He lost all sense of himself and time and space as he took in the glory of her body.
For a woman who’d never been with a man, she didn’t slouch or cover her breasts, or bend her knees. Her slender shoulders thrown back, she stared back at him. Only her fluttering lashes and the tremble in her mouth betrayed her struggle.
Something feverish burned in her dark gaze, a gauntlet thrown. As if she was daring him to find fault with her now, to insult her again with his words.
Her breasts were lush and firm, with plump nipples that grew tight under his hungry gaze. His mouth went dry, his breath came in panting gasps as he drank in more and more of her. The flat plane of her stomach, the small tattoo, a rose, just above her bikini line and the shadow of the dark hair covering her sex underneath the sheer skin-colored thong.
Slowly, softly, as if she had done the same thing a million times, as if it was etched into her DNA, she stepped out of the pool of the dress and kicked it with a flick of her foot.
Three-inch stilettos with strings wrapped around her ankles, her long, sleek, toned legs completed the picture.
Somewhere in the past few seconds, his erection went from hard to painful, contained in his boxers. He had never been brought to such arousal just by looking at a woman. If she so much as touched him...
All the while his brain grappled to keep enough blood to form a coherent thought.
Something didn’t add up, it said before his libido took over again.
But, drowning in desire, Dmitri found he didn’t care.
All he wanted was to bury himself in her so deep that he never had to think again. That she forgot to breathe. “Take off the thong,” he ordered, his throat croaking to form the words.
“And the heels?” she threw back, sounding husky and breathless, and he thought he would implode.
It was as if a different woman had emerged when she took off her clothes. No matter, he told himself, pushing himself off his feet.
He would learn every facet there was of Jasmine, every inch of her; every thought that passed her mind would all be his soon.
There would be nothing left of her that he didn’t know, touch or taste.
“Keep them on,” he said, determined to unravel her just as thoroughly as she had done him from the moment she had come at him with that damned knife.
It was as if with that one strike, she had permanently etched herself into his skin.
CHAPTER NINE
JASMINE WAS FINALLY, incontrovertibly ready to be the woman she wanted to be. She was ready to be just her, devoid of ghosts from the past, ready to own her pleasure, her life.
Clasping her nape with one hand, he caressed her hip with the other. Chest to breasts, hip to hip, thigh to thigh, they stood flush against each other. His erection, a searing brand against her lower belly, lengthened, and the thought of him inside her filled her with a mixture of excitement and anticipation. “It’s going to hurt whatever I do,” he whispered against her mouth. “I can’t change that.”
Something more than simple pleasure billowed in her chest that he respected her enough to tell the truth. That he didn’t cover it up. That there was finally truth between them, at least in this.
“I don’t care.” She met his eyes squarely. “I’m not the girl you saved, not the sister of the man you owed a debt to, not the girl you feel sorry for. I’m just me tonight, Dmitri, and I have waited so long to feel like this... And I want the real you. Not tenderness that you have to fabricate, not lies you use to tether me, just you.”
“You’ll be the end of me.”
She smiled, shivering from head to toe. “Then, I hope it’s a pleasurable end.”
Fisting his hand in her hair, Dmitri took her mouth in a bruising kiss. This kiss was hotter and harder than ever before, his tongue plunging into her mouth mercilessly. She could feel herself getting wet, the chafing of her thong too much to bear.
Her breasts pressed against his, his other hand splayed big and hard over her bare butt. “Theos, you’re made for this, your body... I’ve never seen anything sexier.”
Jasmine shuddered violently, pleasure shooting across and over her, like molten metal flowing into all the places she had hidden even from herself. Her body had been nothing but an instrument for survival until now, something she had detested, something she had centered her shame on.
Dmitri’s words and caresses made her love it as much as he seemed to, freed her from her own shackles.
He pushed her against the wall, his suit-clad thigh jammed between hers, rubbing against her heated core. Pulling her hands above her head, he held them there.
The fiercely possessive heat in his eyes sent her insides swooping as if she was on a downward fall.
He trailed those sexy lips over her cheek, her jaw, licked the rim of her ear and then traced it down to the pulse at her neck. Throwing her head back, she gave in to it. This was what she wanted—Dmitri in all his bad-boy glory.
When his mouth closed over her pulse, Jasmine shuddered, hard. She had been terrified that he would be gentle with her, that he would be that fake, sophisticated version of him. But he was not, and her heart soared at that.
He was in this moment as fully as she had been, as real as he had been to her all those years ago.
Her stomach curled in delicious spasms as he dragged his mouth down, over the valley between her breasts. While one hand still arrested her hands from touching him, he palmed her breast with the other. Lifted the firm weight to his mouth and flicked the tight bud with his wicked tongue. Jasmine arched into him in mindless need.
Sensations sparked all over her, leaving little shivers in their wake.
Holding her hard against the wall with one shoulder while his white-hot gaze consumed her, he took the hard nipple into his mouth and sucked.
She came off the wall like an arrow, pleasure shooting down between her thighs. Her body felt like one pulsing mass of pleasure as he continued the torment with his tongue and, oh, dear, his teeth.
At some point, Jasmine stopped fighting and began sobbing and moaning and begging. His name became her mantra as he continued his relentless assault.
She had thought she knew what lust meant, what incited it. Thought it dirty. Despised how willingly one took on such intimacy for a few moments of pleasure, had thought the whole world crazy...
But the intimacy of their heated looks, the shared breaths, the fact his desire for her finally revealed the real Dmitri to her was just as arousing as the pleasure he was drenching her in.
There was not an inch of skin he didn’t kiss or taste or suck. An intolerable, insistent ache built in her lower belly.
She sank her hands into his hair as he kissed his way down her abdomen, his willing slave. He was still in the snowy white dress shirt and trousers while she was naked and that, too, felt erotic, that, too, was intended to remind her that he was bending her very body, her will to his.
But she didn’t care. All she wanted was to go wherever he took her, revel in whatever he gave her. To be possessed by him in every way that mattered.
And then he was kneeling in front of her, his face pressed to the flimsy triangle of fabric that covered her sex. “Theos, I can’t wait to taste you, Jas.”
She was flushing and panting, and moaning...as he rolled down the thong and lifted her leg.
Jasmine became boneless as he threw one leg over his shoulder, his harsh breath fluttering over the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. Thought she would melt into a puddle on the floor if he didn’t hold her up with an arm against her soft belly.
“Oh...” The word floated out of her mouth.
When the first flick of his tongue came over her wet folds, it was as if someone had plunged a knife from her spine to her belly, so sharp and acute was the sensation.
Then he did it again, dipping that wicked tongue into her wet warmth with such expertise that she wanted to die from the onslaught of pleasure.
She shifted and snarled against the wall as he continued licking her, the pressure relentlessly sending her up and up.
“Please, Dmitri...” she pleaded, unable to bear it anymore.
“Look down at me,” he commanded in a raw whisper.
Her hands in his hair, Jas looked down. Kneeling in front of her, his mouth tucked against the most intimate part of her, he looked like some pagan god come to wreak havoc, and she his feast.
As she watched, caught in the languorous heat in his eyes, his mouth closed over the swollen, excruciatingly swollen bundle of nerves and pulled ever so gently.
She screamed his name as she shattered into a million shards, her hips bucking against his mouth, her lower belly still spasming violently. He kept on and on until every last drop of pleasure was wrenched from her body.
When her knees buckled, he caught her and lifted her into his arms.
He carried her to the bed, his gaze drinking in her face. She fell in an inelegant heap, her heart still not back to normal after the earth-shattering climax.
Only the moonlight from the veranda illuminated the room, music and voices floating up from the party. Even that intrusion was too much for Jas. She didn’t want to share Dmitri for a second.
His gaze stayed on her with the same intense hunger, as if all he wanted to do was to drink in her nakedness. Skin tingling at his perusal, she watched him as he shed his shirt, his trousers and the black boxers. Then he was gloriously naked, all hard angles and masculine power.
His tight shoulders appeared first, and then that muscular chest of his, velvet skin delineated over ropes of muscles, a washboard stomach and then...