His hand lifted, a single claw extending before it slid beneath the material between her breasts and sliced it apart, brushing the cups aside to allow him to stare down at the bared flesh.
“Graeme, this is crazy,” she whispered.
“As you said, I’m insane,” he answered absently as he brushed his cheek against the side of one swollen curve. “Why would I pretend sanity at this late date?”
His breath wafted over her nipple, the slight caress of heated air nearly dragging a whimper from her.
“You’ll regret it later,” she assured him. “You know how angry you get when you regret things later.”
She would definitely regret it. She already regretted it. Yet her head was falling back, her back arching and her fingers sliding into his hair to hold him to her as his lips covered the hard point of her nipple.
A cry tore from her when his lips surrounded the tender tip, pulling it into his mouth and suckling at it with firm draws of his mouth. His tongue lashed at it, laved it, licked at it. Sharp teeth gripped the tortured peak. Holding it there, he rubbed his tongue against it then flicked over it. The caresses set it afire with such pleasure she was arching against him, riding the hard ridge of his erection, desperate to ease the throbbing need growing between her thighs.
Dampness spilled from her vagina, coating the folds beyond and dampening the silk covering her sex. Each draw of his mouth, each lash of his tongue or rake of his teeth against her nipple sent such sharp spirals of sensation exploding between her thighs that she found herself helpless against them.
She’d never known pleasure like this. She’d never ached like this or found herself so helpless against a man.
And it was Graeme. Graeme who had destroyed her, who had taken everything she could have fooled herself into believing might actually be hers.
“Enough.” Her voice was weak, faint. She’d had to force the protest past her lips.
She’d be damned if she would reward him for tearing her life apart.
“Stop, Graeme. Just stop . . .”
His head jerked up, his lips swollen and sexy as hell. And she hated herself for noticing it.
“I won’t regret it,” he suddenly snarled in answer to her earlier declaration. “But I have no doubt you will regret letting that nonsense that just passed your lips free.”
Before she realized what he intended, he released her.
Holding her hips until she was standing on her own, he moved back, amber fire still filling his eyes as he stared at her, his breathing hard, erratic.
No doubt she would regret it. Hell, she already regretted it.
“You need to leave.” She might never get her breathing back under control. The breathless sound of it was something she’d never heard from her own lips before.
Her claws were digging into the wall behind her, her bare breasts still holding his gaze, her nipples still tight and hard, as though begging him to ignore her words.
Her body was betraying her just as eagerly as Graeme had betrayed her years before.
“Of course I do,” he snarled. “God forbid you might have second thoughts, right?”
“Exactly,” she hissed back at him, the feline sound harsh and filled with her own inner conflict. “God forbid I should actually depend upon you to do anything but make my life hell, is more like it. Why should I reward you for that?”
“Reward me?” Amazement filled his voice as well as his expression. “Trust me, baby, you were the one about to get the reward.”
“Really?” she all but purred as she slid away from the wall, her gaze sliding over him slowly as she passed him, knowing better; the scent of his lust was far stronger, far hungrier than her awakening senses and she knew it. “Then it won’t bother you a bit to know how I’ve fantasized about having a lover.” Fantasized about him while she slept, helpless against the images. “And all the ways I’ve imagined rewarding him for being the man I’ve ached to have.”
The shadows of the primal Bengal pulsed beneath his flesh as a growl rumbled in his throat.
“Don’t push me, Cat,” he warned her, his tone guttural as she gripped the step railing and started up the stairs.
“How I wondered what it would be like to taste his flesh, to lick over hard, hot flesh like I would lick a favorite treat. Or to rise above him and lower myself . . .”
The snarl that left his lips sent her racing up the stairs, all thought of teasing him fleeing beneath the sound of a fully aroused, lust-filled Bengal Breed intent on one thing and one thing only. Pure mindless sex.
She slammed the bedroom door behind her, locked it and stepped back from it warily, wondering if he would dare to breach it.