Helena shifted and he tensed. The glide of her soft, rounded buttocks over his groin was doing nothing to quell the desire he’d been struggling to subdue from the moment her backside had landed in his lap.
Her eyes rounded with comprehension. ‘Sorry—’
‘Sorry,’ he said at the same time.
They both stopped, and half-laughed, half-groaned.
Before lust could incinerate his restraint, he gently moved her off him. Then rose and pulled her to her feet.
‘Thank you.’ He tipped up her chin. ‘I know those weren’t easy things to talk about.’ He tucked a curl behind her ear, something tender, perplexing, moving inside him. ‘Do you still want that walk?’
She stared up at him ‘No,’ she said.
And then she leaned in
and pressed her lips to his—a move so entirely unexpected that for a moment he simply stood there, inert, caught by the sweetness of her breath and the subtle sizzle of promise in that tentative kiss.
Then her tongue darted out, stroked over his lips, and in one red-hot second her kiss had escalated from sweet to incendiary.
Leo groaned, hauled her against him and thrust into her mouth, needing to feel her, taste her, unable to get enough even when her fingers stabbed into his hair and pulled his head down for a deeper kiss. His clothes felt too tight, chafing his skin.
Too many layers.
Too much fabric between them.
He wanted the barriers gone.
Wanted her naked, laid bare—just for him.
His pulse firing with a flammable mix of impatience and lust, he scooped her up, enjoying the warm nuzzle of her lips on his neck as he carried her to his bedroom. He lowered her feet to the rug beside his four-poster bed, satisfaction roaring when she tore at his shirt with an urgency that matched his own frantic need to get naked.
In seconds their clothes were shed and Helena was spreadeagled on his bed, her slender limbs pale against the dark cotton coverlet. He kissed her jaw, her collarbone, then sucked the hard, rosy peak of one breast into his mouth.
A low moan vibrated in her throat. When he slid his finger along her hot, wet seam her legs widened in a brazen invitation. Her fingers scraped over his scalp, her hips writhing as he circled her clitoris with his thumb and slid one finger, then two, deep inside her.
‘Oh, yes...’ Her moan fractured into soft little cries that stoked his desire. ‘Please... I want you... Don’t make me wait.’
I want you.
The words snapped his restraint. Shredded his intent to touch and taste and savour before burying himself inside her.
Hands unsteady, he pulled a condom from his nightstand and tore into the packet. Helena rose on her elbows and watched him roll on the sheath, her eyes glazed, her lips moist and slightly parted.
Leo moved between her thighs, positioned himself at her entry and began to nudge in. But she raised her knees, wedged her heels into his buttocks and tilted her hips so he slammed full-length into her searing heat.
‘Dio!’
Stars exploded in front of his eyes and he squeezed them shut, opening them again when her hands framed his face and he heard his name whispered over her lips. He held himself rigid above her.
‘You don’t need to be gentle with me,’ she said, and rocked her pelvis.
The sensual rhythm created an exquisite friction that forced another rough exclamation up his throat. He searched her face for any hint of the fear he’d seen earlier but saw only the flush of desire. The stark look of hunger in her eyes that mirrored his own.
He surrendered control and started to move, stroking his hard length in and out, building to a frenzied rhythm that she matched thrust for thrust until, a second before he climaxed, she sank her teeth into his shoulder and arched in violent orgasm beneath him.
A feral, utterly alien sound was torn from his throat, the intense pleasure of release amplified by the erotic pain of her bite and the feel of her internal muscles convulsing around him.
Moments later his strength gave out and he rolled onto his back, dragging Helena with him. Sensations came and went. Rapture. Languor. Satisfaction. But they were all fleeting. And as his heartbeat slowed and his breathing returned to normal Leo had the disquieting sense that he, not Helena, was the one laid bare by their lovemaking.