His heart pounded, raced as sensation built and clawed up his spine.
And he wanted her with him. He wanted her as unraveled as she was making him. On the last thrust in, he bent and dragged his teeth on her nipple and she exploded.
As she climaxed around him, Nathan pumped into her heat. And the tremors in her sex pushed him over. His own climax thundered toward him, splintering him into a million shards of pleasure and sensation. And nothing else.
He felt as though he was done for. His heart rushed in his ears, and he smiled, in defiance.
Take that, you useless organ, he challenged it. Stop this moment and it would all still be worth it.
Riya was still trembling beneath him, he realized, and he was crushing her with his weight. He meant to move off her, but her fingers clenched around his biceps, holding him still.
“I’m too heavy for you. Let me go.”
She hid her face in his chest, and his muscles clenched under her tender kiss. “I can breathe. Just a minute... Please, Nate.”
For a few minutes, which actually felt like an eternity, Nate cradled her face in his hands. Rubbed his lips against hers, heard the thundering roar of her heart and her breaths trying to keep up with his.
Lingered in the moment until his heart swelled in his chest.
And slowly, as the haze of the pleasure faded, as his breathing resumed normality, regret and remorse rushed in.
He felt her kiss his forehead, wrap her arms around his shoulders.
Found his own arms moving to wrap around her, to hold her close, to tell her how explosive it had been. To tell her that sex had never been this personal for him.
“Nate?”
The whisper of his name at his ears was an intimacy that had him hardening inside her again. “Hmm?”
“Is it always like that?”
No, it wasn’t always like that. In fact, it had never been like that for him.
Looking into her eyes, he said in a matter-of-fact tone, “With the right partner, it could be.”
Her palms traced the ridges of his back. “Oh.”
He pushed a lock of hair that fell forward. “And you were right. You’re quite the natural at it. You’re explosively responsive and any man would...”
The very idea of Riya with another man made him sick to his stomach.
Sudden panic surging up within him, he jerked away from her. Rose from the bed and walked into the bathroom without looking back. Turned the shower on and stood under it.
He never indulged in the intimacy of holding his lover or sleeping with one in his bed. He had never wanted to, if he were honest. In that first year after he left home, all he had done was take, as if the whole world were for his own personal enjoyment, everything in it his prize.
And waking up tangled with a woman whose name he didn’t know and would never know, in an unending cycle of seeking comfort and escape from his fate and fears, bitterness had risen in his mouth one day.
Until he’d realized that at the end of all of it, the truth had never changed.
It hadn’t made him stronger or smarter or healthier. It had only made him disgusted with himself. And he had realized that even this total loss of control, this gorging on things, was also driven by fear. So instead he’d put rules in place for himself.
Never get involved. Ever. Sex, even as he hated the casual, transient nature of it, had to remain impersonal.
Traveling as he did, working as he did, he’d found it easier to keep to his tenet. He had never had a girlfriend; he had never had a first date or a second date. He’d never taken a woman to dinner, never gotten to know one.
He had never even hugged one or comforted one as he had done tonight. Never let a few minutes of his life be about anyone but himself. Never let anyone get under his skin.
And now everything inside him roared with a savage intensity, raged against an unknown fate. He pummeled his hands against the tiles, bent his head in defeat as the water pounded over him.
A longing like he’d never known burst free inside, spreading through him like an unstoppable virus, and he shivered under the hot spray.
Because he wanted to go back into that bedroom.
He wanted to hold her, kiss her, he wanted to tell her that what they had shared was special. Even his untried heart knew that. He wanted to tell her that he was glad that she’d trusted him for her first time, that for all the hurt she had lived through, there was an intrinsic purity and courage to her emotions.
He wanted to tell her that the thought of her sharing her body with anyone else lanced him like a hot poker, that the thought of her sharing her emotions, her fears and her joys with someone else filled him with a hot fury.
But if he did, he would only make it harder on both of them. Make it awkward for the rest of his stay. Would push her into making more out of it.
He’d never let anyone close in his entire life. And he didn’t intend to start now.
Even if she was the most extraordinary woman he had ever met.
* * *
He was gone.
Riya opened her eyes and felt the silence around her, touched the empty silk sheets and closed her eyes again. Locked away the sting of his withdrawal. Pulled the sheets up to her neck and scrunched tight into herself.
She ran the tip of her finger against her lips and found them swollen. Her arms trembled, her thighs felt as if she had run a marathon. Her body throbbed and ached after his deep thrusts. Even her scalp tingled, an aftereffect of how tightly Nathan had held her when he climaxed. Her hips bore the evidence of his loss of control, of his passion—pink grooves where his fingers had dug into her.
He had lost control in the end. He’d come as undone as she had. And Riya hugged the fact to herself.
She had known, after all these years of denying herself the simplest touch, it would be strange, weird. But she felt as if she had died and come out alive again.
She gazed at the corridor through which he had walked, his lean frame radiating with tension.
She had broken a rule she hadn’t known. That much was clear.
Had it been the kiss? Had it been the way she clung to him? Or had it been her question about it always being that good? Emotions, he didn’t do them. She knew that.
But whatever it had been, it was done. In a way, she was glad she had angered him. That left her alone to face what she had done, gave her a reprieve from what she felt around him.
Because nothing, she realized, could take away from the moment, from the beauty and wonder of what she had experienced. She wasn’t going to regret it; she wasn’t going to ruin it.
It had been the best few hours of her life, the most alive she had felt. The most fearless she had been. Free to look and touch and taste without wondering about the consequences.
And now it was over.
For a few more seconds, she let herself linger in the moment. Buried her face in the pillow. Breathed in his scent again. Remembered the heady pleasure of being locked under him, her every breath, every moment, every inch of pleasure she felt, all his to give.
Her emotions and herself, under his total control and how good it had felt.
Imagined that he was still there, pulling her into that lean body of his, wrapping those corded arms around her and holding her safe.
This was not a rejection. And even if it was, she couldn’t care.
* * *
It took only a few moments under the hot spray of the shower for Nathan to realize how heartless he had been. He didn’t have to break his self-imposed rules, but he could have at least said a kind word to her. Could have made sure she was okay.
For goodness’ sake, it had been her first time.
When had he turned into such a thorough bastard? He felt a distinct unease in his gut. Walking away shouldn’t have become this easy. All she’d asked was a simple question.
How could he forget that Riya was new to this, and not just physical intimacy? The hardened cynic that he was, even he’d been moved by the intensity of it.
Wrapping the towel around his hips, he trailed water all over the marble floor as he walked back to the bedroom.
The empty bed felt like a punch to his stomach. He looked around the bedroom and the sitting room and returned to the bedroom again. Her dress was gone. Her sandals were gone. Her clutch was gone.
She was gone.
His phone pinged and he picked it up with a vicious curse. He switched it on, suddenly unsure of where all the anger was coming from. He hated to be so emotional, so unbalanced, and she had done it to him.
“I never asked you to leave,” he said.
A short silence reigned before he heard her clear her throat. “I know. I thought it was best. I called to say I found your chauffeur and he’s driving me back.”
Another silence while Nathan fumed at himself. There was no accusation in her tone. And yet it grated at him.
“Nathan?”
He had taken her virginity and he had forced her into fleeing his bed after the night she had had.
“Nate? Please say something.”
Now she sounded wary, tired. And he remembered the emotionally draining day she had had, all thanks to him. “Riya, I’m sorry, I should have—”
“Thank you, Nate,” she said, cutting him off. There was no sarcasm or mockery in her tone. Only genuine gratitude.
His throat closed off.
“For...for everything tonight.”
“Hell, Riya. You don’t have to thank me for sex. I’m not a...”
What? What was he not? And what was he? What was he doing with her?
She laughed, and the ease of the sound only darkened his mood. Had it really been that simple for her? Just been about one night? Had he ruined all her innocence, changed her forever?