A Price Worth Paying(43)

He let her down slowly and set her on her bare feet without letting her go. Almost—she wanted to believe—almost, as if he couldn’t bear to. His eyes locked with hers, dark eyes storm-tossed and brimming with need—need for her—and the knowledge was as precious as it was empowering.

When she was back home in her tiny flat in Melbourne, where San Sebastian and arrogant Spaniards and endless sunshine would be nothing but a distant memory, just knowing she’d had a man like Alesander wanting her would be something to pull out on a cold wintry night to warm her frigid bones.

His dark eyes burned for her. And she might be nothing to him, she knew, but she was the one with him here now. She was the one he wanted now.

His hands slipped over her shoulders and down the bare skin of her back. Hot. Seeking. She felt the slide of the zip and her strapless gown loosened around her. It was all she could do not to reach for it as it fell away from her breasts. It was all she could do to let the weight of her skirt drag the gown to the floor without trying to cover herself. Until it was too late to do anything and she stood nervously before him, naked but for a lace garter meant for stockings abandoned somewhere with her shoes upon the sand, and the tiny scrap of silk that was her underwear.

Breath hissed through his teeth as his eyes raked over her, her nipples hardening at the cool caress of air after being constrained by her tight bodice. Her breasts firming, her nipples peaking more with his heated gaze. ‘Beautiful,’ he murmured and she let the word sink in and float down like a leaf to some special place deep inside. He touched the pads of his fingers to her throat and like an echo she could feel her heartbeat in his touch. Their gazes locked as he followed the line of her collarbone to her shoulder. His touch was electric, torturous and yet simultaneously exquisite, too damned good to bear, too damned good to stop.

And when his knuckles drifted lower, her world waited, breathing hitched, her nipples aching to be touched, as his fingers skimmed the curve of her breast.

It was ecstasy.

It was agony.

‘I thought you were in a hurry.’ Her protesting voice sounded thin and desperate and trembled like her knees.

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘Do you know how perfect you are? I am in awe.’

She closed her eyes to stop the words getting in. In case she believed them. ‘What you are,’ she whispered shakily, ‘is overdressed.’

He laughed, low and deep, that way he did, and her nipples peaked with pleasure. ‘Don’t they say patience is a virtue?’

‘Virtue is overrated.’

He growled and she felt the jolt at her core. ‘Is this what you want?’ he asked, rolling her nipple between thumb and forefinger, teasing it mercilessly before he curled his fingers around her breast and squeezed tight.

She whimpered, her eyelids fluttering closed, and he took her hand before she knew what was happening. ‘Or is this what you want?’

She gasped when she realised what he had planned. Gasped again at what she felt, the size of him, the strength, and it was her turn to be awed.

Awed, and grateful too, because she knew she could not have been so bold and he had given her licence.

He shrugged off his shirt as she tested his length in her fingers. He was so big. Long. Thick. She felt a growing dampness between her thighs. Inner muscles clenched and unclenched in anticipation.

‘Is that what you want?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she confessed, a germ of fear that he would be too large for her no contest for her willingness to try. She licked her lips, hungry at the prospect, already sliding down his zip to slip her hand inside. She squeezed them gently through his silk underwear, so sheer the fabric hid nothing of him, before gliding the back of her nails up his length. ‘Yes, please.’

He groaned and grabbed her wrist in a hand made of steel. ‘Then you will have me,’ he said, his voice thick around the edges, ‘but not like this. When I come, I want to be inside you.’

He wasn’t slow after that. He wasted no time lifting her from the circle of her fallen dress and spinning her onto the cloud-soft bed, laying her down almost reverentially upon the coverlet. His trousers lasted no longer than a second after that. His underwear but a blink.

She caught her breath. Before her stood a god, broad-shouldered and hard chested and sculpted from flesh that had been fired in the kiln of burning need. A flame still flickered in his dark eyes, while his thick erection swayed proudly before him. Hungry. Seeking.

Magnificent.

No mere boy like that other one whose name had suddenly vanished from her mind, but a man, fully—no—perfectly formed.