Soon the tent was a cocoon, and darker, with the loss of moonlight.
Mikael reached for a lantern and moved it, hanging it a little behind her. “Different places you might want me to kiss you.” He moved another lamp, bringing it closer to the table next to her. “The lamps are so I can see you,” he said. “I want to see you.”
Her insides wobbled. She bit down on the inside of her lip to hide her flurry of nerves.
“I want to see you as I make you come,” he added.
Her lips parted, shocked. She sat up taller, her hands going to her knees.
She shouldn’t like it when he talked to her like this, but she did. He was untamed. “You think I’m joking?” he asked.
She didn’t know how to answer, wasn’t sure what to do or say, so she simply looked at him, chewing on the inside of her lip, nervous. Anxious. Excited.
This was his night. His game. He held the power.
“I have waited all afternoon for this,” he said, prowling around her again, dark eyes burning, emphasizing the high hard lines of his cheekbones, jaw and chin. “Waited to see you naked. Waited to taste your skin.”
A funny pang pinched her heart. She struggled to breathe.
He was frightening, arrogant, headstrong.
He was also overwhelmingly powerful, physical, and sexual.
She’d never met another man like him and she shouldn’t be drawn to him, but she was.
For some reason she responded to him, to his edges and complexity. She was intrigued by his harsh justice, as well as his sensual nature.
She craved the sensual side of him. She wanted the sensation and pleasure of being bedded by him. She wanted to sleep with him. Wanted him naked against her, wanted his bare hands on her breasts and his mouth on her body. Wanted to be pinned beneath him and feel him thrust hard and deep, burying his body inside hers.
He moved in front of her, crouching before her, and tilted her chin up to look into her eyes. “I want you,” he said, his deep voice velvety soft. “But I want your pleasure more.”
And then he kissed her, deeply, the kiss so slow and so erotic that it immediately torched her senses, making her head spin.
He pressed her back against the soft carpet, and stretched out over her. She could still feel the press of his arousal through his robes. He was long and thick and hard.
His hand found her breast through her thin gown, his fingers rubbing and pinching and kneading her taut nipple. She trembled and sighed as he focused on one breast, and then the other.
She was hot and wet and aching for more.
Jemma pressed her thighs together, craving satisfaction.
“Don’t come,” he murmured against her mouth. “Relax. Let me enjoy your beautiful body.”
“You’re turning me on,” she answered.
He shifted his weight, his hips grinding against hers.
The head of his arousal pressed against her pubic bone. His warmth made her want to open to him. She wanted him inside her, not on her. “This is torture,” she whispered.
“Good torture,” he said, drawing away, and placing a kiss on her chin, and then her neck, and he kissed his way down to her breastbone, and then lower, over the fabric of her gown covering her belly and then lower still, kissing the V of her thighs, his breath heating her skin, making the silk gown warm and damp. Making her warmer, damper.
She groaned as his teeth lightly nipped her. “Please,” she whispered. “Be nice.”
“I’m being very nice,” he said.
And then he shifted his weight off her completely, and he reached for the hem of her gown.
Her heart slammed into her rib cage as he pushed her skirt up, and carefully tugged her lace panties down, sliding them off her ankles, over each of her jeweled shoes. Then he parted her thighs, pushing them wide, and settled between them to kiss the inside of her knee, and then continued kissing her inner thigh, slowly working his way to her most intimate place.
Jemma gasped as his warm mouth settled on her, his tongue sliding up and down, stroking her.
She shuddered with pleasure, overwhelmed by the intense sensation. His mouth and touch made her feel so many different and disorienting emotions and sensations, filling her head with pictures and colors, all intense and vivid, electric and erotic.
The eroticism exposed her. The eroticism challenged her.
Who was she? What was she? What was true?
Jemma cried out as his tongue pushed deeper, his mouth cool where she felt so warm, his tongue circling provocatively across her taut, sensitive nub. At the sound of her cry, his hands pushed her thighs wider, his thumbs pressing against her bottom, holding her open.
It was shocking. Shocking because it was him, doing this to her.
She’d been raised to think for herself, raised to be independent, successful, and her brain told her she shouldn’t enjoy this...being handled, managed, seduced. But her body liked it, and she was beginning to realize there was another side of her, a side she found rather frightening.