Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

  ‘I don’t know why you’re trying to fight it. We have no control. It is coded into our DNA.’

  ‘Do many women fall for that “it’s just chemistry” line, Mathieu?’

  The lines of his chiselled face tautened with anger. ‘I’m saying that what we are feeling is as basic as the colour of our eyes. You may not like it but you have to live with it.’ His glittered like liquid silver as his restless glance roamed over the soft contours of her upturned features.

  ‘Convenient fatalism, but I don’t have to live with you and I definitely don’t have to have sex with you,’ she retorted.

  There was a glow in his eyes that was sinfully suggestive as he bent close to whisper in her ear, ‘Great sex.’

  His sensuous purr had a catastrophic effect on her sensitive stomach muscles. She plucked at the neckline of her dress as her skin prickled with heat. Her heart thudding with nervous excitement, she swallowed and shook her head.

  He drew back a sound that was close to a growl vibrating in his chest as he ripped the loose tie from his neck and threw it on the floor. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you don’t want to share a bed with me?’ Actually the way he was feeling—the closest words in his extensive vocabulary that came anywhere close to describing that condition were totally out of control—meant the bed was by no means a prerequisite. Just about anywhere would do.

  The urge to feel his skin in contact with her skin was overwhelming. If he wasn’t able to satisfy the primitive instinct to sink into her softness and warmth and feel her tight around him it was possible he would lose what little sanity he had left.

  ‘Well?’

  The words of denial shrivelled on Rose’s lips the moment she met the smouldering challenge in his. She swallowed and squared her shoulders.

  ‘Just because you want something doesn’t make it a good idea.’

  ‘And you want me.’ He closed his eyes as a shudder of relief vibrated through his lean frame.

  She doubted he could have sounded any more smug or complacent if he’d tried, but it was hard to feel the proper level of indignation over this when he couldn’t have looked more sexy or desirable either.

  And on that front, to give the devil his due, he never tried, he just…

  ‘If you don’t, just lock the door.’ Producing a key from somewhere, he held it out to her.

  Rose caught her full lower lip between her teeth as she stared at it.

  After a moment the key went the same way as the tie.

  ‘You can hardly stand up, you’re literally shaking and I haven’t even touched you.’ He swallowed, his voice dropping a husky octave as he added, ‘Have you any idea what it does to me to know that? To know that you’re weak with lust for me?’

  ‘I am.’ Rose stared into his eyes, seeing her own reflection there along with the combustible mixture of the emotions that gripped him.

  Her heart was beating so frantically that she could hardly breathe as she lifted a hand to touch the spot in his lean cheek where a nerve jumped. He turned his head and caught her hand, pulling it to his lips, drawing one finger and then the next into his mouth.

  A fractured gusty sigh escaped her lips and her knees disintegrated. She would have fallen in a heap at his feet if he hadn’t caught her at the last moment, wrapping an arm around her waist and drawing her upright.

  Her heavy lids closed and she gave a dreamy sigh, savouring the tensile strength in his lean body, conscious of the febrile shudders that intermittently shimmied through the length of his body.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m amazing,’ she said, tucking her head into the angle between his chin and shoulder. She had never imagined that weak and helpless could feel so liberating.

  She felt the soundless growl of laughter vibrate in his chest. ‘Well, amazing Rose, I think we should take this discussion into the bedroom.’ His urgency intensified, as did the ache in his groin as he anticipated the touch of her bare skin against his. His urgency deepened as he imagined her body closing tight around him. ‘Right now,’ he added, bringing his other arm around her waist and hauling her higher and closer against him.

  Feeling the pressure of his erection against the softness of her belly, she gave a startled, ‘Oh,’ and her eyes flew open. As she gasped for breath her eyes connected with the heat in his and she melted some more. ‘You’re incredible.’

  Rose had never in her life felt the primal drive, the need to be possessed by a man. But she had been fantasising about being possessed by Mathieu Demetrios from the first moment she had set eyes on him. Maybe he was right, maybe it was about something programmed into her genes, but frankly she didn’t care.

  It didn’t matter, she realised with a sense of relief—she had moved beyond the guilt, the tortuous heart-searching and trying to make sense of it.

  Even if this was the worst decision of her life she was going to make it happen. Even if she spent the rest of her life regretting it, she wanted Mathieu so much it was more important than breathing and just as essential for her continued survival.

  For the first time ever she understood the real meaning of all-consuming passion. She had met the love of her life and she might not be destined to spend the rest of her life with him, but she was going to savour every moment that she did have.

  ‘How can you be surprised? You must know how much I want you.’

  ‘Tell me,’ she whispered in a husky voice he had to strain to hear.

  He expelled a long deep breath and said, ‘I’ll show you.’

  She let out a small shriek as he cupped her bottom and lifted her upwards. As he swung her around and began to stride towards the bedroom door she wrapped her legs around his waist and, pressing her breasts against his chest, linked her arms around his neck.

  She fitted her mouth to his and kissed him hungrily, opening her mouth in response to his probing tongue, and groaned into his mouth as the kiss deepened. When she came up for air her fingers still curled into the hair on the nape of his neck.

  They were both breathing hard as they stared into each other’s eyes.

  ‘You’re staring,’ he said thickly.

  She nodded. ‘At your mouth. I think,’ she mused, ‘that it is one of my most favourite things in the world.’ It was strange not to be censoring her words, strange in a good way.

  ‘Your mouth is in my top ten,’ he admitted, ‘and, while kissing it is even higher, you do realise that if you carry on doing that we’re never going to make it to the bedroom.’

  ‘Beds are good, but the floor is fine.’ Did I really just say that?

  ‘True, but the thing is I’ve been imagining you naked with your hair spread out over silk sheets since the moment I met you.’

  He’d been imagining her, imagining her being some red-hot lover. Rose’s insecurities came crowding in. She really ought to tell him up front there was every possibility she would be rubbish … enthusiastic but rubbish.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  For once she wasn’t dismayed by his ability to read her thoughts. ‘I don’t want to make a mess of this.’

  She leaned close so that her nose almost grazed his, her nostrils quivering as she inhaled the musky scent of his arousal overlaid by the light citrus tones of the obviously expensive cologne he favoured.

  He was so totally delicious, everything about him fascinated and excited her.

  ‘Not possible.’

  ‘You say that now, but—’

  ‘Shut up.’

  He was kissing her so she didn’t have very much option and, anyway, about two seconds into the kiss she forgot what she wanted to say. A second after that she forgot her own name.

  Still kissing her, he carried her across the room to the bed where he laid her down. Then not taking his eyes off her, he began to remove his clothes, the task made more difficult by the fact his hands were shaking so much.

  He had fought his way out of his shirt and kicked off his trousers when she sat up and stretched her arms out to him. Not a
ble to resist the invitation in her glorious golden eyes another moment, he knelt beside her on the bed.

  Rose struggled to catch her breath, her throat ached … he was so beautiful he made her ache all over. Just looking at him burnt her up from the inside out.

  Mathieu took the hands extended to him and turned them over. ‘I want your hands on me,’ he rasped, his voice as dark as the hot feelings inside her.

  A fractured sigh snagged in Rose’s throat as he laid her hands palm down on the bare skin of his tautly muscled belly. Breathing shallowly, she raised herself up on her knees and slid her hands up over his hair-roughened chest. Circling his tight male nipples with a finger, she leant forward, repeating the action with her tongue.

  His skin tasted salty; he tasted the way he smelt.

  ‘Sweet mother of God,’ he groaned, sinking his fingers into her hair and dragging her face up to his. His hands framed her face. ‘Look at me,’ he said thickly. ‘Dieu, but I want you, Rose.’

  Her eyes slid to his mouth. Just looking at the sensual curve made things tighten and shift low inside her. ‘What’s stopping you?’ she asked, thinking, I love you … oh, God, I love you.

  They kissed fiercely with a bruising desperation, fighting to deepen the contact. Mathieu’s hands fell to her hips and he jerked her hard to him, sealing their bodies at hip level, letting her fully appreciate the urgency of his throbbing arousal.

  Rose could feel the tremors running through his greyhound-lean frame. ‘I didn’t know anything, anyone could feel this way.’ Her head fell back as his lips moved down her neck, his tongue flicking across the pulse throbbing at the base of her throat.

  She pulled back and looked at him, and he smiled a slow smile that felt like a fist tightening very deep in her belly. Her skin burned in an agony of anticipation as he slid down the zip of her dress and, still holding her eyes, peeled it gently off her shoulders.

  When the fabric pooled around her waist revealing her full pink-tipped breasts he sucked in a ragged breath. ‘You are beautiful, mon coeur,’ he rasped, weighing one perfect breast in his hand before bending his head and running his tongue across first one engorged peak and then the other.

  Desire like a flame licked through her body as her back arched. She found the sight of his dark head against her pale skin incredibly, mind-blowingly erotic.

  He was speaking in French, the hot, impassioned words spilling from his lips as he pushed her back against the pillows and spread her hair like a golden curtain around her flushed face. He then curved her arms above her head, his eyes darkening as he watched her breasts quiver, the peaks hardening as they lifted.

  ‘Is this the way I looked in your fantasy?’ she whispered, forcing the husky words past the aching emotional thickness in her throat.

  He smiled, a fierce smile that thrilled her to the core. ‘You are my fantasy, ma petite’. One hand gently splayed across her abdomen, he pulled her dress down over her hips until she lay there in a pair of lacy pants. He ran a finger along the pale smooth flesh of her inner thigh and she trembled, gasping his name as his fingers continued to stroke and tease, releasing a flood of heat that washed over her heated skin tingeing it with a faint rosy blush.

  ‘Don’t stop,’ she pleaded when his fingers lifted from her skin.

  She felt rather than heard the deep laughter vibrate in his chest, but when he bent over her and locked his eyes onto hers there was no laughter in his face. There was strain evident in the sharp-drawn lines that drew the skin tight over his incredible bones and a hungry, almost febrile glitter in his deep-set eyes.

  ‘There is no possibility of that happening,’ he promised huskily. Then, turning away briefly, he divested himself of his boxers. She watched him through half-closed eyes, one arm thrown above her head in an attitude of wanton abandon.

  When he turned back her eyes dropped. A stab of sexual heat shot through her body all the way to her curling toes.

  ‘Oh, my,’ she breathed shakily.

  She wanted him so much her skin crackled with it, her blood hummed with it. She couldn’t put the depth of her longing into words, but she tried, and she wasn’t even embarrassed by the inarticulate babble that came from her lips as he moved over her, parting her thighs and trailing a finger along the silky soft skin of her inner thigh, drawing sharp gasps and moans of pleasure from her throat before moving higher and deeper into her moistness.

  A keening moan stayed locked in her throat as she moved against his hand.

  Nothing, she thought, could be better than this.

  She was wrong.

  Her body arched as he thrust into her and a wild cry of startled delight left her lips.

  Above her Mathieu froze and, between rasping gasps, growled, ‘Look at me.’

  Rose’s mind, every part of her, was so totally concentrated on the incredible sensation of being filled and stretched by him, the heat of him, the smooth thickness of him, that there was a time lag before she responded.

  Eyes glazed, the amber colour of the iris reduced to a thin strip, the pupils were so dilated, she blinked up at him, momentarily blinded by the luminous glow in his.

  He stared down at her, his golden skin coated by a glistening coat of sweat, the sinews in his clenched jaw and neck standing out as he struggled to hold himself in check.

  ‘You’re … you’re …’

  I’m dying, she thought as her head began to thrash from side to side on the pillow. Unable to bear the pressure building up inside her—there was nowhere for it to go—she pleaded, ‘Please, Mathieu, please …’

  Then as she felt him pull back she tried to lift her head and cried out in alarm. ‘No … no, I need …’

  She grabbed for his shoulders, her fingers sliding over his sweat-slick skin, then her nails sinking in to hold him.

  She breathed a fervent sigh of relief as he slid back into her, not deeply enough to satisfy the hunger inside her, but enough to send shafts of shimmering sensation coursing through her body.

  He repeated the sequence again and again, pulling back with agonising slowness, then sinking in each time a little deeper until she could feel the rhythm in her head, in her blood, in her bones—she couldn’t separate herself from it.

  When it got too much to bear she prized her eyes open. ‘Mathieu, I can’t, this is … I need—oh, God, I can’t bear it,’ she moaned.

  He looked into her passion-glazed eyes and a groan was dragged from deep inside him. ‘Neither, mon coeur, can I,’ he groaned, thrusting deep into her, giving her all of himself.

  She responded with a wild cry, wrapping her legs tight around his waist and pushing up to deepen the glorious penetration and the intense nerve-stretching pleasure. Her breath grew shallow and fast as she felt the pressure build, then as the light exploded behind her eyelids she went limp and let the shattering climax claim her.

  Mathieu felt her pulse tightly around his length and with a groan let go, and with one final thrust a feral moan was ripped from his throat as, gasping for breath, he collapsed on top of her.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  AS THEY lay there intimately entwined, in a tangle of sweat-slick limbs, Rose smiled and ran her hand down the damp curve of Mathieu’s back.

  ‘I am the first man you have been with.’ Rolling off, Mathieu lay on his back, one hand curved over his head. The knowledge lay like a stone behind his breastbone. He stared at the ceiling as he added hoarsely, ‘How is this possible?’ The question seemed addressed more to himself than to her.

  Rose, still floating on a cloud of languid contentment, felt the first stirrings of unease filter into her bliss. She opened her eyes to look at him through the damp screen of her lashes.

  Back-lit by the shaft of light from the half-open curtain, his tautly muscled torso gleamed like oiled silk and Rose was overwhelmed afresh by the spectacular beauty of his powerful body. Emotion locked the muscles of her throat tight.

  ‘Speak to me, Rose…’

  She lifted a hand to her cheek and felt the sal
ty wetness of her tears. She had not been conscious of crying. ‘So you’re my first—does it actually matter?’

  Mathieu looked at her in astonishment. ‘Does it matter?’ he echoed in outrage. ‘You were an innocent.’ He swallowed, causing the muscles in his brown throat to ripple visibly as he fought to contain his feelings, unable to believe she could not understand how this altered everything.

  ‘A damn virgin… Dieu …’ He lifted a hand to his head and fell backwards onto the mattress.

  ‘You were the one who said I’d never had a lover.’ Her attempt to draw a smile failed miserably. When his head turned on the pillow towards her she could almost physically see the waves of tension rolling off him.

  ‘I was being ironic and you knew it,’ he bit back before he closed his eyes once more.

  He had done everything right up to this point. So why did he have to spoil everything now? ‘I really think you’re in danger of blowing this way out of proportion.’

  ‘Every word you say,’ he told her through gritted teeth, ‘is making this worse.’

  ‘Fine, I won’t say anything.’ She felt his rejection like a physical pain in her tight chest. Face white, she rolled onto her stomach, dragging the sheet up to cover her nakedness, nakedness she had just minutes earlier taken voluptuous pleasure in. Now it was all ruined, her hot skin began to cool and she shivered.

  She had found their love-making so incredible, more mind-blowingly perfect than she could have imagined possible, that it had not occurred to her until he had begun to speak that he had found the experience less satisfactory. Which, when she thought about it, was not so surprising as she had not known what she was doing, but it had felt pretty good at the time.

  He dragged a hand across his eyes. ‘Dieu, what have I done?’ he groaned.

  ‘You want me to explain? I thought I was the innocent?’

  He turned his head, the anger in his eyes smouldering. He looked as angry as she had ever seen him. ‘I hardly think that this is the moment to be flippant.’

  The dry laugh locked in her emotionally constricted throat. ‘Believe me, I do not feel flippant. If you expect me to apologise for being pretty amateur, forget it.’