I tried to speak, opening my mouth to thank him once again, but I couldn’t find the words. He’d made me completely, wholly speechless. He looked down at me with dark, wanting eyes; intense like I had never seen him before. Without breaking my gaze, he took one of my wrists in his hand…and began to bind it to my other wrist, this time in front of me, rather than behind me.
“What…” I said, my breath catching in my throat. “What are you doing?”
He didn’t answer with words, but instead placed his rough, thick fingertip at the hollow of my collarbone, at the base of my throat. He dragged it down my chest, between my breasts, and slowly down my belly. My breath came in short, hesitant gasps. It felt so good to have him touch me, finally, and my nipples tightened as I felt the heat of his skin against mine. His touch made me shiver, and my eyelids became heavy with desire. With need.
Hooking his finger over the waistband of my britches, I felt his fingertip slip just past the top of my knickers. I was so close to him, but still I felt so far away. I needed my hands on that scarred, tanned skin. I needed to touch him, to feel him. Finally. Like I knew I had been wanting all along.
Stepping into me a little more, he bit his lip as he studied me.
“So… What’s my reward for saving your life, Princess?” He asked. The way he said that word, it was halfway to an insult. For some reason, I liked that. I yearned for it. That powerful, irreverent disrespect.
Disrespect me. Please.
My desire made everything hazy and heavy. But making him wait wasn’t a good idea. I knew that for sure. I wanted him a lot of ways, but I didn’t want him angry with me. Never that.
“What do you want as a reward?” I managed.
He seized both my wrists in one of his massive hands, and drew my arms up above me, as he walked me backward. The rough bark of a thick oak pressed into my skin through his shirt. He pinned me tight up against it, and I felt his hard cock pressing into my belly and hip.
Oh lord. The trickle of wetness between my legs now felt like a sticky, thick river. But even through my lusty haze, his eyes were crystal clear. The color of dark amber, with flecks of green. He’d let his sideburns grow long, and his stubble was rough and dark.
“Kiss me,” he said. “I think I deserve at least that.”
I recoiled, turning my face to the side, putting up a struggle. But it was all artifice, all pretense. Everything inside me said yes to the kiss, and much, much more. And yet I knew that if I gave in to him too soon, he might think I was weak. I couldn’t stand him thinking that.
I felt like I was walking on a tightrope. One misstep and I’d be done for—he’d push me away. But if I picked my steps just right, maybe, just maybe, I could get what I so desperately wanted. And what his hard cock told me he wanted, too.
“You’re my brother. Never.”
“Step-brother,” he growled.
I searched his face for any sign of softening. Any hint of a smile. Any comfort in this intense, terrifying rush of desire and the unknown. But he showed nothing. He gave nothing away. How desperately I wanted to breach those walls. How I ached for him to let me in.
With a thrust of his hips, he pushed into me even more firmly, and my eyes fluttered shut instinctively, like I was falling into a warm and deep pool.
“I’ve never been kissed. I don’t know how.”
Keeping my wrists above me with one hand, he used the other to tip my jaw up toward him. His fingertips dug into my flesh, his thumb especially firm against my cheek. Even that small gesture felt so possessive that it took my breath away. It was me he wanted with this burning intensity. Maybe it had been me all along.
He nudged my cheek with his nose, and inhaled deeply, before meeting my lips with his. The kiss was intense at first, startling and overpowering, as if he had so much pent up desire that he was raging with it, almost out of his control. It was too much and I had no idea how to respond.
But slowly he began to coax me from myself with his tongue, with his body, showing me how to kiss him. And how to be kissed. Before I knew it, I was kissing him back, whimpering and moaning into his mouth for more, oh God, please, Maksim, more.
My moans were a mistake. As soon as he heard me respond to him like that, he pulled away. I toppled down from my wire. He looked furious. It was so disorienting that yet again, I didn’t know what to say or how.