by Tara Pammi
As she watched, caught in the languorous heat in his eyes, his mouth closed over the swollen, excruciatingly swollen bundle of nerves and pulled ever so gently.
She screamed his name as she shattered into a million shards, her hips bucking against his mouth, her lower belly still spasming violently. He kept on and on until every last drop of pleasure was wrenched from her body.
When her knees buckled, he caught her and lifted her into his arms.
He carried her to the bed, his gaze drinking in her face. She fell in an inelegant heap, her heart still not back to normal after the earth-shattering climax.
Only the moonlight from the veranda illuminated the room, music and voices floating up from the party. Even that intrusion was too much for Jas. She didn’t want to share Dmitri for a second.
His gaze stayed on her with the same intense hunger, as if all he wanted to do was to drink in her nakedness. Skin tingling at his perusal, she watched him as he shed his shirt, his trousers and the black boxers. Then he was gloriously naked, all hard angles and masculine power.
His tight shoulders appeared first, and then that muscular chest of his, velvet skin delineated over ropes of muscles, a washboard stomach and then...
“Oh, wow,” she whispered at the sight of his turgid shaft.
Color slashed those cheekbones but he didn’t smile.
Stretching her arm, which took every ounce of strength she had, she ran a finger from the base all the way to the soft head. So many men had made passes at her, from such an early age, and she had hated them and herself...had tuned out any and all curiosity and interest in men as a rule, first because of her mum and then because of what she had been doing...
“I finally get why so many women go gaga over you,” she said huskily, still in a haze from the orgasm. But she didn’t want to hide or feel ashamed at what should be natural, didn’t want to punish herself for mistakes she hadn’t made. “Just looking at you fills me with all kinds of ideas.”
“One forbidden indulgence at a time, glykia mou.” He stepped closer to the bed, and pulled her to him. “And who knows, by tomorrow morning, we might be done with each other.”
She was slowly learning him now. When he felt something deeply, which was more often than not despite his facade, that was when he used those cruel words, to better hide behind them. Or to bury what he felt. Or to lash out.
Would he run if he knew how much of herself she was giving in this moment? How much she wanted her body to please him, how much she wanted to leave a mark on him?
How many of her own shackles he was releasing her from?
She slid closer to him on the soft sheets, came up on her knees and bent. Her hair cascaded around her, giving her a second to overcome the heat tightening her cheeks.
Because more than anything, she wanted to please him.
She brought the rigid shaft to her mouth and licked the length of him. Velvet tightness over steel in her hand, his taste exploded on her tongue.
His breath hissed out of him, his hands sinking into her hair. She did it again and for a few seconds, his fingers fisted in her hair, dug into her scalp and held her there.
That raw glimpse into his need sent power spiraling through her, as if she had been jolted with a burst of it. Wrapping her tingling mouth around the broad head, she closed her mouth around it and sucked on him.
His curse reverberated around the silent room, only fractured by his harsh breaths.
Like an earthquake’s aftershock, a tremor went through her lower belly at the taste of him, at the raw-edged need in his guttural groan. Addicted to her own pleasure, she looked up at him and did it again.
When she fisted her hand around that hard length, he pushed her back against the bed, none too gently.
He climbed onto the bed and over her, like a conquering warrior looking at his spoils. Lying on his side, he pulled her trembling body closer to him, one muscular thigh locking her against the bed when she tried to wriggle out of his hold. “Enough playing, thee mou. I want to be inside you now.”
His hands moved down her belly and into her folds, as if he didn’t listen to his own rules.
Intrusive and intimate, his fingers parted her. She twisted the sheets and moaned. But was determined to say her bit. “I want to return the pleasure you gave me,” she whispered, desperate to keep the tension out of her voice.
Because now that the flush of her pleasure was fading, anxiety at what was to come ate through her. She wasn’t worried about pain; it was a fact of life. But his words still rattled around at the back of her brain.
High maintenance... She would die if he didn’t find pleasure with her...
His kiss came like a cinder again, firing off every nerve, just when she thought she would never recover again.
“You think you’re not giving me pleasure, Jas mou?”
He covered her with his body and Jas lost track of what she was thinking again. “You scream as if you’re falling apart, you kiss as if you can’t breathe, you sink into every caress, Theos... I can’t breathe for imagining all the ways, all the places I’m going to take you...”
A gasp exploded out of her mouth when he pushed first one, and then two fingers into her inviting warmth, all the while his thumb pressing against the bundle of nerves at her core.
Through a fog of lust, she heard his pithy curse about protection and stayed his hand. “I’ve been on the pill since I was sixteen. In that, my mother was the model of a responsible parent. Or maybe she thought I would be just as weak and desperate as her.”
She closed her eyes, disgusted that the echo of fear and shame she had held on to for so long still could rattle through her.
He came back to her and kissed her temple with such tenderness that tears knocked at her eyes. “Look at me, Jas.”
When she didn’t comply, he kissed her eyelids, the tip of her nose and her mouth.
He parted her legs and settled between them, his hip bone digging deliciously into her thigh. “You’re nothing like her, agape mou. Don’t you already know that? Your fire—” he kissed the valley between her breasts “—your reckless courage—” his tongue flicked her navel “—your heat—” her tattoo got his kiss now “—and passion—” long and unbelievably hard, his shaft settled at her sex, teasing her “—and innocence and kindness.”
The tip probed the entrance while his mouth closed over her nipple. New sparks of need broke into life and Jas moved under him, restless in her own skin again. Desperate to have him inside her, desperate to be his in that final way...
His hands held her hips with a bruising grip and Jas writhed as the velvet heat of him scorched her already sensitized sex. “You’re all the things none of us ever was, Jas, neither me nor Andrew,” he whispered against her skin. “You are simply perfection.” Drunk on his words, she reached for him just as he thrust into her in one smooth, sure stroke.
A curse ripped from his mouth just as pain cleaved through her pelvis.
Jas became rigid under him, her nails gouging his back, trying to get him to still, trying to breathe through the alien and achy and full feeling of having him inside her.
Dmitri was inside her, the wanton, willing part of her was screaming in her head. Magnificently masculine, he was heat and steel and hard around her and inside her, and there wasn’t even a single breath she could take that didn’t bring more awareness of him into her. She dug her teeth into his shoulder, tasted salt and sweat and him.
“You’re doing beautifully, Jas.” Drugged, his words rumbled against her rib cage. “You’re... Thee mou, you feel like heaven.”
Large, rough hands held her shoulders down and then he thrust again, and he was now as thoroughly lodged inside her as he was lodged under her skin, in her heart.
A gasp tore from her mouth, borne more out of a new fire than discomfort.
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br /> His chest rasped against her breasts as he said something in Greek, but the pinch of pain was already receding and Jas was floating because even though she didn’t understand what he had muttered, she did know that he was in an agony of pleasure, devoid of his control, shuddering in the wake of it just as she was.
Clasping his jaw, she pulled his head down so that she could look into his eyes. So that he knew it was she as irrevocably as she knew it was him. “Does it feel good, Dmitri?” she asked, determined to know for sure.
A series of curse words fell from his mouth, one filthier than the previous and Jas found herself smiling, her heart stuttering with joy. He pushed back her hair from her damp forehead gently. “That’s for me to ask, agape mou. How do you feel?”
“As if I will die if you move and die anyway if you don’t.” A fierce heat began to build up her chest as he played idly with her nipple. The tip puckered at his touch, knotting and sending a pulse of sensation to her pelvis. “Tell me, Dmitri, how does it feel for you?” She dragged at his lower lip with her teeth and he hissed in response. “The truth, if you please.”
Softly, slowly, he kissed her shoulder and she felt his damp forehead. She had a feeling that he was cooling himself down, like a wild animal catching a breath, before continuing the hunt. “You’re so tight and hot and I’m too aroused and hard...” He rested his dark head between her breasts and expelled a sharp breath, the blade of his shoulders rattling visibly. “Jas, I can’t change it and I can’t change how good it feels to me while... I’ve never given anything, true, but I don’t want to rain hurt on you, either.”
He sounded so unlike himself that Jas smiled. And the man thought he didn’t have tenderness in him. “But it doesn’t anymore.”
She dug her fingers into his taut buttocks and squeezed in closer, anchored herself on his rock-hard thighs. The hair on his thighs rasped against her palms; the leashed power in his body made everything thrum. She couldn’t get enough of him, couldn’t get enough of what he was doing to her. Couldn’t breathe when she imagined all the things he could do to her with that powerful body, couldn’t breathe at how fragile and delicate and precious she felt trapped under him. “And I trust you to make it better.”
Tangling her hands in his hair, she took his mouth in a soft kiss that soon morphed into something else.
He met her gaze. He was incredibly still, almost crushing her into the mattress but he was gorgeous. “I can’t go slow. You’re incredibly wet and hot and I...just don’t have it in me to be... I’m a selfish man, Jas.”
“Selfish man who just made me see the stars and the sky? You’re not too bad, Dmitri. And believe me, I won’t break.”
And to prove it to him, she thrust up experimentally. His hands on her hips holding her down, he withdrew almost all the way and then thrust back in.
Jasmine was in heaven or hell or someplace in between as he moved in and out with slow, measured thrusts that seemed to be for the express purpose of driving her out of her skin. “Faster, please,” she said, and when he didn’t oblige, she bit his shoulder.
The pace of his thrusts became faster, more desperate, less measured, one hand on her hip and one in her hair, his tight grip adding an edge of pain to the scorching pleasure.
The faster and rougher he got, the hotter and higher she climbed, his swift strokes wrenching arousal from her again.
Just for a second, he paused and sneaked his fingers between them and pressed down. And she fell apart. He took up his rhythm again as she came, his face a study in passion and need.
This time she didn’t close her eyes.
She didn’t want to miss the intensity of his passion, the gray fire in his eyes, the tightness of every feature, the corded stillness of his shoulder blades, the tiny beads of sweat along his upper lip, the growl that fell from his mouth as he pumped into her one last time and collapsed over her.
Wrapping her hands around him, Jasmine bore his crushing weight willingly.
She was now irrevocably a woman. And she liked all the perks that came with it. And the man who had taken her there with such an all-consuming passion, the man who claimed to possess no tenderness and did no emotions, who took on blame for her brother’s sins, who made an art of the mask he showed the world... She was falling fast for him.
But whether it was the postcoital haze or the happy hormones their session of lovemaking filled her with, Jasmine couldn’t care.
CHAPTER TEN
DMITRI PULLED JAS with him as he lay back on the bed. The echo of his release still pumped aftershocks through him, a climax that had been as emotional as it had been intense.
Her dares and her questions, the pleasure and pain and joy in her eyes... It wasn’t just her body she had shared with him. Just like the little girl she had been, Jasmine gave whatever she had with generosity, felt everything she did with a sharp hunger that was so incredibly beautiful to watch...
For the first time in his life, sex for him hadn’t been just about animal release but connection and intimacy, about kisses and sweet promises, about give and take of more than just release.
It was impossible to make love to Jas without taking a part of her.
Without a part of him wrenching away from him whether he willed it or not.
He had never felt this satisfaction, the visceral rightness of what had happened. This...sense of joy at a woman draped over him with such possessive pleasure. It went bone deep and he felt absolutely no inclination to get up and move, even though he usually headed directly to the shower after sex.
Her skin was damp to his touch, her breaths coming in panting pulls against his shoulder. Delicate fingers spread out over his chest, she kept her eyes closed.
She looked and felt perfect against the length of him, her hair spilling over his forearm.
He pulled the duvet up to cover them, his mouth going dry at the sight of her round buttocks, the flare of her hip. Still her breasts were flush against his side, and the thought of rolling those plump nipples on his tongue made him hard again.
“You are fine?” His voice came out gruff and growly.
Without opening her eyes, she nodded. Her hand moved restlessly over his chest, traced the ridges of his abdomen, came to rest on his shaft, over the duvet. He clasped her wrist, but she slapped him away and resumed her position. Heat punched through him as she played with it, a soft smile playing around her lips.
As if it was her right to fondle him. As if there was nothing else she would rather do.
“Jas, if you keep doing that, I will take you again.”
Her mouth pressed into his skin. “So who’s stopping you?”
Something between a groan and a growl escaped him as she pushed herself upon her elbow and proceeded to lick his nipple. As though she were a cat and he cream. “Your body is unused to this, to me. Since you don’t seem to possess any good sense, it falls to me. And I’d rather not test my self-control, especially when it comes to you.”
“Okay,” she agreed, and moved her hand up to his chest but showed no signs of releasing him.
Theos, he hadn’t meant to say so much.
Did he have to spell out everything to the infuriating woman? Did she find some perverse pleasure in behaving so outrageously that he inevitably watched over her?
And beneath his increasing fervor to have her again, he found that he liked indulging Jasmine. He wanted to stay there and let her play with him, to see a smile light up her eyes.
Usually, he couldn’t wait to get away the moment his release hit. He had tried a couple of times to stay, to wrench some kind of feeling out of himself but all he had felt was coldness, an instant detachment that curdled any pleasure he had found just minutes ago.
An empty hollowness that he couldn’t rid himself of.
So he moved on, to the next chase, to the next warm body
that would provide that ephemeral release.
And yet, languorous heat pumped through him as she caressed him with more of an artless curiosity rather than skilled strokes designed to arouse. With her vined around him like that, he never wanted to get out of the bed.
Dmitri knew he should feel guilty. Or some other horrible emotion should be coursing through him, remonstrating with him for his lack of tenderness or finesse. Or shame that he had willingly given up that thread of honor Giannis had tried to instill in him.
Stavros would tell him, in that forbiddingly arrogant voice of his, that he should feel guilty about not feeling guilty, at least.
Breathing in the wild scent of Jas and sex combined, feeling her soft curves surround him, he couldn’t bring himself to feel anything but the most primal kind of satisfaction.
Sated after the most intense sex of his life, he couldn’t hate himself for it.
How could he when he barely ever felt anything this deep? When even the faces of the women he’d slept with the previous night faded by the next morning? When, sometimes, even sex didn’t fill the void inside him for a few minutes?
The whole world, including Giannis, even Stavros, who knew him better than anyone else, thought he had no discipline, barely any self-control. That he gave in to every self-indulgence because that was all he cared about—pleasure and wealth and everything superficial.
What they didn’t know was his inability to feel anything.
Not after he had cleaved himself in two and removed the guilt of his mother’s death and the pain his father’s fists had wreaked on him. That if he accessed anything deep, if he stayed too long with any woman or in any relationship, he started to panic.
As if that boy was just waiting to come back to life, bringing with him unbearable agony and pain. So he kept his entire life about casual relationships, transient fun. If not for Giannis first, and then Stavros grounding him, he had a feeling he would have become nothing but an empty shell who fed on transient pleasures and swam through life without meaning.