Vengeance Aside (Wanted Men 0.5)(12)

She swallowed. “Lukas.” She tested his name as she looked up into features that appeared savage for little reason. Mmm. Tall, very dark, and so, so handsome. Her libido sure knew how to pick ‘em. Though, the guy evidently had a temper and was prone to overreacting. “You’re angry,” she said, “and I think I know why. I’m clumsy, and I didn’t express well enough how sorry I am for bumping into you downstairs. It was an accident.” His expression slowly softened as his eyes narrowed on her face, and this close, she could see beautiful white rays streaming through the pale-grey, adding an ethereal quality that stole her breath.

“Clumsy.” He made a dismissive sound under his breath and boldly reached out to fit his hand to that spot between her ribs and hip that gave her a poke from the ticklish factor. He squeezed and tugged. Her heart nearly exploded as she stumbled into him. He melded them together from chest to thigh, which should have been outrageously forward of him, but turned out to be heavenly. Protesting the intimacy wasn’t even a consideration, and she still wasn’t sure why. All she heard were angels singing as an unforgiving hunger roared to life in her body.

“Y-yes,” she stammered, pissed to hear her professionalism slip in such an obvious way. “I’m very sorry.” What the hell was this? She could feel…God, his heat. And something else. It was permeating her skin. Crawling beneath it. Spreading. Taking over. It was alarming and magnificent and…unstoppable.

She waited for the panic to grip as it would have done with anyone else whose energy she couldn’t deflect. It didn’t materialize. Why?

“I’m not. Our timely meeting saved me from making the biggest mistake of my life. Thank you for that.”

Didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, but the accent? Yeah, it was there, and her body very much appreciated it. “You’re very welcome.”

“Am I?”

“Yes. Very…welcome.” To anything you want.

“You’re not wearing lipstick.”

He watched as she licked her lips to kill time because the comment threw her. She recovered quickly enough despite the confusion she felt when she became aware of their heartbeats merging into a weird, rhythmic beat.

“No, I’m not.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like it.”

“You don’t need it.”

“Thank you.”

“You will, later, because you’re coming home with me when I’m finished here, and I plan on making you very thankful.”

Her already erratic pulse went nuts. “Just like that?” Had assumption ever been so delectable? So tempting.

“Da, yagodka. Just like that.”

She. Melted. “I take it this means I’m forgiven?”

He made a rough sound in his throat. “For every sin you have ever committed.”

Her panties disintegrated right along with her moral compass, which was why she did nothing when his dark head descended. Their lips met, his tongue plunged, and what a mistake it was not to resist because the remarkable taste of him instantly became an addiction, branding her and ruining her for any other.

The frantic warning going off in the back of her mind was ignored as her hands found their way up to tangle in his hair. He groaned and pulled her in tighter as he deepened the kiss, feeding from her, feeding into her, something she somehow recognized was life.

A throat was cleared. “Hey, you two. Looks like you didn’t need a meet-and-greet after all.”

The voice buzzed in her head, sounding like it was coming from the end of the hallway. Lukas spun her so his back was to the door and she was hidden from sight. His hand stayed pressed to her tailbone as the other gripped her nape. He held her in place as he lifted his head. They were both breathing heavily, and his eyes were blazing with an expression she’d never seen aimed her way before. His mouth, that firm, beautiful mouth, was moving.

She missed what came out of it because she was being inundated with sensations, all of them wonderous and so fucking sexual she didn’t want a distraction for the first time in her existence. But he was waiting for a response.

“Sorry. Would you repeat that?” Her ears were ringing.

“What is your name?”

Aaaand embarrassment hit her with the force of a speeding bus.

“Dale? Do you not know my brother?”

She jumped like someone had touched a flaming branding iron to her bare ass. Didn’t want to, but she leaned to the side to look around Lukas’s shoulder. Vasily, the man she’d met downstairs, moved into the room and was looking at his phone. Sergei followed him, looking hollow-eyed and slightly disgusted while Maksim and Samuel stood in front of the door, smirking their asses off.

“I do now,” she said as she extracted herself from her fucking boss’s husband’s brother’s arms! Lukas seemed to have frozen and wasn’t helping, but she persevered. “And that’s how you French kiss, Lukas,” she dared say before smoothing his tie down with a pat to his chest that begged forgiveness. She walked with her head held high to the bar that ran alongside the wall to the left of the door.

“Your brother was asking for pointers,” she informed Samuel without looking at him, “because he has a big date, and he sweetly admitted he’d do almost anything not to disappoint the very lucky lady looking so forward to seeing much more of him later tonight.”