“You didn’t like it?” she asked anxiously as he drew her to her feet.
“If you don’t get a condom on me soon, you’re going to have to start arousing me all over again.” He couldn’t believe the quiet, husked voice was his own. He sounded tender. He even felt a deep, complex stirring inside himself. To say, “I want you” didn’t come near to encompassing the expansive need in him.
The phrase still caused her blue eyes to glitter with jubilation. That naked look nearly made him use the desk right there and then.
He cupped her head so he could swoop his mouth onto hers and did everything in his power to convey his desire, to bestow as much pleasure as he could. Her sweet moan, the plaster of her lithe body into his, was his reward.
Swinging her into a cradle against his chest, he made the bedroom in record time, barely able to open the drawer for a condom and get it on without erupting. He removed her yoga pants and the panties beneath with a rending of delicate lace while she pushed off her top, her breasts hot and damp with sweat as he pressed himself over her, crushing her onto the bed beneath him. Using his knees to push her thighs apart, he couldn’t resist testing her arousal, finding her so wet and ready she bucked at the first touch of his fingers.
In one triumphant thrust, he filled her. A primal tingling raced down his spine as he made her his, only his, again and again and again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ALEKSY TOLD HIMSELF he was allowing the relationship to continue, and deepen, for Clair’s sake. Of all the men she’d come across in her life, she found him to be sexually compatible, so he was putting himself at her service. It would be unkind to deprive her of an opportunity to explore her sensual nature. At least he knew she was unique and treated her accordingly. Some might call it self-servicing, but he disagreed. No one had ever gone out of their way to make her happy. She deserved to be spoiled in every way, so he was doing it.
It wasn’t his usual exchange of luxuries for sex either. They were both getting exactly what they wanted from that side of things.
His mind drifted to the other morning when his housekeeper had called in sick. Clair had made him breakfast. As her short robe had fluttered around her bare thighs, teasing him with glimpses of her bottom, he’d grown so hard his appetite for food had fallen to a distant second behind his hunger for her. She’d noticed.
Seated on a kitchen chair, he’d pulled her to straddle him and they’d teased and tantalized each other, playing out the lovemaking, holding back even when he was inside her, driving each other crazy until he’d had to knock his eggs to the floor and take her on the table, urged to thrust hard and fast by her breathy pleas. They’d climaxed together, vocal and near violent, and had been equally shaken and quiet afterward.
He’d taken her back to bed, where she’d slept against him, her head a kitten weight on his chest. He had dozed, but mostly he’d berated himself for failing to use a condom.
What was he trying to do, tie her to him forever?
He hadn’t brought himself to mention it when she had stretched awake against him, but later in the day she’d shyly informed him she didn’t think pregnancy was an issue and that they’d have to curtail their favorite activity for a few days.
A weight of disappointment had settled on him, one he’d blamed on abstinence, but they’d been back to basics this morning and even though he was still fogged with sexual satisfaction, he was also aware of a cloud of unease hanging over him.
Guilt.
The more he learned about Clair, the more he knew how badly he’d taken advantage of her. If he had the least shred of conscience in him, he’d give her up, but watching her natural reserve evaporate was positively entrancing. She had made the first move this morning, rolling atop him and telling him how much she’d missed making love with him. How could any man be expected to forgo waking up to that?
Unable to bring the ends of this particular rope together, he stopped gazing out the window and gave up pretending that he was working. His ambition was nonexistent. He’d only been in the office an hour, but he began to pack up for lunch, excited as a schoolboy for the ring of the bell. Lazlo had inadvertently revealed while arranging Clair’s credit card the other day that her birthday was coming up. She had become flustered and dismissive when Aleksy had asked her how she wanted to celebrate, eventually confessing that birthdays had always been a disappointment along with Christmas.
He was determined to turn that around for her, starting with a visit to the city’s best jeweler on his way to meet her at an exclusive, sky-high restaurant. Enjoying the way she reacted when he surprised her with toys and trinkets didn’t make him selfish, he told himself. It was the opposite.