But now, Arlie was the one with no words. No thoughts. She was pure sensation, existing only in the aftermath of Samuel Kane. Her breath sawing erratically in and out of her, she looked at him in the lamp’s golden glow. The dark hair he usually kept so pin-neat hanging carelessly across his forehead. Eyes usually so focused and sharp now hazy with undisguised desire. His mouth, like hers, kiss swollen, glistening.
Chaos became him.
Arlie wanted to feed it. Some reckless depth inside her recognizing its own kind, a thing that lived in both of them, begging for liberation. Longing to surrender all control.
“Tell me,” he urged.
Before this moment, she would have given him any number of answers.
I want you to never stop looking at me the way that you’re looking at me now.
But he will. Once he knows, he will.
“You.” With her eyes still on his, she reached out, palm flat against his rigid length beneath the tailored slacks. “I want you.”
“Take me.”
Samuel gazed down at Arlie, who had never looked more beautiful than she did in that moment. Lust-hazed eyes a deep sapphire blue, lips kiss-swollen rubies, cheeks flushed pink, her hair wild and the color of rain-soaked wheat fields.
She reached up and loosened his hand from her hair, maintaining eye contact as she took a step back from him. With one decisive movement, she shrugged the robe from her shoulders, standing before him naked and entire. No barriers. No artifice.
In the ensuing silence, he heard the sharp intake of his own breath as he drank her in. He allowed himself this moment to explore her hollows and curves like a shoreline to be charted, reining in the overwhelming desire to be inside her as quickly as he could lift her onto his throbbing cock.
From the minute she’d stepped into his office for her job interview, he’d sensed her hesitance. Her disbelief that she could have what she wanted. That what she wanted would be taken away.
He wanted her to take it back.
To take from him what she wanted.
With a sly, sexy smile unfolding on her lips, she took his hand, tugging him toward the end of the bed.
“Here,” she said, strategically positioning them before the antique wood-framed cheval mirror.
Gently, reverently, she removed his shirt from his torso before running her hand from his bared sternum to his stomach, his muscles shivering under her touch. She paused at his navel, tracing a finger around the taut, small place where his life had begun.
His belt buckle clinked as she fumbled it open and reached beneath it to unbutton his pants, their eyes meeting as she slid the zipper down. Samuel’s breath came faster now, heaving as she helped him step out of his pants, so that the only thing remaining between them was a pair of boxer briefs.
Arlie dipped her finger beneath the elastic rim, finding the pearly bead of moisture at the head of his cock and spreading it in concentric circles that made him suck air through his clenched teeth.
“I want to taste you.” Her voice was breathy, a trace of uncertainty still lingering in her eyes.
“Then taste me.”
Sinking to her knees, Arlie dragged the boxers down with her, freeing his erection.
He thought of their first, furtive kiss in the closet. With those same lips, she took him in her mouth, moving up and down his length.
“God, you’re good at that,” he breathed.
Her hands anchored themselves on his hipbones, pulling him toward her, quickening her pace then stopping altogether.
Samuel gazed down at her.
“Watch,” she said, meeting his eyes in the mirror.
And he watched.
He watched as she flicked her tongue over his swollen head, her lips trailing down to the base of his cock before she took him in her mouth once again.
She brought her hand up, fastening around his length as she worked her mouth over him in a rhythm that echoed the throbbing of his heart.
His grip on her hair tightened, halting her progress. “Baby,” he ground out, “I can’t take much more.”
Pulling against him, she deliberately took as much of him as she could.
A dare.
Samuel jerked back from her, lifting her to her feet before scooping her up and carrying her to the bed.
She lay as she had been deposited, ankles together. An invitation to be opened.
He joined her on the bed, drawing her knees apart as he hooked his forearms beneath her thighs, planting his hands on either side of her rib cage.
He found her mouth again, but this time, it was different. Her tongue tangling with his, their teeth grazing as a dark, sharp, hungry edge crept into their kiss. Each of them taking as much as possible, on this one impossible night.
Arlie tore away from their kiss, breathless, urgent. “Please,” she said, looking up at him, skin glowing with a thin sheen of sweat.
“Please what?” he asked, needing to hear her say the words.
“Please fuck me.”