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Charlene TEGLIA - Dangerous Games(ellora)

Page 3

by Dangerous Games(ellora) (lit)


  Now that he’d seen her, he knew he wouldn’t be satisfied until he had her stripped bare emotionally and physically. No barriers. Nothing but the truth between them, whatever that might be. He reached down to run a gloved hand up her thigh and felt her react.

  Energy hummed between them, like two magnets, either pushing against each other or irresistibly pulled together. He’d felt it as soon as his body touched hers when he’d pushed her to get on the motorcycle the first time. The sex would be good.

  Wanting her wasn’t a problem, but letting her go to his head was. He still needed to know more about her and her brother. Releasing her leg, Drake turned his attention to guiding the high-performance machine up the drive.

  He’d indulge himself with her, but he’d remember where his best interests lay. He ought to ease up on pushing her. He needed her to trust him. Finding her a damsel in distress had given him an opportunity to earn her trust already, but it was fragile. He could quickly undermine it by pushing her too far.

  Accepting a ride from him was one thing.

  Telling him her secrets was another.

  When they parked at the house, Drake was determined to rule the compulsion to join two magnetic forces together. Remember his priorities. Mind over matter. Be reasonable. In control.

  Until she jumped off as if she couldn’t wait to get away from him, pulled his jacket off her as if it might contaminate her to wear it another minute, and put as much distance between them as possible.

  Reason and control fled. She was running away from him and her flight triggered an unsuspected primal instinct to run her to ground. It was as if some hidden predatory beast within him rose up in her presence and recognized her as his natural prey.

  “I want you to tell me why you did that.” The words came out in a low, fierce growl. He stalked towards her, making her back away until she came up hard against the front door. He kept moving forward until his body touched hers.

  Her brown eyes grew huge. The rapid beat of her pulse, the awareness in her body told him she felt the strength of the attraction between them.

  He could see that she was also determined to deny it. The beast inside him wasn’t going to let her and the devil had his mouth.

  One leather-gloved hand rose to touch the pulse jumping in her throat. “Tell me. Or I’m going to start putting my hands on you.”

  She stayed as silent and frozen as a deer trying to be invisible to a wolf. His hand left her throat and trailed down to her breast, flicked her nipple deliberately.

  “You felt something when I did that.” The hand continued down, towards the button that fastened her slacks.

  “I don’t— I can’t—” she gasped out, then fell silent again.

  “Keep talking. Or I’m going to keep touching you.” Drake nudged her feet apart with one booted foot, then wedged his thigh in between hers. His hand found the button at her waistband, opened it, slipped inside to brush against the bare skin of her abdomen. It felt like hot silk against his fingertips. He wondered how the leather covering the rest of his hand felt against her skin. The thought shot electricity straight to his cock.

  Drake brought his second hand up, used both hands to lower her zipper and spread the flimsy fabric apart. A low whimper escaped her, but she still didn’t speak.

  One finger stroked the silky fabric of her panties, then slipped inside and stroked down to touch her soft pubic curls. Back and forth, not going any lower, but threatening to. “Tell me.”

  When Melinda stayed silent, Drake stroked his finger further down to touch her where she was hot and slick, stroking between the folds of flesh to lightly press against her clitoris.

  “You want me.”

  A strangled sound escaped her.

  “Say it.”

  His finger slipped lower, just touching her wet opening.

  “You can’t do that,” she managed to gasp out instead, even as he felt tiny muscles clench at his fingertip.

  “No? Give me a reason. Tell me what you want. Tell me why you didn’t want to wear my jacket and why you acted like you couldn’t get far enough away from me. Stop me if you don’t want me touching you.”

  He growled out the words as he sent his unoccupied hand up under her shirt to jerk aside her bra. Fingers found and tugged on one erect nipple while he closed the leather-covered palm of his hand inside her panties fully over her mound.

  Words burst out of her in a flood. “I didn’t want to wear it because it smelled like you. Your pheromones are lethal. Your motorcycle ought to be illegal. And you can’t just touch me because you want to!”

  Drake slipped his hands free of her and her clothes, rested his chin against her forehead. “I thought it was a good reason to touch you. Do you want to touch me?”

  She hesitated, and he slid his hands towards her backside. “Answer me, or I’m going to find out if your sweet ass fills my hands the way I think it will.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Not good enough.” His hands cupped her butt, shaped her, lifted her against him and off the ground while he rode his knee up between her open thighs to press where his hand had been moments before.

  “Yes, I want to touch you,” she mumbled. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea. I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to touch me, either.”

  “Why not?”

  He thought it was a damn good idea. His hands on her felt right, good. Her hands on him might just be the best thing this side of heaven, and he wanted to find out.

  “We don’t know each other. You don’t even like me. I don’t want you touching me if you don’t like me.”

  Drake lowered her until her feet rested on the ground, settling her back against the door. She had looked at him with a peculiar mix of innocence and newly awakened carnal curiosity. Not the look of a woman used to a man putting his hands on her. That alone would have revealed her inexperience even if he hadn’t made it his business to learn just exactly how long it had been since a man last touched her. It had been long time. And he was not a civilized-looking man.

  “Are you afraid I’ll hurt you?”

  Melinda thought about that. “No. You haven’t so far. You’ve done exactly what you said you would do. You haven’t lied to me. You stopped when you said you would. But I don’t want this to be about you getting your pound of flesh.” She added after a minute, “Not that I think you planned it this way. I don’t think either of us could have expected this. Chemistry isn’t something you plan. It just happens to complicate the situation.”

  Drake brought his hands up to tangle in her hair, tilting her face up towards his. She was right about that. Wanting her like this wasn’t in his plan and made things complicated as hell. But he could still make it work in his favor. He focused on the point he wanted to make. “So you trust me to play by the rules.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s lay down the rules. You tell me what you want. I tell you what I want. We set the rules together, and we play by them. Sunday night the game’s over and you’re free to go.”

  Melinda trembled, glad for the support at her back. Her body was on fire and her brain was short-circuiting. Hormones and biological imperatives didn’t care about timing or circumstances or whether or not a man was dangerous, evidently.

  Nothing had ever felt as good or as terrifying as his hands on her body. Good because there was an electric charge jumping between them and because he knew what to do with his hands. Terrifying because nothing should feel that good. It made it impossible to think. Impossible to remember that she was there to pay the piper. Payment shouldn’t enter into whatever this was between them.

  But he was telling her it didn’t have to, that they could deal with the two separate issues and keep them neatly compartmentalized. Not that she believed for a minute that it wouldn’t be complicated. This man had complicated written all over him. Sex with him on any terms would be anything but uncomplicated.

  She wanted him anyway.

  They set the rules tog
ether, he’d said.

  All she had to do was say what she wanted.

  If she said she didn’t want to have sex, he wouldn’t force her. She knew that much about him from the observations she’d been able to make so far and from the limited information she’d been able to dig up on him. He also wouldn’t have to. She’d learned that about herself when she let a total stranger unzip her pants and palm her privates. She had wanted him to touch her there, and that one touch had felt like more of an experience than her entire sexual history to date.

  Whether it was wise or not, whether it was a good idea or not, unless she ran like hell away from this man, she was going to be naked under him before the weekend was over. Probably before the sun set, in fact. And she’d be begging him to do it.

  She couldn’t run. She was bound by her word to stay, and this crazed biological compulsion between them didn’t change the fact that they’d made a deal to settle any concerns he had regarding Ryan’s offense. That being the case, what choice did she have but to say she’d play his game on equal terms?

  “Okay,” Melinda said. “Rules. First, this has nothing to do with paying Ryan’s penalty or revenge. I’ll be your lover for a weekend, but I won’t be your whipping post and I’m not sleeping with you out of obligation.”

  “Glad to hear it. Obligated is not what I want you to feel when you spread your legs for me. So it’s agreed. This is our game, and it’s only between us. Only what we want. Tell me what else you want.”

  She breathed deeply, inhaling his insanity-producing pheromones in the process, which didn’t help her concentration. “Second, if you truly find me unlikable as a person, the game’s off. I can’t be touched intimately by somebody who dislikes me.”

  “Do you have to like a man to want him?” Drake asked.

  “I wouldn’t think much of myself if I didn’t.”

  “Do you dislike me?”

  “I don’t know you,” Melinda hedged. “I can’t say you’re a nice man. But nice and good aren’t the same. Ryan says your game is the best because it’s the hardest but it’s fair. You were willing to give him a break when you didn’t have to. So that says something about you, I guess. And you gave me your jacket to wear, so if we’d been in an accident I wouldn’t have been unprotected. You put my safety above yours. So no, I don’t dislike you, but you make me uncomfortable.”

  “I get under your skin,” Drake pointed out. “I make you mad. I turn you on. Uncomfortable, maybe, but not everything in life is about staying in your comfort zone.”

  “That’s fair. Okay, your turn.”

  “First, I want you to be honest. If you lie about what feels good, you’ll cheat us both. Until the game is over, you have to tell the truth about anything I ask you.”

  Melinda nodded.

  “Second, I want you to trust me completely with your body. I want you to do anything I tell you to do. No arguments. No questions.”

  He wanted her to give him that kind of control? “You’re not into whips or anything, are you?”

  “No pain,” he promised. “I won’t hurt you. But I don’t think you know very much about your own body. You don’t, do you? You look like sex is brand-new to you and you’re curious as hell. That turns me on. I want to be the man to teach you all about what your body can do.”

  It would be so much easier if he didn’t give her a choice, if he just unzipped his jeans and took her, right there against the door. She wasn’t a virgin, but she might as well have been because he was right, damn him. No man had ever made her…wonder. Drake Trahern made her wonder about forbidden things and what it would be like to try them.

  But instead of taking away her choice or touching her until she was incapable of making one, he was forcing her to take responsibility for her response, for her own pleasure, for her decisions. Forcing her to acknowledge feelings she didn’t want and couldn’t control. Forcing her to confront him and herself both.

  Forcing her out of her comfort zone. A comfort zone she now admitted silently she’d climbed into four years earlier at her parents’ death. It might be time to be pushed out of it.

  She had an opportunity here for more than smoothing things over for her brother, more than the perfect no-strings fling. She had an opportunity to discover something about herself, to see if life had more to offer her now than the safety she’d been embracing.

  He looked all wrong for her. The situation was all wrong. But her hormones agreed that in one important way he was exactly right and his knowing hands said so, too.

  Her shyness hadn’t put him off. Maybe the wrong man was exactly what she needed. Maybe she could become the right kind of woman under his influence, the kind who could be brave and confident, the person she was in her fantasies but didn’t know how to be in reality. She could find out.

  All she had to do was say yes to his terms.

  Tell him the truth about anything he wanted to know.

  Do anything he told her to do.

  His hands in her hair were massaging her scalp, sending tingles of awareness down her spine and making her feel oddly soothed and reassured at the same time. Her hair was full of tangles from the wind…it would be easy to pull painfully against the roots without meaning to. But his hands were careful, gentle.

  He would be that way with all of her, Melinda realized. When he’d tugged her nipple, it had been hard enough to excite but gentle enough to be pleasurable instead of painful. His hand inside her panties had been careful of her delicate skin. He’d been careful with her body even while he was trying to make a point, to force her to acknowledge him and her sexual response to him. He hadn’t used his hands or his superior strength to hurt her.

  Still. Agree to do anything, anything at all that he wanted her to do? Give him advance permission to do anything at all he wanted to do to her?

  “Why do you want me to do anything you ask?”

  Drake used her hair to tug her even closer, so close their breath mingled and no air moved between their bodies. “Because for some reason you bring out the beast in me. I want to conquer you. I want to own you. I want to dominate you sexually while you submit to me. I want to know that you’re mine to do anything I please with until Sunday night.”

  He wanted to dominate her. The idea made her mind tilt.

  It wouldn’t matter that she wasn’t brave and didn’t know how to be. It wouldn’t matter that shyness paralyzed her and made her tongue-tied. She would only have to act on his orders while he did everything she longed to experience.

  He was so close, their mouths were nearly touching. Melinda wanted to feel the brush of his lips against hers so badly she could almost cry. Her mouth was dry. “Is there any more?” she managed to get out, her voice thick with desire.

  “No. You?”

  She shook her head. She couldn’t help moving that extra bit closer so her upper lip slid against his. One light touch and she wanted to follow with her tongue. She shuddered against him.

  Maybe he wasn’t the only one who wanted to conquer. Maybe she wanted to own him, too. And this exotic, dangerous male beast could be hers for a whole weekend. A little temporary insanity that she could indulge to the limit and nobody else would ever have to know about. No repercussions. No regrets.

  It would only take three little words.

  She didn’t recognize her own voice when she spoke.

  “It’s a deal.”

  Chapter Three

  The beast roaring inside Drake relaxed slightly at her agreement. He’d been alone too long, gone too long without a woman, that was all. Once he got inside her wet heat, this urgency would lessen.

  She’d admitted to her desire for him. She’d agreed to letting him be in complete control. She’d put herself in his hands and she would do anything he asked. Anticipation fired his blood at the thought of having her obey his every command.

  Letting go of her, he stepped back a few inches. Not far, but enough to let the air move between them and counteract the waves of heat they generated from each
other.

  “Then the game’s started. Here’s what you’re going to do first. You’re going to take off your shirt and your bra while I watch.”

  Melinda touched her tongue to her lower lip. “Are you going to leave your sunglasses on?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to take anything off?”

  “Not yet.”

  Her hands were shaking, but she reached down and grasped the hem of her thin pink sleeveless shell. She drew it up slowly, hesitated when she reached bra height, then pulled it up and over her head. She folded it and looked around for a place to put it, settling for laying it over her purse.

 

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