His Ultimate Prize(24)

'You're thinking again.'

She stared into blue eyes filled with raw hunger and masculine affront.  Slowly she let her fingers drift through his hair, experiencing a keen  sense of feminine satisfaction when he groaned. 'What are you going to  do about it?'

His lips parted in a feral smile. 'Don't challenge a man on the  knife-edge of need, sweetheart. You might regret it. If you survive the  consequences.'

Without giving her time to answer, he pulled her down on top of him,  both hands imprisoning her to his body as he fell back on the bed.  Unerringly, his mouth found hers.

Raven stopped thinking.

And gave herself over to sensation. Rafael's pelvic bone might have been  broken and pieced back together but there was nothing wrong with his  arms. He lifted her above him and held her in place while he feasted on  her breasts. When he was done, he lifted even higher. 'Take off your  panties for me.'

With shaky fingers she drew them off, experienced a momentary stab of  self-consciousness, which was promptly washed away when he positioned  her legs on either side of him and looked up at her.

'You might want to hold onto something,' he murmured huskily, taking a sharp bite of the tender skin of her inner thigh.

The statement wasn't a casual boast. At the first brush of his tongue on  her sex, her whole body arched and shook. She would've catapulted off  him had he not been holding her hips in an iron grip.

Pain shot through fingers which had grasped the wooden headboard at his  warning. He licked, sucked and tortured her with a skill that left her  reeling and hanging on for dear life.

When she tumbled headlong into another firestorm, he caught her in his  arms and caressed her body until she could breathe again. Then he left  her for a moment.

The sound of foil ripping drew her hazy gaze to him. The sight of his erection in his fist made her sex swell all over again.

He caught her stare and sent her a lethal smile. 'Next time, you get to do it.'

Raven didn't know what to do with that. Nor did she know how to find the  correct words to tell him she'd never done it before. In the end, they  just spilled out.

'Rafael, I'm a virgin.'

He stilled, shock darkening his eyes. A look flitted through his eyes a  second before he shut them. The hand he raked through his hair was  decidedly shaky.

He sucked in a long harsh breath, then opened his eyes. The raw hunger  hadn't abated but the fisted, white-knuckled hand on his thigh showed he  was making an inhuman effort to contain it. 'Do you want to stop?' he  rasped, jaw clenched as he fought for control.

The thought of stopping made her insides scream in rejection. 'No. I  don't. But I wanted you to know before...before it happened.'

He exhaled slowly. His hand unclenched, then clenched again as his gaze  slid hungrily over her. 'I can guess your reasons for remaining  celibate. What happened to you would make anyone swear off sex. I know  the chemistry between us is insane, but you need to be sure you want to  do this now, with me.'

'Would you rather I do it with someone else?' she quipped lightly,  although the very thought of anyone but Rafael touching her made her  shudder in rejection.

He lunged for her, firm hands grasping her shoulders in a rigid hold before she could take another breath.

'Not unless that someone else wishes to get his throat ripped out,' he  bit out. He pinned her to the bed and devoured her with an anger-tinged,  lethally aroused intensity that made fire roar through her body.

By the time he parted her legs and looked deep into her eyes, she was almost lost.

'I'd planned for you to be on top our first time. But I think this will be easier on you.'

His bent arms caged her as he probed her entrance, his gaze searching  hers with every inch he slid inside her. The momentary tightening that  made her breath catch stilled his forward momentum.

'Raven?' he croaked, tension screaming through his body as he framed her face in gentle hands.

'I'm okay.'

'That makes one of us.'

Her fingers tried to smooth back his hair but the silky strands refused to stay in place. 'I...can I do anything?'

His laugh was tinged with pain. 'Sí, you could stop being so damned  sexy.' He pushed another fraction and her breath hitched again. 'Dios,  I'm sorry,' he murmured, bending to place a reverent kiss on her lips.

Raven didn't know what was in store for her but she knew her body was  screaming with the need to find out. With a deep breath-because, hell,  no pain no gain-she pushed her hip upward. His cursed groan met her hiss  of pain, which quickly disappeared to be replaced by a feeling so  phenomenal words failed her.                       
       
           



       

'Raven!' Rafael's response was half praise, half reproach.

Tentatively, she moved again.

He growled. 'Damn it, woman. Stay still.'

'Why?'

'Because this will be over sooner than you'd like if you don't.'

Heart hammering, she inhaled and gasped when the tips of her breasts  brushed his sweat-filmed chest. 'But at least we know the equipment is  working, right?'

He pushed the last few inches until he was firmly seated inside her.  Sensation as she'd never known flooded her. At her cry of delight, he  pulled out slowly and repeated the thrust. Her head slammed back against  the pillow, her fingers clenching hard in his hair as she held on for  mercy.

Yep, there was nothing faulty in Rafael's equipment.

With another hungry groan, he increased the tempo, murmuring hot, erotic  encouragement in her ear as she started to meet his hips with tiny  thrusts of her own.

This time when she came the explosion was so forceful, so completely  annihilating, she wasn't sure whether she would ever recover.

Rafael plucked her hands from his hair and pinned them on the bed, then  proceeded to dominate her senses once more until she was orgasming again  and again.

When she heard his final guttural groan of release, she was sure she'd gone insane with pleasure overload.

'Dios...' His voice was rough. Mildly shocked. 'This must be what heaven feels like.'

A bolt of pleasure, pure and true, went through her.

Don't get carried away, Raven.

To bring herself down to earth, she searched her mind for something innocuous to say.

'If you break out into At Last, I'll personally make sure you never walk again.'

His laugh was deep, full and extremely contagious. She found herself  joining in as he collapsed onto his side and pulled her body into his.

They laughed until they were both out of breath. Then he fisted a hand  through her hair and tugged her face up to his. After kissing her  breathless, he released her.

'I was thinking more along the lines of Again and Again and Again. If  there's a song like that, I'll need to learn the lyrics. If there isn't I  might need to write one.' He cupped her nape and pulled her down for  another unending kiss that left her breathless and seriously afraid for  her sanity. 'I love kissing you,' he rasped.

A bolt of something strong and unfamiliar went through her, followed  swiftly by a threat of apprehension. Steadying a hand on his chest, she  pulled herself up.

'Where do you think you're going?' he asked.

She averted her gaze from his and fought to find reason in all this madness. 'I need to get up.'

'No. You need to look after me, and my needs demand that, after what  you've just done to me, I stay in this bed. Which means you have to stay  too.'

Unable to resist, she glanced down his body and swallowed the hungry  need that coursed through her. It was unthinkable that she would want  him again, so voraciously, so soon. But she did.

'If you carry on licking your lips and eyeing me like that, I'll have to teach you this lesson all over again.'

She blinked. 'I can't...we can't...it's too soon.'

'As you rightly noted, the equipment works so I most certainly can,  pequeña.' He moved and she saw his fleeting grimace. 'But maybe you need  to go on top this time.' He held out his hand and she swayed towards  him.

'This is crazy, Rafael,' she protested feebly, even as she let him arrange her over him.

'But crazy good, no?'

She melted into his arms. 'Crazy good, yes.'

* * *

'Tell me what really happened with your father. What did he do to make you yearn for your eighteenth birthday?'

Rafael couldn't believe the words tumbling out of his mouth. But then  again, he couldn't believe a lot that had happened in the last  twenty-four hours. From the moment he'd placed the phone call to set  things in motion to fly them to Mexico, he'd felt control and reason  slipping out of his grasp.

Not that he'd had much in the way of control when it came to the woman  drifting in and out of sleep only a heartbeat away. Sure, he used the  Los Cabos villa for entertaining. But it was mostly on business, never  for pleasure. And he'd never let a woman stay over. Until now.

Her raven-black hair spread over his arm and he couldn't resist putting  his nose to the silky strands, inhaling the peach-scented shampoo as he  waited for the answer to the question that invited shared confidences he  wasn't sure he wanted to reciprocate. But what the hell? She'd pried  more information out of him in the last few weeks than he'd ever  released in years.