Her gaze flickered to him, a shadow in it. And then she smiled. Her gorgeous, perfect, dazzling smile. “Falling in love, risking my emotions, it’s never going to be easy for me. And with you...I could never fall for you. We’re really the worst kind of person for each other, aren’t we? But that’s what makes this easy, that makes one night with you everything I want it to be.”
Her honesty stung him, but he slashed the feeling away.
One night to satisfy this craving, desperate need for each other. That was all they could afford of each other.
Pulling her arm to his mouth, he kissed her wrist, licked the vein flickering there. Kissed a path upward, all the glorious skin warm to his touch.
Her soft tremble, her gasp as he reached the crook of her neck swept him away hard. “Shall I shock you and tell you all the different ways I’ve imagined having you?”
He licked the pulse there, sucked on her skin. She shivered, sank her hands into his hair. Shuddered, writhed, but he didn’t let go. He continued until she was panting, moving restlessly in his arms, rubbing her breasts against his chest. He was rock hard, her volatile response tightening his own need, fraying his control.
He fisted his hands, fighting the urge to push her dress up, to drag her on top of him and thrust up into her wet heat.
Sweat beaded on his brow. And that couldn’t be borne. He would enjoy this; he would drown himself in the scent of her, but his control couldn’t falter.
It was all about release, all about his body. As long as he kept it to that, as long as he didn’t think about what this might have meant to her, to him in a different world, beyond tonight, it was good.
Laughing, she tugged her hair away from her shoulder and looked down at herself. A blush spread upward from her neck as she ran a pink-tipped finger over the blemish. A soft pant fell from her mouth, and it was the most erotic sound he’d ever heard.
There was innocence in it and there was a raw hunger in it. For more. He had been right. She had repressed so many things, and that flicker of undisguised hunger now, of playful curiosity, turned him inside out.
Her gaze moved to his mouth and stayed there. “It stings.”
Picking her up, he mumbled his apology into her mouth.
She kissed him with a searing hunger that rocked through him. Scraped her teeth against his mouth. Stroked it with her tongue when he groaned.
“Only in the best way,” she whispered when he let her breathe. “I want more.”
Laying her down on the huge bed, Nathan shucked his jacket and loosened his tie.
Raising an eyebrow, he let his gaze travel all over her. “Unzip, Riya.”
Coming to a kneeling position, she reached for the zipper on her dress. Her fingers trembled around it. But she slowly tugged it down.
His mouth dried as the dress came loose around her chest. He was dying to see those lush breasts, those long legs, every inch of her. Just as the fabric flapped down, she held it to herself, her cheeks flushing. “Can we turn off the light, Nathan?”
“Nope,” he said so loudly that she smiled. “Those prim dress shirts and trousers have been driving me mad.” When she still hesitated, he stilled his hand on his shirt. “You can’t see me either, then.”
Something flickered in her gaze. Lifting her chin, she straightened to her knees and pulled her dress down. Over her chest, over her midriff. Leaned back onto her elbows and kicked it from around her feet.
Nathan felt his heart pump harder and harder, and for once, something else took precedence over the malfunctioning organ. His breath balled in his throat.
Her slender shoulders bare, her lush, rounded breasts thrust upward, the shadow of her brown nipples visible through her strapless bra, the concave dip and rise of her stomach, the flare of her hips, the V between her thighs hinting at dark curls...
If his heart stopped right then, Nathan would have had no fear, no regrets.
And the lack of fear, the lack of any other emotion except his feral hunger to possess the woman in front of him, was a sensation he reveled in.
Because it made him feel alive as nothing else could.
* * *
Riya had never understood what the fuss was about sex, how it drove people to the most unwise decisions.
Until now.
She’d never understood how completely it unraveled you, this desire, how completely it exposed every part of a person, how it connected one so deeply with another.
They hadn’t even undressed completely, but the look in Nathan’s eyes—so demanding and all-consuming, the possessive challenge that lingered there—would have sent her running to the hills.
He would demand complete surrender, of her body, her mind, even her very soul. And beneath the flicker of fear, there was also a freedom in giving herself over.
The soft fabric of her bra chafed against her nipples and her thong, which had been a necessary evil for this dress, suddenly felt intrusive, making her sharply aware of the ache between her legs, the incessant peal of need there every time his gaze traveled over her.
She was wet there and she was hot all over, and together, the sensation continued to build.
His gaze never leaving her, Nathan unbuttoned his white dress shirt, pushed it off.
All that bronzed, glinting skin, the whorls of copper chest hair, the black string hanging with a pendant over his pectoral muscles, the jut of his shoulders, the flat male nipples so unlike her own, the washboard plane of his stomach, the line of hair that went down below his navel. He was so utterly male.
And all of it was hers tonight to do with as she wished.
With sure movements, he unzipped his trousers and kicked them away. Then his boxers.
Riya licked her lips at the sight of him completely naked. Her heart thudded incessantly, her sex pulsing.
His guttural groan surrounded them, and she raised her gaze to him.
He moved closer, in touching distance. Riya raised her hand, eager to touch that hardness, eager to learn everything about him. “You won’t touch me, is that clear?”
Frowning, she tilted her head up. “Why not?”
He didn’t answer.
Pushing her back against the bed, he climbed into the bed and on top of her in such a predatory, masculine way that all of her possessive claims, all of her risky resolve fled.
Leaving nothing but gloriously alive sensations toppling against her, drowning her, demanding her utter enslavement.
He was heavy over her, he was hard against her, he was hot all over and he didn’t let her move. His arms cradled her upper body, raising her to him, locking her so tight against him. She was aching to touch him, dying to feel his muscles harden under her fingers...
But he locked her, leaving her no escape but to feel every assault of his fingers, his mouth, his tongue, his breath.
He kissed her until there was no breath left in her. He played with her hair...
Her toes curled into the sheets as he dragged his open mouth down her neck and to the valley between her breasts.
Need knotted at her nipples as he cupped her breasts reverently, kneaded them, lifted them to his mouth. She bit her lip, scrunched the silky sheets with her fingers, bucked against his grip. “Nate, please let me touch you, let me move or—”
“No.”
“What do you mean no?” she cried.
He rose above her like a dark god, intent on pulling her under, every inch of his face carved from stone. His icy blue eyes wide, he was panting too. And Riya realized what tremendous control he was exercising, how tightly reined in his desire was. How, even being in the moment, he wasn’t truly with her.
But before the thought could take root, he licked her nipple and she lost all coherence again.
“Do you want me to stop, butterfly?” he whispered hotly against her breast, his tongue laving the skin around her eager nipple.
“No,” she said so loudly that the word reverberated in the silence.
His fingers tweaked her other breast, pulled at her nipple, while his mouth closed over the first one. Riya kicked her legs against the bed, and still he didn’t let her move.
She gasped under the attack, she sobbed, she twisted and turned as he suckled, laved with his tongue. And a frantic pulsing began at her sex.
“I wondered,” he whispered against the valley between her breasts, taking a shuddering, reverent breath.
All she could manage between catching her breaths was to say “What?”
“Your nipples,” he said, rolling off her and lying on his side. His muscular leg covered her legs, his arm holding her tight against him. He dipped his mouth and suckled the swollen tip again and she arched her spine as sensations rippled and splintered through her.
The heat built intolerably between her legs and she rubbed her thighs restlessly.
His large hands stole between them, denying the friction she needed, and Riya was ready to beg. “I wondered what color they would be.” This against the underside of her breasts.
“I guessed it right.” This against the planes of her stomach. “Like chocolate.”
He looked up then, and Riya looked down, her skin slick with sweat. She saw his gaze move over her face, her mouth and her breasts again, and felt a shyness come over her.
This was so intimate, intrusively so.
This moment when something else arced beneath the simmering chemistry between them was everything she had avoided her entire life. Here, lying naked below him, all of her exposed to his eyes, was the biggest risk she had ever taken.
For a startling second, she wondered what she had started. Wondered how she would face him tomorrow, how she would...