Or did she respond to him in this way? Alexa had no idea who reacted to whom and when. She only knew that now she desperately needed him to give her more than the gentle caresses that had stunned her so much at first. That she needed more than softness, than a delicacy of touch. She needed heat and hardness, strength and pressure. She needed to feel the power of his hands, the tightness of the muscles in his arms as they closed around her, lifting her from her seat.
Or did she stand up to him?
She didn’t know the answer to that, only knew that somehow she was on her feet, pressed tight against the hard strength of his body, feeling the warmth of him enclose her as she drew in the clean scent of his skin.
His mouth was no longer gentle but demanding in the way she had feared it might be from the start. Now she had no fear of that demand and met it with a hunger of her own, pressure for pressure, need for need. Now her hands were free to tangle in his hair as she had wanted, but as soon as she had her wish she knew that it wasn’t enough. She wanted more. Wanted to touch him everywhere, to feel the strength of muscle and bone underneath her searching fingers, slide in at the open neck of his white shirt and know the satiny warmth of his skin, the crisp feel of his body hair tickling her palm.
One of Santos’s hands was in her hair, twisting to hold her still, to keep her mouth just where he wanted it, while the other roamed over her body. His tongue tangled with hers, tasting the innermost warmth of her mouth, mirroring the more intimate dance towards which they were heading. And they were heading that way. There was no doubt of that at all in Alexa’s mind. This heat, this hunger, this yearning intensity could not lead to anywhere else. It was as if someone had started the countdown to a nuclear explosion and there was no way of stopping it that wouldn’t result in an even more dramatic meltdown than the one they had triggered between them.
‘I want you,’ Santos muttered against her mouth, his accent so raw and thick that the words were almost incomprehensible.
But there was no need of words with the heated evidence of his arousal pressed against her stomach, with his hands growing harder, more demanding with every pass they made over her body. The heat of his fingers over her breast had her nipple peaking in urgent response, pushing wantonly into his palm so that the brush of his fingers was a stinging pleasure, sending sensation rushing from this most sensitive point to flood the rest of her body with need. Alexa moaned aloud at the feel of it, hearing Santos laugh deep in his throat as he caught her response against his lips, kissing it back into her mouth, his taste blending with her own until she didn’t know where she ended or he began.
And that was how she wanted it in every cell in her body. The primal heat that his kisses had started within her licked along every nerve, pooling low down between her legs where a heavy, honeyed pulse of desire beat a primitive tattoo so that when he half walked, half carried her backwards to the larger settee she went with him willingly, too lost in sensation, too mindless with need to think of anything beyond the moment. And when the backs of her legs hit the side of the bed as they had done earlier she tumbled onto the downy quilt, carried further and faster with Santos’s heavy weight coming down on top of her.
His hands were under her dress now, pushing the pink satin down her arms to expose her heated skin, fingertips trailing burning patterns over her body so that she writhed in unrestrained delight at the sensations his touch created.
‘Want you too,’ she muttered urgently, her voice not sounding like her own, it was so rough and raw with need. ‘Kiss me—touch me …’
Take me, she longed to say but even now some last remaining hint of restraint kept a check on her tongue. There was no going back, she knew that deep in her soul. It would tear her apart if he stopped now, when her body was aching for him, straining towards him, almost screaming the need to know his full possession, the total union of their bodies, skin on skin, flesh against flesh, hunger matching hunger.
But she couldn’t quite bring herself to voice that need. Didn’t dare to put her yearning into words, to strip away the carefully protective mask she had felt the urge to wear in front of this man. Stripping her clothes off was one thing. That was what she wanted more than all the world—to be physically naked with him. But emotional nakedness was quite another matter. That was something she didn’t dare reveal to him. It would be like putting her soul under a microscope and letting him dissect it with a cold, brutal steel knife.
Needy fingers fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, tugging them free with impatient movements. Exposing his skin brought a sudden rush of the warm, slightly musky scent of his skin and she inhaled it like some rich perfume, feeling the impact of it hit her as if it was a raw aphrodisiac.