in the tight set of his mouth, in the lingering heat in his hungry gaze, set all her internal alarms ringing.
His jaw set, he trailed his gaze over her slowly, from the top of her hair to her pink toenails, without missing an inch in the process. Something flitted into it and a flutter began in the pit of her stomach.
She was still clothed, even though the upper curves of her breasts were visible over her bra and her shorts were bunched up against her upper thighs.
He disappeared and then reappeared on the bed in the blink of an eye. With something in his hand. “Take off your clothes.”
Her breaths came quick and rushed. The pink handcuffs looked absolutely flimsy in his large hands. An unrelenting throb, a tremble, started in her. Pushing back with her heel, she tried to roll away from him. He didn’t let her.
With her ankle in his free hand, he flicked his wrist and she slid down the bed, her legs now trapped between his knees.
A dark smile full of sinful promises curved his mouth. The handcuffs dangled in the air above her. “I want to see every inch of you, lick and kiss every inch of your skin. I want you incoherent with pleasure.”
She shook her head, her mouth dry as a desert. His words had the most arousing effect on her. A slow, wicked pull began pulsing at her sex and she clutched her thighs together.
It wasn’t enough that she had surrendered. She had to surrender everything. His words and her thoughts collided, her mind and her body clashed, even as an illicit thrill shot through her.
“No.”
He shrugged, sitting back on his haunches. “My way or no way. Last offer, gatinha. Give up your control or I’m walking out the door.”
There was a savage satisfaction, a grating pride in his words, that irked her.
She wanted to say, Fine. Slide off the bed and walk away. The word trembled on her lips. The sensible part of her was screaming at her to walk away. But what had all these years of being careful and logical brought her?
A crushing loneliness and nothing else.
She nodded, unable to give words to her acceptance.
His teeth were bared in a smile, gleaming with unabashed hunger.
Sliding back on the bed, trembling with a host of conflicting emotions, she unhooked her bra and shrugged it off.
A hungry groan was torn out of Diego and it shuddered around them.
He seemed to freeze right in front of her, drinking her in. Need knotted her nipples and moved incessantly lower. Gritting her jaw, she lay back against the bed and slowly peeled off her shorts in one movement.
He leaned forward and she drew in a sharp breath, her fingers halting on the edge of her panties. He clasped her wrists and tugged her arms upward. His shirt grazed her nipples, setting her skin ablaze. The hem of his jeans rubbed against her belly. She groaned and almost bucked off the bed, the delicious friction setting her skin on fire.
He neatly clamped her wrists with the handcuffs and moved back to his knees. “Turn around and lie facedown,” he threw at her roughly, before sliding off the bed.
She bristled at his command, even though the hoarse note in his words, the way he moved away from her as though he didn’t trust himself, sent a wave of feminine power rippling through her.
CHAPTER TEN
“CHOCOLATE OR STRAWBERRY?”
The question from across the room was fraught with unsatisfied hunger, mirroring her own. The soft Egyptian cotton chafed against her breasts and her skin. She let out a shaky breath.
“I have a choice?”
Silence—waiting, threatening—met her.
She shut her eyes, clutched the sheets with her fingers and mumbled “Chocolate...” Every second he didn’t touch her was reducing her into a mindless state of anticipation and need.
She didn’t know what she had expected—didn’t know what his question even meant. It was definitely not the hot slide of his oil-slick palms over her back.
The massage oil.
She groaned as he rubbed at the knots in her shoulder. The scent of dark chocolate combined with his own, infiltrating every pore of her. His calluses abraded her skin, sparking tiny pinpricks of pleasure all over.
Done with the knots in her shoulders, his hands moved down, over her lower back, lower still to her buttocks. She closed her eyes and savored the sensation as they traveled over her buttocks, her thighs, her calves and even her feet.
They pulled and kneaded, rubbed and stroked, until every muscle in her was pliant and boneless. Her throat was raw with the sounds she made. She felt as if she was floating on clouds.
But he didn’t stop.