A Debt Paid in Passion

“I do need to hear that,” he said with a tight white line around his mouth. “I need to hear it, see it, feel it...”

When he covered her mouth with his, the passion behind his kiss was cataclysmic. If she had wanted to be swept away, the tsunami of desire was here, lifting her so she found herself clutched to his chest and carried to the bed. But there an odd, intent stillness took him over. Everything slowed.

He sat beside her to run light fingers from her bare shoulder to her wrist, lifting her hand to his mouth. Hot, damp lips pressed into the thin skin of her inner arm, following the faint blue line to the crease of her elbow.

She compulsively wove her fingers into his silky hair, enjoying the play of the short strands on the sensitive spaces between her fingers. He smelled faintly of aftershave and firmly of himself. The compelling scent overwhelmed her as he nuzzled the hollow of her shoulder, then grazed his lips over the upper swell of her breast.

His shirt was a crisp annoyance as she sought the heat beneath his collar, restricted by the tight buttons and bow tie and his refusal to crush her under his weight.

“I want to feel you,” she complained, restively scraping her fingers up from his waistband to free his shirt, crumpling the fine silk.

He sat up. His narrow eyes glittered with something smug and arrogant, but his movements were urgent as he pulled at his clothing.

He does need to hear it, she thought, even as she rose on an elbow and picked at his buttons, trying to hurry him. As he threw off the shirt, she stroked across the twitching muscles of his chest, lightly scratching with her nails as she stroked from his collarbone to his abs.

“You’re so hot,” she breathed, thinking, figuratively and literally. He epitomized an underwear model’s fine physique, but radiated heat from his swarthy, flush-darkened torso. His pure male sexuality weakened her. She was glad she was lying down, but a distant part of her was flinching in alarm. She’d done this once, stroked and satisfied her curiosity and his libido, and the next day her world had been devastated.

“Every time you clip up your hair, I want to let it down,” he said in a sensuous rumble, gently seeking pins to release the hair pulled back from her temple. As he finger-combed, he bent to let his hot breath tease the delicate whorls of her ear. “I think of you doing very erotic things to me with this hair,” he said, words and lips sensitizing her to screaming pitch before he took her to a new level of shivering excitement, dabbing his tongue and lightly biting and sucking her lobe. By the time he moved to the flesh at her nape, she was head-to-toe goose bumps, forehead pleated in an agony of delicious excitement. He further paralyzed her with soft bites into the incredibly responsive tendons of her neck, making her moan and arch to offer herself.

“What are you doing to me?” she gasped, making no protest as he slid her wrists upward and clasped them in one of his hands.

“I haven’t even got your dress off,” he husked, seeking and finding the zip at her side. Slowly he released it, watching her pant as she waited, completely absorbed, wanting nothing except to belong to this man.

“You’re like a goddess. A fantasy coming true, making me insane. I can’t think of anything but having you.” He released his grip on her to peel the one shoulder down her arm, exposing her breasts and avidly looking at them.

“Raoul.” She brought her elbows down and forward, forearms wanting to shield herself, but his undisguised desire was a type of seduction. A deep part of her wanted to please him and if the thrust of her breasts excited him, she wanted to give him that.

He clasped the full globes in splayed hands and anointed them with reverent kisses. “So beautiful. So perfect.” His hands slid to push the fabric down further and she lifted her hips, letting him take the gown off her legs, leaving her naked but for her slutty shoes and a nude thong that wasn’t any kind of cover.

She’d been waxed, plucked, exfoliated and moisturized today, but she still held her breath, fearful he’d make note of her imperfections.

He chuckled with gruff pleasure and drew a wickedly teasing fingertip over the silk covering her hot and pulsing mound. His sure hands skimmed away that defense and suddenly she was painfully aware of wearing only shoes on a broad bed while she writhed in arousal before a half-dressed man.

“Raoul.”

She didn’t know what she wanted to say, but he said, “Shh,” with quiet command.

His brows lowered in concentration as he cupped her hip in one hand, stilling her. His other hand moved to smooth a testing fingertip over her C-section scar. It was the starkest mark left by childbearing, even more pronounced than the faint stretch marks and the fading brown line descending from her belly button.

“Don’t,” she said, wriggling self-consciously and trying to brush his hand away.

“Tender?”

The scar was oddly both oversensitive and numb, but mostly his touch felt too personal. He bent to touch a kiss there and she gasped, shocked and moved and flooded with embarrassed excitement.

Then he shifted to blow softly over her mound. He’d been seducing her so gently, she’d overlooked how powerful and forceful he really was. Her contracting thighs smoothly parted for his superior strength as he made room for his wide shoulders, settling low to press licking kisses high on the insides of her legs.

“You don’t have to...”

“Oh, sweet, hot Sin, I do. I really, really do.”

She clenched her eyes shut as knowing fingers caressed. This was the sort of intimacy she’d never been able to relax for, knowing he was looking at her— Oh, God. Her muscles clenched on the finger that slid in to test her slippery depths.

“Tell me when I get it right,” he said, taking a soft bite of her flesh. At the same time he withdrew his touch, then filled her with the span of two thick fingers. His tongue flicked and she couldn’t bite back her keening moan. Everything in her gathered to this one bundle of pure sensation, paradise beckoning with each languid caress that he lazily bestowed on her, as if they had all the time in the world.

It was pure torture and so good she was dying, losing herself, growing wanton, inviting more with a tilt of her hips, encouraging him in gasps of sobbing murmurs.

“I can’t take it,” she cried, pulling mercilessly at his hair.

He reared back onto his knees with a near-primal growl, making her wail with loss even though she’d forced the issue.

Jerking at his trousers, he freed himself, shoving them off and away before he crawled over her. Her legs instinctively twined up to hitch her ankles behind his waist, trying to draw him down as he clasped the sides of her face and kissed her, hard.

His weight settled, crushing her pelvis before he lifted to allow her seeking hand to clasp his sleek shaft and guide him into her.

He slid home with a delicious plunge that turned his whole body to granite. For a few seconds he was a blistering, immovable cage around her, mouth locked to her lips, his heart the only movement as it pounded the wall of his chest, trying to reach hers.

A sigh of pure bliss left her. It felt so good to have him in her, filling the hollow ache she’d thought would be with her the rest of her life.

Then he eased back, pulling at her nerve endings as though they were harp strings, drawing her taut with ecstatic tension before he thrust again. Joy expanded within her.

The crescendo built, both of them clasping to be closer even as they fought to make the strokes harder, deeper, more irrevocable. This wasn’t just her, she knew distantly. He was as lost to need as she was, clawing for satisfaction as if their lives depended on it. It did. She needed this, him, the raw hunger and the sweet struggle and the fight to hold on, hold back, to never let this end, to give and take...

The pinnacle arrived, holding them balanced on its tip, breath caught as they swayed between anguish and joy.

Elation won, tumbling them into the maw. He crushed her as he throbbed with his final thrusts making deep contractions pulse rapture from her center to the tips of her fingers. Deaf, dumb, blind, she could only feel. She was in heaven.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

RAOUL HAD NEVER feared for his life during sex, but tonight came pretty close. His heart still felt as though it was under enormous pressure. Taxed. Too full.

Sitting on the foot of the bed, he wanted to believe a trip to the cardiologist would fix him, but it wasn’t the answer. The woman avoiding his gaze as she pulled the green gown over her head and let it fall into place was the shard of glass piercing his chest.

“Are you all right?” he asked, voice burning like whiskey in his throat.

“Of course.” She flipped her hair free of the gown and bent her attention to the narrow zipper along her side.

She’d been the one to hear the chime announcing a text from her sister while he’d been brain-dead from the most powerful orgasm in history. His legs wouldn’t hold him, his skin wanted nothing but the silken brush of Sirena’s smooth nudity and all his libido could think was more.

This sort of dependence scared the hell out of him, making him want to retreat, maybe do some work for a few hours. Definitely remove himself from her presence until he’d recovered his equilibrium.

At the same time, he was disturbed by Sirena’s emotional withdrawal. She’d been as caught up as he, it had been incredible, but now she was subtly tense, offering to text the limo driver to pick them up.