As her tears welled and overflowed, he yanked her against him and banded his arms around her. He pressed her entire body against his, trying to absorb her so she would be in him, safe, and forever in a place no harm could come to her.
An image of her bleeding out on a fucking operating table slammed into his head. He saw a doctor call the time and draw a sheet over her pale face. Distressed, he squeezed her so tight she moaned. “Goddamn you, I could have fucking lost you both, and I wouldn’t have known. I would have just kept searching. I would have searched forever. For nothing.” He picked up her heart beating against his, and he centered on it.
“I am so sorry.” She gently stroked her hands over him, his head, down his neck, his shoulders. Petting him. Soothing him. “It is okay, Alekzander. We are okay. I am so sorry I have done this to you.”
He came back enough so he could see her face. He devoured her every feature as he’d yearned to do every day since they’d last been together. He could tell she didn’t know why he was going here. Hell, he didn’t know why he was going here.
Once again his focus changed when he felt her body soften as she leisurely reached up to slide her fingers into his hair and push it back from his forehead. She shifted slightly, rubbing against him, her fingertips traveling down over his cheek. But it was the feel of her brushing them across his lower lip that lured him off the ledge and made him see what she was doing.
He remembered her using this method of distraction before. After an associate he’d been close to had been killed in a situation that could have been avoided. Sacha had seen he was suffering, and she’d used the attraction that blazed between them to bring his attention away from his grief.
Right now, she was using it to get his mind off his greatest fear; losing her.
She was the only woman who could tangle him in fucking knots and make him enjoy the cramping pain. His body began to stir and he welcomed it, savored it. If she thought she was going to take him from helpless to helplessly aroused just so she could wander off to pack, she was mistaken.
“Since you’ve brought us here, you’re going to follow through.” She would feed the beast she’d disturbed.
She blinked as if she hadn’t expected that and he was charmed by the sudden apprehension in her eyes that did nothing to lessen the need he was responding to in a big way.
She’d always made it impossible for him to concentrate on nothing but the physical, by effortlessly reaching his emotions.
“Come on,” he encouraged under his breath, wanting her to make that leap the rest of the way back into them. It was the only place she had to go, so she might as well do it now rather than later. “Bring me that mouth I’ve never stopped dreaming about. Let me suck on your cherry tongue and maybe I’ll give you a few reasons to moan down my throat.” His hunger for her flared, over-taking his anger. It clawed his insides to fucking shreds.
The moment stretched, and just as he reached the end of his patience, she lifted her face and parted her lips. His invitation.
That he accepted by swooping in and taking that mouth he couldn’t resist. She whimpered once and then went octopus with her arms around his head. She opened wider, and her tongue was thrusting deep from one heartbeat to the next. She gripped his hair and just about killed him when she tipped her pelvis and rubbed against his aching cock.
“That’s my girl. Just like that,” he encouraged before sucking her tongue the way he wished he was sucking on her hip or inner thigh. With a mind of their own, his fingers stroked up her ribs until he was in inch from—
She came in and linked their fingers. Thwarted. On purpose? She brought their hands down and around.
“Squeeze.”
He nearly spilled right then. Best instruction he’d ever been given. She released him, and he had two decadent handfuls of her ass in the next second. When that wasn’t enough, he lifted her off her feet.
“Legs up,” he commanded. All at once, her legs came around his waist, she yanked on his hair and sank her teeth into his bottom lip good and hard. Sublime.
He brought her over and plopped her onto the kitchen counter to free up his hands. Fisting her hair, he held her steady while he devoured her mouth, stealing her moans, her breath, her very essence.
“Tighten your legs.” When that wasn’t enough, he sent a hand down and flattened it on her lower back. He jerked her forward. “I want to feel the heat coming from your pussy.”
She moaned as her feet locked at the ankles across his ass. Better.
Palming her breasts, he scored her covered nipples with his thumbs and licked down her neck. The second she rubbed herself on his spasming abs, he was striving to give her what she needed. He dropped his hand to her thigh and tightened his fingers to draw her attention. When she didn’t protest but worked her roaming hands under to push his jacket off his shoulders, he went up, his fingers heating with every inch. When he reached where torso met thigh, he passed his thumb firmly down the center of her body. Hot. Damp. She jerked and was then pulling his shirt out of his pants. The feel of her palms running up his abs was nothing but a blazing trail of fucking pleasure.