“Ah,” he ripped a frustrated hand through his hair, his eyes still on hers. “My samotna ptuška.”
“What?” she asked, instantly curious at what he’d called her. But for the first time in her life, her curiosity was narrowed down to the size of the head of a pin. Because suddenly his eyes were burning.
She wasn’t sure how, but his large hand was sliding over the top of her hair, tangling in the silky strands, to land at her neck.
He tugged her forward, none too gently, and Dora gasped, leaning over the console.
“Samotna ptuška,” he whispered again, almost against her lips.
For all his dignified presence, the suit, the lawyerly exterior, his calm, icy politeness, Danil was not polite or dignified now. He simply smashed their mouths together.
Dora found herself caught halfway between pushing him away and pulling him closer. The result was a battle-like embrace, her wire-strong arms banding around him as her fingers dug into his back. She opened her mouth and received him. Not in submission, but in a wild, pulling absorption of him. He was anchoring her to him like the string to a kite and she held on. She felt the wild need to both swallow him whole and lay herself over him, touch every inch.
It was like kissing lightning, Danil thought, as he absorbed her extending, flashing energy. She was whip strong and demanding, twining the two of them together like they were two strands of the same rope. But she tasted surprisingly light. A delicate flavor that grabbed him by the throat. The juxtaposition of her strength and her flavor had his mind spinning; he didn’t, couldn’t understand how one woman could be both.
Urgently, as if the second their lips had touched for the first time, someone had started some cosmic countdown, he dragged his hands over every inch of her. But the world, the console, the two seats, her fucking leather jacket, all of it kept getting in the way of what his hands really wanted to touch. Needed to touch. Were born to touch.
With a frustrated huff, Danil pulled back from her and Dora felt as if she were resurfacing from the bottom of the ocean. The light of the sunrise was suddenly so watery, so blurry, her pulse raced in her ears as she dragged her tongue over her bottom lip, catching his flavor. Dimly she felt Danil tugging at her coat, sliding it off her shoulders.
She sat in his front seat, her shoulders and neck creamily exposed in her deep green satin camisole.
Danil gripped her by the shoulders, his thumbs rubbing underneath the thin straps of her shirt.
“This is all you wear for shirt?” he asked, his Slavic accent taking over his speech. “Just this silky underwear?”
“I like how it feels on my skin,” she replied, foggily fighting to pull the words up from her depths.
Danil’s eyes were heated, heavy with touching her, and for some reason her answer to his question seemed to enrage him. Because he was scooping her up around the waist and shoving her back into the back seat.
Dora’s mind tried to kick back into high gear. But it was in a low gear and cruising uphill fast. She revved but wasn’t going far. She wasn’t used to this feeling. To the complete shutdown of her faculties. But here she was, unable to string two words together while an enormous man wedged himself into the back seat of the car.
It was only when Danil’s weight landed on top of her, when his mouth instantly fell on her neck like an animal that hadn’t eaten for weeks, when his hands somehow found their way under the silky slide of her camisole that Dora’s words came back.
“Wait, wait,” she murmured. But nothing came next. And with the curious interest of someone who studies life, Dora was amazed at the crushing disappointment that raced through her when Danil’s hands stopped their journey across her stomach. “I need…”
“Tell me what you need, samotna ptuška,” Danil said, his voice stretched thin with impatience.
But the problem was that she didn’t know what she needed. She knew what she wanted, which was to fuck, wildly, this half-stranger who’d just bailed her out of jail. She had no problems with that. But the other part of her, the part that wasn’t touching a stranger, was touching Danil. Danil whom she somehow already knew. Danil who had come when she’d called him for help. Danil whose hands were on her like they belonged there. That part of Dora was screaming for her to slow down. That part of her knew that this was about to get messy for her.
“I-” she struggled with the words but she was just so damn foggy.
“Pandora,” he growled and had her eyes snapping to his with the unbridled authority in her voice. “I will not fuck you in back seat like a teenager at prom.”
As he spoke, one of his hands journeyed up, just to the southern edge of the lace of her bra. His other hand went down, to dip just the smallest inch underneath the band of her jeans.