“That one is really sensitive,” she panted, smoothing her hand over his short, thick hair and clutching at his shoulders, not sure if she wanted him to stop or take her over the edge.
“I can tell,” he said with smoldering approval. Opening his mouth on her, he sucked delicately, nearly levitating her off the bed.
“Ryzard,” she cried, knee bending and thighs opening as she tried to grasp more of him. With a growl, he slid down and bit softly at her inner thigh. “Do you know how many things I want to do to you?”
Moaning, she threw her arm over her eyes and surrendered. “Do anything. I love everything you do to me.”
For a second he did nothing. She wondered if she’d done something wrong and started to drop her arm away. Then she felt his touch delicately parting her. His mouth. Pressing the back of her wrist against her open mouth, she muffled her throaty groan of abject joy. To be wanted like this, so deliciously ravished, brought tears of happiness to the seams of her closed eyes.
And oh that was nice. Pleasure coiled and built on itself through her middle, winding her into the sweetest tension. She wanted release and she wanted this to go on and on. Then he slid a testing finger in her, and she knew exactly what she wanted.
And told him.
“I can’t wait, either,” he said in a raw voice, as if the truth stunned him. In a sliding lunge across her, he nearly yanked the bedside drawer from its table and seconds later smoothed latex down his length.
When he pressed into her, she welcomed him with a gasp, nails tightening into his skin as he possessed her with ruthless care, slow and inexorable. Through her lashes, she watched him watching her and bit her lip, feeling deeply exposed, but moved by the intimacy at the same time.
“I can’t believe I’m the only man who knows how amazing you are,” he said gutturally, hands holding her head as he rocked side to side, settling deep inside her, sealing their connection.
Her body didn’t feel like her own. She trembled in arousal, limbs both weak and strong, clinging to him. Her mouth offered itself, parting and begging for his.
* * *
With a tortured growl, Ryzard kissed her, thrusting his tongue into her, wanting more and more of her. All of her. Indelibly.
But that intense, deep possession couldn’t be sustained forever. Eventually, he drew back enough for ecstasy to strum through him as her sheath stroked and clenched around him. She smelled incredible, felt even better, tasted like forbidden substances. He became animalistic, purely in his physical state, senses captured and held by this creature who entranced him. Nothing entered his vision except the expression of exquisite torture against the unique pattern on her face.
In a rare moment of unguarded openness, he removed his internal shields so he could fully absorb the pure, sweet light of her. His only thought was to fill her with the same all-encompassing rapture that held him in its grip.
She sobbed his name and he increased his tempo, reacting to her need and compelled to fulfill it. She met him thrust for thrust, their bodies so attuned they scaled the cliff together and soared into the abyss with perfect affinity. Clutching her tight under him, buried deep in her shivering depths, he let out a ragged cry of triumph as he gave in to pulse-pounding release.
CHAPTER SIX
RYZARD ROLLED AWAY, then settled on his back, his body brushing hers, but only incidentally. He wasn’t embracing or meaning to touch her that Tiffany could tell.
She turned her head to see his profile was unreadable. Not displeased, but not...
Oh, she didn’t know what she was looking for. A spear of inadequacy impaled her. While she had been caught up in their lovemaking, she’d been fine, but now she was back to being scared and self-conscious of her scars. She sat up.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he said, hand loosely cuffing her wrist.
Ha. Where could she go? They weren’t allowed back into the club. Hello, big brother, can you pick me up at the docks?
Glancing over her shoulder, she tried to read his mood behind his heavy eyelids, but his spiky lashes made it impossible.
“You seem...” She didn’t want to reveal how sensitive she was to disapproval right now. They might have been intimate in other ways before, but this was different. It wasn’t just the physicality or revealing of her scars. She’d been incredibly uninhibited, exposing the very heart of herself.
“It’s probably best if I go,” she managed in a husky voice.
“I don’t know what I seem, but I’m only trying to assimilate something that—” He breathed a word in his own language. She suspected it was a curse, but his tone was kind of awed and self-deprecating at the same time.
Facing forward, she closed her lids against a sudden sting, biting back an urge to beg him to continue what he’d almost said. It sounded as if he was as moved by their lovemaking as she was, which was balm to her tattered soul.
He released her wrist to stroke her lower back, making her lift her head from where she’d let it droop to rest on her knees.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Just trying not to act like a first-timer.”
“This is unique for both of us.”
She tried not to drink too deeply of that heady assessment. She was already falling for him in little ways and couldn’t afford to become too enamored. This was merely an extension of their one-night stand.
“You keep condoms in the drawer by the bed,” she pointed out. “I’m not that unique.”
A beat of dark silence, then, “I never claimed to be a virgin.”
She wanted to glare at him, but couldn’t risk him seeing how hard it was for her to acknowledge his experience. Why? What right did she have to possessive feelings? She was lucky to be included in his special club at all.
“And this won’t be the only bed I’ll ever be in, so—hey!”
He had her on her back and under him before she realized he could move that fast.
“Here’s a tip for someone new to this,” he growled. “We don’t discuss past and future lovers, particularly when we’re still making love to each other.”
She blinked in shock, heart hammering.
His aggression fell away to a baffled, tender caress that he smoothed along her good cheek. “Don’t make me feel guilty for my life before I met you. How could I have known that what I thought was pleasure...” His expression clouded with a look of such angst, it made her heart hurt.
“It’s just chemistry,” she assured him, teetering inwardly against her own words even as she attempted to comfort him with them. The remark went directly against her girlish desire to hear that she was actually very special to him.
She held her breath, hoping against logic that he’d offer such a pledge.
“Exceptional chemistry,” he agreed. His hungry gaze followed his hand as he caressed from her lips to her collarbone, across the damp underside of her breast and down to her hip where his thumb aligned to the crease at the top of her leg. “But you do understand this is simply an affair? It can’t lead to anything permanent. I’m not the sort of life partner you’re looking for.”
His blunt statement fell between them like a metal wall, softened only by the expression of regret on his face.
“Glad you said it first,” she said with a poignant smile, hoping it hid the way she tensed internally. She was as wary of certain fantasies as he was, but not nearly as adept at cutting her emotions out of her heart. “I told you what I think of being the woman behind the man. You’re merely a guilty indulgence, like cheating on a diet.”
His brow winged, indignant but amused. “Let’s fatten you up then.”
* * *
Ryzard gave up trying to work. They’d been sailing three hours already, so he had another word with his captain, then remained at the helm while his instructions were carried out. As the wind whipped his shirt through the open windows of the pilothouse, he once again congratulated himself on having the wisdom to switch from a single-hulled sailboat to the double construction of a cat. The three-sixty views and flexibility with anchorage were worth the ribbing he received from traditionalists.
Hell, if he had allowed his concentration to wander like this on his old schooner, they’d all be dead, but here he could indulge himself with recollecting every delicious minute of his day. He’d devoted several hours to learning each and every one of Tiffany’s pleasure triggers, stimulating both of them as he expanded both of their educations in physical delight. Sweetest of all had been her generous straddling of him, broken voice asking for direction as she tugged him along her path to bliss.
They’d been like drunkards at that point, sheened in perspiration. Her eyes had been glassy, her pouted lips reddened by a thousand kisses. Her breasts had swayed with their undulations, her hips an instrument of torture he wielded on himself as he guided her with hands clamped tight in ownership.