“Hmmm…” Her fingers brushed along his wrist, instantly turning his ire into heated lust. “So we’re at an impasse. You can’t sleep with me because you want to earn my trust and I can’t sleep with you because if I do, my trust becomes questionable. Either way we’re screwed, but only in the figurative sense.”
Bree started to move away and the loss of her presence caused a physical ache. Alex spun quickly, clutching her slight form to his chest. “You have to want me for who I am, Briana. Record, career and all.”
“I do.” She stared up at him with an earnest gaze. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t wish for our situations to be different.”
He searched her face with its determined chin and carnal mouth, features that no vid unit could do justice to. In person, she was stunningly perfect. “Why? How will that affect what happens over the next two weeks? You wanted a fantasy. Let me give it to you.”
Her hands stroked the length of his spine. “Maybe I want the fantasy to be real.”
Stiffening in her embrace, he began to pull away. That was his fantasy, too. Damn, how he wished he could keep her! But that would never become a reality.
“I’m sorry.” She released him without protest. “I shouldn’t have said that. No pressure or anything. I just—”
Alex dropped to his knees before her, unable to fight his attraction when she looked so forlorn. “I want you.” He raised his gaze to lock with hers.
“Wow.” Stunned green eyes stared down into his. “This is…totally unexpected. And really hot.”
“You’re really hot. For the first time in my life, I’m pretty sure having sex with a beautiful woman is a bad idea.” He kissed the inside of her thigh. “But I can’t resist doing it anyway.”
Her fingers drifted into his hair and kneaded his scalp. He purred in pleasure. “That was actually a pretty romantic thing to say, Alexei. In a fucked-up kind of way.”
“Who knew it was in me,” he teased.
“You’re not normally so charming?” she asked with a dubious arch of her brow.
“I don’t usually have to use charm at all.”
She sighed and shook her head. “Yeah, just whip out that cock and they probably stampede. It must be pretty wonderful for a guy to be so gorgeous that women just fall into bed with him.”
“It’s pretty wonderful if the woman he wants does that. Otherwise, it can be annoying.”
Briana laughed. “Now you see why I wanted you to beg for it.”
“You’ve got me on my knees, sweetness.” Cupping her ankles, he slid his hands up, following the graceful curves of her legs. “You’re in great shape.”
“Yeah. With all the sitting around I do, you would think I’d be fat.”
“You keep fit on purpose and you carry a blaster with obvious skill. When we ran through Thieves’ Cove you moved with me—”
“That was amazing,” she interrupted with a smile that would have brought him to his knees, if he hadn’t already been there.
Standing slowly, Alex tugged her body against his. Whatever he’d felt for her last night was nothing compared to what he felt for her today. And they were about to have sex—full on sex with his cock buried deep inside her. He knew when they were done he’d be in a lot worse shape. “How much trouble are you in, Bree?”
She swallowed hard and pulled back a little. “Who says I’m in trouble?”
“You trust me with your body.” His hands cupped her breasts, squeezing the firm flesh gently. “But not your secrets?”
“Don’t worry about me. I can handle it,” she breathed, her eyes drifting closed as his thumbs brushed across her nipples.
His palms tingled, then burned as her skin warmed to his touch even through her tee. “Perhaps I want to help you handle it.”
“Perhaps I want you to stop talking and just handle me.”
Alex fought the urge to bare his fangs, to exert his dominance and stake his claim. There wasn’t any need to do that. There were other, less frightening ways to make her his. He could inundate her with pleasure. He could join their bodies so completely she wouldn’t be able to tell where she ended and he began. “Undress.”
Bree’s eyes flew open. “What?”
“Take. Off. Your. Clothes.”
She snorted. “Shouldn’t you do that?”
“Certainly.” He shrugged out of his flight vest.
“I meant, shouldn’t you do that to me?”
“If you want to wear that sexy outfit again,” he said gruffly, dropping his trousers, “I suggest you do it. If I touch you, I’ll shred it.”
“Oh.” Her gaze dropped to his cock like a magnet to metal. She licked her lips. “You think I look sexy?”
Damn. It drove him crazy when her tongue darted out like that. Pretty soon he was going to feel that lush mouth slick and hot around him. “Hurry,” he ordered. “And I’ll show you what I think.”
He’d never seen a woman strip so fast in his life.
“You know,” Bree grumbled, hopping on one leg to get out of her shorts. “In romance novels, the hero slowly undresses the heroine and it’s totally erotic.”
“Then they fuck and the heavens open up and stars explode and galaxies collide.” He snorted and stepped closer. “The real thing is better.”
Her voice was muffled by her tank as she pulled it over her head. “For men, maybe.” She tossed the shirt aside and shook out her curls. “You guys always get off.”
Alex gripped her by the waist and stepped forward until he’d pinned her to window. He paused a moment, taking in the view of her naked upon the backdrop of black space and sparkling stars. Then he spun her around so she could see too.
Briana squirmed between his body and the glass until he bent his knees and slipped his cock between her legs. “Oh hell…” Her voice was a breathless gasp. “I think a star just exploded.”
Inclined to agree, he nuzzled her ear and breathed in her scent. “Let’s see how much damage we can do.”
Chapter Four
Bree shivered as Alex’s voice, low and seductive as sin, brushed across her ear and echoed in her mind. Behind her, the heat and hardness of his cock burned between her thighs. Th
e feel of his muscled chest pressed to her back made her wet. The chill of the glass, in stark contrast to his warmth, made her nipples hard. “You feel awesome,” she told him, thinking he should know that.
His hands slipped upward and cradled the curve of her breasts. “You know,” he said, his voice husky, “I don’t have any jobs lined up after this run.” He pulled her away from the glass and fondled her nipples. Rolling them with his fingers, he pinched and tugged until she whimpered with pleasure. “I could stick around and help you out.”
“Oh my God. How can you think at a time like this?” She was having trouble even breathing.
“I’m thinking about you. Everything I do is about you. Trust me.”
Leaning her flushed cheek against the glass, Bree closed her eyes and willed away the emotion she had no business feeling. “You’re being romantic again, damn it.”
Alex’s chuckle made her ache all over.
“Let me turn around.” She wanted desperately to get her hands on him.
“Lesson Number Two in patience—when a vamp has a hard-on like I do, you don’t want to incite him further.”
The softly menacing tone to his voice made her so hot, she writhed against him. “Why not? I’d love to see you lose control, get a little wild, turn things—”
Bree gasped as two sharp points scraped along the top of her shoulder. She stared at his reflection in the glass and saw the deadly glint of his fangs and the laser brightness of his gaze.
“That’s why,” he said softly, staring back at her. “One hunger feeds the other. Left unchecked, the man you know will give way to the animal you don’t. I won’t risk hurting you.”