To Distraction (Bastion Club 5)

As giving as he was demanding.

As yielding as he wished.

As she wanted.

For oh, she wanted this—the fire, the passion, the heady desire, the uninhibited whirling of her senses.

The heat, the flames that licked, then roared, the molten fire in her veins.

And he was with her this time, not an observer of her pleasure but a wholly engaged participant—and she rejoiced. Exulted in the hard grip of his hands as he held her, the un

slaked lust that edged every caress, the desire that burned and turned his body to hot iron, unforgiving and searing, the hunger—urgent and needful—that drove every ravenous kiss, every greedy, grasping touch.

It was she who abruptly caught her breath, broke the kiss and pushed back from him—so she could grasp the hem of her chemise and strip it off over her head.

His hands closed about her and he hauled her against him before the silk left her fingers. She gasped at the contact of bare skin to clothes, then his lips came down on hers and he drank her cry as his fingers squeezed tight about one furled nipple.

She arched in his arms, the movement shifting her sensitized skin against his clothing, abrading thousands of nerve endings alive and flickering beneath her flushed skin. His hand left her breast and possessively roamed, over her waist, her belly, to her curls. He speared his fingers through them, then pressed one hard leg between her thighs, forcing them apart; his fingers slid between, found the flesh he sought already slick and swollen. He cupped her, and thrust first one, then two fingers deep.

Nails digging into his biceps, she hung on as he worked his fingers within her, then withdrew and returned, again and again, pushing her on, harder, faster, more ruthlessly than before.

She couldn’t catch her breath, physical or sensual, couldn’t stand against the fiery tide he called up and sent raging through her.

He pressed deep and she shattered, came apart in his arms, her cry muffled by his lips.

For long giddy moments all she knew was sensation, and the reassuring strength that held her, surrounded her, lifted her….

He laid her on her sheets, the covers discarded, trailing over the end of the bed, her head on her pillows, her hair tumbling down to spread like dark red flames around her head. Her limbs he arranged in a feminine sprawl, one more revealing than she would have chosen, her arms out from her sides, leaving her breasts exposed, legs flat to the sheets but with one knee bent to the side…she blushed when she realized that he was looking at her, examining her as he stood at the end of the bed, toeing off his shoes, stripping off his clothes.

The candles bathed her in golden light, but it was his gaze that kept her warm.

That heated her through, and gave her the courage to lie there, wantonly asprawl, and let him look his fill.

The urgency investing his every movement filled her with a sense of awe—that she, her body, his desire for her, his need to possess it—could affect him, the highly controlled, usually so contained, ruthless and powerful gentleman to such an extent.

To the point that his hands shook as he lowered them to the buttons at his waist.

Lifting her gaze over his ridged abdomen, over the sculpted planes of his chest, lightly laced with crinkly black hair, over the breadth of his heavily muscled shoulders and upper arms, the strong tendons in his throat, she reached his face—and saw…a ruthless intensity that should have sent her fleeing.

That should have shaken her to the core, frightened her, pricked her old fears to new heights…yet didn’t.

His gaze was on her body, wholly absorbed, wholly focused and intent.

The sight of his face, of the stark, unforgiving intent to possess that was etched so clearly in the patrician planes, struck her like a blow to the chest—to her heart.

His trousers hit the floor; he stood naked before her.

She didn’t let her gaze drift down. Instead, when his gaze rose and collided with hers, all fire and passion and need, she raised her arms, opened them to him—offered her body and herself to him.

His eyes narrowed for a second, drinking in her surrender yet knowing it wasn’t. That it was more, something other, something else.

Something he was powerless to resist.

He knelt on the bed, crawled, a large prowling beast, the short distance to her. With one hand, he rearranged her legs, spreading them apart; he came up between, one arm bracing alongside her shoulder taking his weight as he fitted his hips between her widespread thighs.

As he reached between them and set the broad head of his erection to her entrance. He nudged a fraction in, then removed his hand, planting that palm on the other side of her. Caging her. Holding himself above her as he slowly thrust into her.

Watching her.