Something flickered in her gaze. Confusion. Recognition. Consternation?
“You don’t want me completely naked, do you?” The thought of being uncovered for the first time in his life, in her was enough to make him need a moment to regroup. With thumbs hooked in his waistband, he fought a complete loss of control, eyes pinned to the wink and tremor of her navel.
How he wanted her.
“Naked but protected,” she eventually said, as if she thought he’d been waiting for her answer. It sounded innocent, almost as if she wasn’t confident he’d get there unless she requested it. Her voice made him shudder with hunger.
He would get there. Oh, yes. Definitely.
Carefully he eased his jeans and shorts off his hips, dropping them and kicking them away, forcing his hands to hang loose, revealing none of his excruciating tension as he straightened.
She studied him in a long, taut silence, something he allowed because he was going to look at her the same way very soon. Still, he grew unbearably hard and thick under her gaze. His skin would split if she didn’t let him have her soon.
“You’re—” she began faintly.
He clenched the packet between his teeth and tore it open, then rolled on the latex, aware of the fine trembling that betrayed him.
“Ready,” he said, finishing her sentence. “Are you?”
She didn’t say anything, only looked at him with wide eyes, the reflections in them a swirl of emotions he couldn’t interpret. Was she trying to tease him into insanity? He reached out to hook a finger in her panties at her hip, giving her plenty of time to slow him down.
She didn’t and as he peeled them off, he had one satisfaction at least. Her nest was spun gold, darker blond than her hair, but only a little. In his periphery, he saw her hand move convulsively, but he prevented her from covering herself.
“You’re too beautiful to hide, my golden one,” he murmured, distantly aware he’d spoken in Russian but what did words matter when the need to touch consumed him? He drew a soft line through her curls, finding slippery silk and—
She arched as though electrified, breath hissing in.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Now.” He hiked her up the bed as he covered her, spreading her thighs with his own.
She reacted to the touch of his body as if he’d burned her, shrinking into the mattress before squirming to stroke herself against him, a whimper of surrender trembling from her lips. Her hands slid over him, meeting at his spine. Her legs bent to bracket his hips, and her skin was hot and soft. Delicate and feminine and enthralling.
“I didn’t know anyone could make me feel like this,” she whispered with an ache in her voice.
He didn’t want to hear about other men. The mere suggestion shook him out of his blind, ferocious need and brought him back to reality. Was she trying to incite him with jealousy? Well, he would be the only man on her mind right now.
“Do you want me?” he growled.
“So much.” She pushed her breasts and stomach against him, cheek rubbing his shaved one like a cat begging to be stroked.
“This?” He guided the tip of his erection to part and find the center of her.
She caught her breath and stilled.