by Dani Collins
She was a tactile person, however. A forgiving one. And someone who felt with her whole body. She stepped into him on instinct, needing the contact to soothe all the scuffs and bumps and fears and scorns. He was her only anchor here in this topsy-turvy world he’d thrown her into, even though he was also the source of her turmoil. She needed to hang on to him.
His muscles flexed and he ironed her to his front with massaging hands, holding her close as they both shuddered under a rush of emotion. His hands moved in a twitchy soothe as he rubbed her back.
Their chaste kiss tremored toward passion.
He started to lift his head and she dove her fingers into his hair, urging him to stay close enough to continue their kiss. She was the one who let it slide into something more erotic by tilting her head to deepen the fit, parting her lips farther, inviting him to ravage.
He started to, the hunger in him a flash fire that wanted to consume her.
With a sudden, jagged noise, he lifted his head, nostrils flaring as he sucked in a harsh breath.
“Be sure,” he commanded in a gruff tone. “You kiss me like that and I’ll lose my head again.” He made it sound like such a dire threat even as he tucked her hair behind her ear in a simple, unexpected caress that left her quivering.
She wasn’t sure of anything, but she wanted to be sure of him. Of this—that she had an effect on him that equaled the one he had on her.
If that much was true, she hoped it meant she could affect him in other ways. Ways that would lead him to expose his heart to her. She hoped, desperately, deliriously hoped, that this was the foundation of her future with this man.
And if she didn’t have one, at least she would have this. A memory.
She tested his warning by tightening her arms around his neck and rising onto her toes. Then she pressed her mouth to the one that occupied so many of her erotic dreams and felt him stiffen slightly.
He set light hands behind her waist but let her continue to play. Allowed her to flagrantly indulge herself—to run her hands into his hair and kiss the corners of his mouth and slide her tongue along the smooth fullness of his bottom lip. She caught that sinful piece of him between her teeth as though it was exotic fruit and lightly pulled, forcing the sexiest noise she’d ever heard to emit from his throat.
He was hard, she discovered, as she leaned her weight into him. It made her want to laugh with the heady power she had over him. She skimmed her nibbling mouth across the hardness of his jaw into the flesh in his throat, fingers digging at his collar to expose more of him to her busy mouth.
With another primal noise, he sent the world tilting off its axis as he scooped her into the cradle of his arms against his chest. “You sound sure.”
She threw back her head in surrender as he carried her to the bedroom.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HE TOOK HER to his room and stood her beside his bed.
“Do we use one of these this time?” he asked, taking a box from the night table.
“The hotels in America keep Bibles in that drawer.”
“There are times, Rozalia, when I am capable of optimism. I put them there earlier.” He peeled off his tuxedo jacket.
She could feel her lips quivering with humor, but also nerves. Anticipation and excitement, but shards of uncertainty. He was still so much more experienced than she was. So broad and strong, shoulders flexing as he twisted out of his shirt to reveal his chest. Intimidating.
Yet so gorgeously built of smooth contours and a light texture of hair, two dark nipples standing tight with excitement. Her hand went out to touch before she realized what she was doing. Crisp hair turned to damp satin beneath her fingertips as she traced the line down the center of his chest to the stacked muscles in his abdomen.
“I wish I was a sculptor,” she murmured.
“This is better,” he said, catching her hand and drawing it to his mouth. “I want to touch you, too. Feel every inch. Taste and savor.”
He bit erotically against the heel of her palm, making clear to her that this was the reason she was so unnerved right now. Her reaction to him was a deep, dark river of feelings that were still new, yet so strong she couldn’t control them. Her trembles increased and her eyes dampened with longing—from one teasing, innocuous bite and the graze of his lips against the unsteady pulse in her wrist.
He wasn’t shaking like this, weak in the knees and growing overwhelmed. Was he?
She splayed her hand on his ribs, seeking to ground herself, but he took it as a signal of some kind and tangled his hand in her hair, dragging her close to claim her mouth with nearly bruising hunger.
Thick, potent craving swirled through her, so heavy and hot she could hardly bear the rush of it in her veins. The sensual need that gathered between her thighs was so acute she groaned in agony.
He tore his mouth off hers and dropped his head against her shoulder, wide shoulders lifting in heaving pants as he held her in the tense cage of his arms.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said in a gritty voice. “I’m trying to take this slow.”
With a type of wonder, she drifted her fingertips across his muscled chest and shoulders, discovering smooth, intriguing dips and lovely sensitive spots that made him flex in reaction.
“It hurts when you stop,” she whispered.
“Don’t tell me that,” he groaned, turning his head to bury his mouth against her neck. He dragged hot, wet kisses along her nape, shooting pleasurable tingles through her whole body that detonated in the tips of her breasts.
She bit her lip as she whimpered in helplessness. But there was no stopping now. She dipped her chin to find his mouth with her own and they held that fused kiss as they both fumbled at the fastening of her gown.
She didn’t let his adeptness impact her, too grateful for the loosening of the silk, the coolness of the air as the fabric fell away.
He lifted his head to peruse her while she stood before him in a strapless bra and panties, heels and the amethyst necklace.
Feminine power rose within her as his gaze fixated, yet shifted over her, as though determined to memorize every shadowed curve and rosy swell of her form. She lifted her hands to remove the clips from her hair, taking her time sliding the clips free and letting them fall with a faint thud against the puddled dress. Then she finger-combed her hair, enjoying the way he watched, mesmerized.
In another brazen move, she released her bra and let it fall away, breathing with deep relief at being freed from the restraint.
His hands came up to replace the cups of white lace, both soothing and inciting as he warmed and lifted, plumping and skimming his thumbs across the turgid tips.
She held very still, gripped by the need for his touch, but the sensation was so intense, she locked her hands around his wrists and made a tortured noise.
“Too much?” he asked through gritted teeth, lifting his gaze so she could read the wildness in his eyes. The animal he was barely containing. “Or not enough?” He trailed one hand down to slide unerringly beneath the front of her underpants.
Wordless sounds came out of her as his fingertips sawed and parted, seeking the point that sent stars shooting behind her eyelids before she’d even realized she had closed her eyes. He dipped lower, laying claim with a tender penetration that she clung to in a clench of joyous welcome.
His mouth covered hers, stealing what breath she had as he continued caressing, tripping her into a sudden, electric orgasm that took them both by surprise at its swift ferocity. She cried out and clung to him, so overcome her knees gave out.
He embraced her tenderly as he nibbled at her ear and spoke soothing words against her cheek and neck. “You are determined to drive me out of my mind, aren’t you?”
“Me?” Did he realize how thoroughly he had just undone her?
“I want you so badly, I’m coming out of my skin and I haven’
t come near everything I want to do to you.”
“I don’t know if I can take more than that,” she said even as wantonness husked her voice.
“We’ll find out, won’t we?” His grin was feral and full of wicked intention as he skimmed his hand down to drop her panties off her hips and nudged her backward toward the edge of the mattress. “Lie down.” He tracked his gaze over her, tightening wires of anticipation in her.
“Wait.” Holding his gaze, she worked to open his belt and fly, watching a snarl of intense arousal harden his expression.
She looked down as she hitched his pants off his hips, baring the jut of his arousal. Her hands were drawn to touch this part of him as much as the rest. His shape was utterly fascinating, the responsiveness of him an aphrodisiac. Her tongue moistened in her mouth as she explored him with a light touch, inner muscles clenching afresh with need.
With a helpless look up at him, she could only plead, “Viktor.”
“You’re not aroused enough. I might hurt you.”
She choked on a laugh and showed him how her hand shook. “I’m dying.”
Growling a noise that sounded like an animal in pain, he kicked out of his clothes and sat on the edge of the bed. “Come here, then.” He reached for a condom and applied it, then drew her to stand on her knees straddling his thighs.
He teased her, locking an arm around her waist so her breasts pouted invitingly at his mouth. He sucked one and the other, going back and forth while his free hand caressed the back of her thigh and her cheeks and toyed where she wept with need for him.
She wriggled with deepening urgency and scraped her fingers through the gloss of his hair and across his shoulders.
“Viktor!” she commanded—begged, catching handfuls of his hair to tip back his head, growing rough with her rising anxiety. She was feverish, totally governed by the need that gripped her. The primitive huntress that lurked inside her edged past rational thought and civilized behavior to call to her mate. “I need you.”
His pupils dilated and he bared his teeth in what might have been a triumphant grin if his jaw wasn’t pulsing with the tension of slipping restraint.
“Now you understand,” he said grittily.
For a few taut seconds, they teetered on the atavistic line between human and animal. His hands shifted heavily to her hips. She slid her own between them, guiding the crest of him to her entrance as she lowered herself.
There was no pain, only the sensual breach of him filling her as she settled into his lap, inner thighs burning at the stretch, the rest of her arching in sensual luxury. His hands skimmed over her and they kissed long and deep.
She took up a smooth, controlled rhythm, one that made their hearts seem to beat in unison. It was sweaty and glorious and earthy and all consuming. She couldn’t have held back if she wanted to. They were too intimately positioned, eye to eye, mouth to mouth, a light friction between their chests, hands free to roam and grasp and steal intimate caresses.
Rather than let her grow frantic as her pitch of arousal neared breaking point, he set firm hands on her hips.
“Not yet,” he whispered, nipping at her chin, then sucking hard enough on her neck to sting. The tip of his tongue circled to soothe, driving her crazy. “Feel.”
She wanted to cry, but she slowed to savor each dazzling retreat and return. It was such an exhilarating but profound state, she opened her eyes to tell him, but didn’t have to say a word. She read the same glaze of abandonment to passion in his eyes. Could hear his control hanging by a thread in the way his breath caught and his tense hand pressed into her tailbone.
She was stunned to realize she was giving him the same experience. They undulated in this state of bliss together, each brought here by the other. Soul mates.
The quivering shock waves of climax gathered with a final, irresistible twist, releasing in a flourish of pleasurable contractions that turned her vision to white light and filled her ears with the rush of the sea.
She would have mourned her loss of control if she hadn’t felt his arms tighten around her, drawing her deep onto him as he pulsed heat within her. His ragged sounds of anguished joy came to her from a distance as the storm of convulsive ecstasy held them in its grip.
* * *
Gradually his most intense shudders abated to light aftershocks, allowing Viktor’s consciousness to absorb that he was still holding Rozi in his lap. He caressed her back as his chest shook and he tried to calm his breathing. The pillow of her breast didn’t mute the unsteady pound of her heartbeat. He could feel it rocking her while fine shivers continued to chase over her.
He had thought their first experience extraordinary, but this had superseded it by miles. No other woman had ever undermined his control and transported him this way. She was the most potent drug imaginable and his rational mind sounded a full-scale alarm of potential self-destruction if he continued to indulge himself with her.
Then her fingertips moved in a light caress in the hollow at the base of his skull and he let his eyes drift shut. He sank back into the soporific high she provided, twisting so he had her beneath him on the mattress.
They kissed lazily until he had to withdraw.
“Don’t move. I’ll be right back.” He disposed of the condom in the bathroom and returned to find she’d shifted onto her side and drawn a pillow under her head.
She was a creamy nude bathed in apricot light, exquisite and heavy-lidded with satiation. But the way she sought his gaze with her own made his heart lurch. That shadow of yearning in her eyes told him she was looking for a reassurance beyond the physical. An emotional connection.
That did alarm him. Even without his brother’s betrayal, he’d never been one for deep relationships. He simply wasn’t built that way.
He settled facing her, letting his hand roam the curve of her hip as he kissed the point of her shoulder. She sighed and her hand draped against his neck, easing the tension rooting inside him. They fit together like two pieces of a puzzle and kissed purely for the enjoyment of it.
He couldn’t give this up. Wouldn’t.
But he couldn’t give her what she wanted, either.
It was a contradiction he didn’t know how to resolve.
* * *
“Gisella is asking me why you’re sending Kaine money.” Gisella was asking her a lot of things that Rozi didn’t know how to answer. She had put her off by saying they were traveling to see Viktor’s aunt Bella, which was true, but she would have to confess all to her soon.
She didn’t know where to start, though. Admitting she had slept with Viktor was a big enough deal but telling her cousin she had risked pregnancy would push Gisella into full-protection mode. She might get on a plane, or worse, tell one of their mothers.
“You said you didn’t want her indebted to Kaine Michaels for covering your legal bills,” Viktor replied. “I’m the one responsible regardless.”
“But I’m worried about her. She seems to be spending a lot of time with him. She was so furious when he got the earring at that auction and he hasn’t even shown it to her. I’m mad at myself now that I didn’t ask you if I could send her a photo of the one you have.”
“You can spend more time studying it when we return to Budapest. Take all the photos you like.”
“You don’t mind? I’d love that. Thank you.”
He was such a confounding man. The minute she began to think he was growing disinterested, he would do something to flip her view of him. They had just spent two days at his flat in Vienna. He’d worked long hours at his office during the day, leaving her with a credit card and a command to buy outfits for a list of appearances over the next two weeks. She had poked around various shops, enjoying the history of the city but growing homesick and lonely being on her own.
Then he’d surprised her with a privately chartered river cruise to Visegrád, where his aunt lived. He
continued working off his laptop, disappearing to take conference calls a few times a day, but he spent a lot of time with her, too. They went ashore to visit sites the moment she expressed an interest, dined by candlelight while the sky streaked with pink and mauve and talked idly as they watched the scenic shoreline of the Danube drift past.
It was like a honeymoon, she kept thinking, except there’d been no ring and no declaration of love.
What were his feelings? she wondered. Was he falling the way she was? Part of her worried her feelings were simply the excitement of being with such a gorgeous specimen of a man. Who wouldn’t tumble headlong for someone who looked that good? One who paid for a private cruise on short notice and made her feel sensual and sexual and special?
She had no such appeal to offer. She was ordinary and, at best, could make him a ring that matched his inscrutable personality.
After five days, the castle on the hill above Visegrád came into view. She was instantly charmed and insisted Viktor come out of their stateroom to stand at the rail and see it with her.
“Are you purposely making me feel as though I live in a fairy tale?” she asked.
“I’m always amused when I visit America and they proudly show off a historic building that is ‘over a hundred years old.’ Call me when you get to a thousand,” he dismissed with his dry sense of humor.
“I’m excited to meet your aunt, but I’m sorry to leave this. It’s been lovely. Thank you.” She slid her arms around his waist, comfortable taking such liberties with him after a week of constant lovemaking.
“It’s been my pleasure,” he assured her, mouth twitching with memory of what they’d been doing only a short hour ago. Her own mouth had been learning new things that had wrung groans of ecstasy from him.
She blushed recalling it but shivered with delight as he skimmed her hair back from her neck and kissed the skin he exposed. Then she rested her head on his shoulder as the boat landing drew closer.
It shouldn’t have felt so ominous, but she found herself tightening her hold on him. What if he was right about her grandmother stealing the earrings? She still didn’t believe it, but worried that whatever she learned would impact what she’d managed to build with him. They were so fragile and new. She didn’t know how much weather they could take without being torn apart.