Completing his capture. Starting the torture.
He had, he realized, no defense against her. None whatsoever.
Had he ever had?
He’d always thought, being dark haired himself, that blondes were the right foil for him. Virtually all his lovers had been blondes; the few who hadn’t had been redheads. He’d never taken a brunette as a lover, but as he—his senses—drank her in, he had to wonder if some part of him had always known, always recognized that she, black haired, was his one true lover—his perfect mate—and consequently he’d shied from taking any like her, any his senses might see as a substitute for her, to his bed.
He was already so ferociously aroused, if he thought about it, he would be in pain.
Unable to summon either strength or will to stop her, he watched as she knelt on the bed and—with that grace that was so much a part of her—in a crawling prowl, came up the bed toward him.
He assumed her aim would be to lie by his side, but then she shifted, slid a leg over his hips, and sat on the sheet across his waist.
He closed his eyes and only just bit back a groan. Behind his head, he held his wrists in a death grip to stop himself from reaching for her. The warm, alluring pressure of her weight over his waist and upper belly, the firm press of her inner thighs against his sides, was temptation incarnate.
She had him trapped—physically trapped. He couldn’t move. And there was nothing he could do.
“Hmm,” she purred—and it was definitely the purr of a cat surveying her own bowl of cream. “Where to begin?”
The question sounded distinctly rhetorical—which calmed him not at all. Her hands hadn’t yet touched him.
He cracked open his lids; his gaze fell on her breasts. The luscious mounds, pearlescent in the silvery radiance of the moon, their peaks tipped with rosy pink aureolas and nipples, made his mouth water.
She’d straightened, and her hands rested on the sleek muscles of her widespread thighs.
He hauled in a tight breath and forced his gaze up to her face—to her perfectly sculpted chin, to the fullness of her lips…eventually, to her eyes; he trapped her gaze as she raised her eyes to meet his. “You’re a virgin.” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a virgin beneath him—sometime in his schooldays?
She blinked her eyes wide. “I know.” Her lips slowly curved in another of those amused female smiles—the sort women used when they knew they had the man in question exactly where they wanted him. Helpless. “I’m fairly certain you’re up to dealing with that little matter for me.”
Then the damned woman swayed, sensuously shifting the globes of her derriere so they brushed the head of his straining erection.
He couldn’t stifle his groan. Again, he closed his eyes, clutched his wrists. His jaw felt as if it would crack.
Why am I resisting?
He’d known the reasons before she’d walked into the room, but they escaped him now. Was there any sense in prolonging his resistance to something that was clearly—whether there or in London—going to be?
“Antonia…” His voice was almost gone—so deep, so rough, it was more growl than diction. He dragged in another breath—and realized he didn’t have any idea what he wanted to say.
Then he felt her weight shift.
Is she pulling back?
A wholly contradictory panic assailed him.
He opened his eyes.
As she put her hands on the bed on either side of his shoulders and leaned close.
Much closer. From a distance of mere inches, her gray eyes met his. Fearlessly, she held his gaze.
And catlike, dipped, so her breasts—delectably warm, deliciously weighted silken mounds—caressed his chest as she closed the last inch and breathed over his lips, “Sebastian…”
Then she covered his lips with hers, and he was lost.
Utterly and completely vanquished.
Not by her but by the primitive force she unleashed in him.
That she was there—patently recognizing that she was his, by her own wordless declaration accepting that truth—and offering herself so blatantly to him… There was no way he couldn’t seize.
His hands whipped from behind his head, clamped about her hips, and he rolled, bringing her down to the bed beside him.
Then he rolled further, and she was beneath him.
The movement had trapped the sheet between them; he considered that a bonus given she was, as he’d reminded her, a virgin. This engagement would have to be slow, even though every impulse he possessed hungered. Wanted. Now. This second.
Ruthlessly, he seized control of the kiss—and kissed her ravenously, rapaciously, with a plundering voraciousness he couldn’t tame.
Didn’t want to. Saw no need to. This—him and her like this, rolling naked in a bed—had been written in their stars.