He didn’t want emotion. He didn’t want to feel. Emotions were dangerous, deceitful. Yet for now he functioned on a more primitive level. Raw instinct not reason drove him.
He inhaled deeply, intoxicated by the scent of her. Unthinking, he bent to the delicate curve where her shoulder met her throat, nuzzling flesh so soft it made him feel like a barbarian, demanding her acquiescence.
But he didn’t care. Desperation smoked off his skin, clamoured in his pulse, clenched his belly.
From the moment she’d arrived, a demure siren among a crowd of overdressed mannequins, he’d hungered for her.
As he’d watched her laugh and whisper and dance with all those other men he’d experienced a completely alien sensation. A roiling, dangerous, possessive anger.
Jealousy.
The sight of her with that journalist, known as much for his feminine conquests as his provocative editorials, had been a red rag to a bull.
Alaric told himself he’d acted to break up any potential leak of sensitive information. They’d looked like conspirators, their heads close together, their voices lowered. The last thing he wanted was news of her theories about his inheritance splashed across the newspapers.
But in truth he’d stalked across to claim her because he couldn’t bear to watch their intimate tête à tête.
He laved her skin with his tongue, filling his mouth with her essence. Tamsin shuddered against his hardening body and he did it again, unable to stop. She was delicious.
‘Alaric!’ Fleetingly he registered her trembling sigh was probably a protest, though it sounded more like encouragement.
‘Mmm? I’m not kissing you.’ His mouth moved on her skin, trailing up to just below her ear. ‘This isn’t a kiss.’
He closed his teeth on her lobe in a gentle, grinding bite that made her spasm and fall further into him. Fire flickered through his veins.
So responsive. So incredibly attuned to every caress.
Escalating desire bunched each muscle into lockdown. The press of her belly against his erection was exquisite torture. If she moved again…
‘Alaric. No.’ It was a throaty whisper that incited rather than protested.
This time he grazed his teeth against the tender flesh below her ear and was rewarded with a shuddering sigh as her head lolled back against the wall. She’d stopped trying to push him away, her fingers curling instead into his tunic as if to draw him closer.
He nipped his way down her throat, revelling in the sinuous slide of her body against his. Unable to resist any longer, he levered away a fraction so he could cup her breasts. High, ripe, lush, they fitted his palms perfectly.
Suddenly slim hands bracketed his jaw, urgently dragging his face up. An instant later Tamsin’s lips met his, hard and frantic, delightfully clumsy in her ardour.
When her tongue invaded his mouth it was Alaric’s turn to groan at the sheer intensity of sensation. She kissed like a sexy angel. Half seductress, half innocent. For a moment the illusion hovered that she’d saved herself for him alone. That he was her first, her only.
Then he sank into bliss as their tongues slid and mated and thought became impossible. She melded to him with a supple sensuality that drove him to the edge.
He caressed her nipples and she growled in the back of her throat, a decadent purr of pleasure that had him thrusting his knee between hers, parting her legs. In response she arched into his hands, pressing as if she too couldn’t get enough.
He needed her. Now.
Tearing himself from her grasp he looked down. The gown’s neckline was high across her breasts, and tight enough to make them inaccessible. But locating the fastening at the back was the work of a moment. As was lowering the zip enough to loosen the bodice.
He heard her suck in her breath but she didn’t protest. Seconds later he peeled the bodice down enough to reveal her cleavage. Her breasts rose and fell rapidly, silently inviting.
With a swift yank of the silky fabric he bared her breasts, watching blush pink nipples bud in the cold air. Not even a strapless bra. Who’d have thought it of prim and proper Dr Connors?
Alaric wasn’t complaining. He drank in the sight of pure white skin, full breasts, perfectly formed and deliciously uptilted as if begging for his attention.
His erection pulsed and he almost groaned aloud when she rocked her hips, her thighs widening suggestively. He needed that pelvis to pelvis contact, was desperate to sheath himself inside her. But first…
He lowered his head to her breast, skimmed a caress across her nipple and felt her hands claw his shoulders as if she could no longer stand without support.
He smiled as he kissed the impossibly soft skin around her aureole, revelling in her responsiveness as she gasped and shifted beneath his ministrations.