The fire building inside her was doused, leaving burning hot embers that blistered her sensitive nature. She had thought his innate drive to lead was ready to take over. He was determined to make her work for this, though, and it almost undermined her belief in herself and what she was able to make him feel.
Trying to understand where she had gone wrong, she searched his expression and noted the tension in his face, the tick in his cheek that made his scar pull at the corner of his slightly parted mouth. His chest was expanding in a short hard rhythm.
In a startling burst of clarity she knew why he’d stopped her. The kiss had started to become more than he could handle. He was cooling the pace so he could remain in control.
A heady sense of power flowed into her, but it was surprisingly tender too. With renewed confidence, she reached out and learned how to open a man’s jeans.
“I don’t have a condom in here,” he warned.
“You don’t need one.”
Aleksy swore in Russian. Stop her, he told himself. Before she put him over the edge. But he was too hungry to see how far she’d go. The rush of blood in his ears deafened him and the heat of desire threatened to spontaneously combust his soul.
He reached for the soft swells teasingly rising and falling behind a thin layer of wool. She often went braless. He loved it. Those modest, taut breasts of hers didn’t need support and he liked being able to find her nipples easily and feel them harden.
Clair stepped back, her light grip catching his thick wrists before he’d barely cradled her soft curves. “No touching. Not yet,” she said breathily. She pressed his hands back to the surface of his desk. “You’ll distract me and I want to make this as good for you as you always do for me.”
Anticipation screamed in him, threatening to make him lose it completely. He instinctively wanted to take over, be the one in control of the pace, especially when her hot blue gaze clashed into his, her enjoyment of having the upper hand obvious.
“I want to suck your nipples,” he demanded, balancing on the knife’s edge between stealing the dominant role that was always his and letting Clair keep the power she was obviously reveling in.
He almost had her. Her pupils expanded into galactic holes he could have fallen into. Her breath rushed out in a near surrender and her light hands on his thighs grew heavy as she melted closer.
“No,” she gasped at the last second, the word driving like a knife into his groin. She dug her fingernails through denim as she firmed her resolve. “Not yet. I want to take off your shirt first.”
With hands that betrayed a nervous tremble, she tugged the close-fitting knit up his chest. He lifted his arms, eyes closing as he endured what felt like the loss of his skin. Her lips touched his collarbone.
He caught back a groan.
Another kiss and her splayed hands smoothed across his chest hair. His nipples went so tight they felt pierced. His erection pulsed in the space of his open fly, clawing at his control.
Her hands began to graze with more surety, flowing over his rib cage and abdomen, finding his waistband. Working with awkward inexperience—which was its own delight—she eased her hands under denim, lifting his hips off the edge of the desk to work his jeans down his thighs.
“Finally,” he hissed, shaking with need.
She paused and he realized he’d spoken in Russian. She kept going and he kicked out of the jeans, stepping so his socked feet were braced, fingers flexing with desire to catch her up to him and plunder her mouth.
She lowered herself to her knees, hands cool and soft on his calves as she removed his socks. Did she know she was driving him to the absolute edge of reason?
He glared down to see her staying on her knees, gaze coming to rest on his shorts, lips pressed into a line of uncertain study. As she reached out and carefully eased the elastic over him, his vision blurred. He stepped out of his shorts and didn’t know if he’d be able to stay on his feet. He was a conqueror by nature and necessity, but at this second he was a slave. A prisoner to each of her incremental movements.
Despite knowing what she was about to do, he was staggered by the first touch of her hands, swelling and hardening to unbearable proportions, filling her palms. Words of protest and abject begging threatened to burst from him, but she was stealing every last thought from him, closing her mouth upon him with untutored, scandalously sexy ardor.
A ragged groan erupted from him. His passion nearly exploded. He wasn’t going to last and he wanted, needed, to be inside her.
With the very last shreds of his control, he tangled his fingers in the golden silk that brushed her cheeks. It killed him to force her to release him, but he had nothing left. He was about to shock or scare her and he had to have her with him when the last of his restraint evaporated. He wanted to feel each ripple of her orgasm when he came and know she was as insanely lost to pleasure as he was.