He’d still been struggling to adjust his thinking, and his actions accordingly as he’d handed her that drink, when she’d thrown him for a loop again by taking his, too, then proceeding to whisk off his tie. As the silk had hissed against his neck, as if relieved to part with his shirt, he’d frozen, his every sense converged on her eyes, trying to fathom from her expression what the hell had been going on.
But they’d been turbid with so many emotions. He thought he’d seen shyness, uncertainty, resignation, recklessness...and hunger, before she’d closed them as if to escape his analysis. Not that he could have been certain of anything. His mind had been a tangled mess by then.
And that was before she’d touched him.
Now a small, delicate hand slid beneath his shirt, as if searching for his heart. He felt as if she’d found it, taken hold of it. It was the only explanation for why it boomed in erratic thunder, when it had always remained steady in emergencies and under literal fire.
Her touch was like nothing he’d ever felt. It was like he’d never been touched before, and her tentative softness was his first exposure to human contact, to sensual stimulation. Sensations he’d never felt before exploded within him, detonating every single barrier inside him. The last dam was his control.
He was no longer in command of his thoughts or reactions, nor did he want to be. Of its own accord, his hand clamped her wrist, stopping the torment of her touch. Her eyes jerked open and up, alarm and mortification spreading in their gold depths. And his last thread of restraint snapped.
A primal rumble surging from his depths, he did what he’d wanted to do every second of the past three days. He yanked her against his body, hard. He growled something incoherent at the music of her cry, enveloping her in his arms and crushing her against him.
For one suspended moment, their gazes merged. Hers was at once stunned and surrendering. His heart felt as if it would explode if he didn’t possess those lips that spilled those mind-melting sounds of submission.
“Antonio...”
He swooped down, his open mouth swallowing her gasp as he drove his tongue between her lips and plumbed her depths. The taste and scent of her, both overpowering aphrodisiacs, made him growl again and again as he feasted on her.
Opening to him, letting him all the way inside her, she whimpered, squirmed. He gave her what she was wordlessly begging for, deepening his possession, every glide against her moist silkiness, every thrust inside her fragrant deliciousness pouring fuel on his fire. Mindless with the need to devour her, to invade her, he hauled her up into his arms and strode to his bedroom with her curled up against him.
He flung himself down on the bed, taking her on top of him. She cried out as she impacted him, then again as he reversed their positions, taking her yielding, trembling body underneath him. His hands were almost rough in his haste to push her dress up and open her thighs. He groaned at the feel of her velvet firmness filling his hands. Lodging himself between her splayed smoothness, he rose on his knees to take off his jacket and shirt, tearing the latter in his haste.
Her eyes grew heavier as he exposed himself, her body undulating its plea beneath him, her voice quavering as she gasped his name between fractured breaths.
With pants still on, he slid over her again, undoing her hair’s improvised confinement, driving trembling hands into her thick tresses, his gaze feverishly roaming her flushed face. That face, that essence, had taken control of his desires and fantasies from the instant he’d seen her. Now he’d take her body. He’d possess it until she wept with pleasure.
Her eyes glittered with molten gold then overflowed. He jackknifed up, gaping at her as tears spilled down her hectic cheeks in pale tracks. His thought just now had been metaphorical, but she was shedding tears for real.
She was that aroused? As aroused as he was?
Triumph and hunger raged through him like wildfire. He should be shocked at their ferocity. But he reveled in feeling out of control for the first time in his life.
“Antonio, please...”
Her tearful plea, her body buzzing beneath him with a need as brutal as his own, undid whatever sanity he had left.
He fell on her like a starving predator, his lips wrenching at hers, his tongue driving inside her as he ground himself against her.
Suddenly she was heaving beneath him, her moans becoming strangled shrieks.
It was only when her cries in his mouth turned to whimpers and her body melted limply beneath his that realization trickled through his fury of arousal.
Had she...climaxed?
Struggling to stop grinding against her, he raised himself on shaking arms, found her staring at him from slit lids, panting through swollen lips, her body nerveless.