He’s not for me. Not for more than this moment in time we’re stealing.
“No.” Air fills the space between us, but still, I keep my eyes shut, my hands balled into fists at my chest as though to protect myself. “You will look at me, Holland.”
His fingers grip my chin as though he could shake some sense into me. While I’m not sure that’s possible, I do open my eyes. Above me, balanced on his knees, Alexander’s expression is only half visible in the ambient light. But I can’t ignore his pain.
He loosens the buttons of his shirt, one, two, three, before he pulls it over his head. His body gilded by firelight, he is Michelangelo’s Adam. Though I’m not sure Adam ever wore such an expression. Nor were his eyes filled with such sin.
“Don’t hide yourself from me. Not ever. Don’t think I can’t see the truth.”
I gasp as he takes my hands in his, pressing them to the mattress above my head. His fingertips skim the sensitive underside of my arms, sliding down my face, my jaw, the pad of his thumb coming to rest on my bottom lip. Resting. Stroking.
“I know you’re here because you feel the same way as I do.”
His thumb presses on my lip, pulling it down to expose the moisture within. To open me to a kiss. A hard kiss. A rough kiss. A kiss that makes me moan into his mouth and my head follow his as he retracts. Makes me sigh as he trails his damp thumb down between my breasts. His hands span my ribs before slipping behind me to loosen my bra when he frames my breasts with his hands, moulding the soft flesh.
“Alexander,” I whimper, as his attentions turn my nipples into hard, aching peaks before he engulfs my nipple with a masculine groan.
I arch and twist as he teases with his fingers, echoing the sucking pull of his lips, crying out as I’m overcome by a hot liquid pleasure his mouth brings. How many nights have I imagined this and played out some variation in my head? Not that my dreams came anywhere close to how this feels.
“God, you’re so fucking lovely.”
My hands find a home in his hair as Alexander’s mouth lays claim to my breasts. Kisses and a coaxing tongue, the brush of his stubble, and the pull of his lips makes my whole body tremble, my nerve endings singing out for more.
I cry out. Not in surrender to this most delicious of torments but in a demand for more.
“Tell me you want me,” he demands.
I tilt my hips in a silent reply, my mind filled with such filth.
Fuck me. Hurt me. Bruise me. Make me leave this room bearing your mark as a remembrance.
“Yes. God, yes!”
He swallows my cries as his mouth meets mine in a punishing kiss, a kiss that’s jagged breaths, clashing teeth, and questing tongues. Until he presses my hands back to the mattress.
“So utterly frustrating but so, so lovely.” His gaze burns down, his fingers linking with mine as he lowers his head and kisses me again. Gentler this time, his lips barely flirting, forcing mine to slow, my will to concede. Measured and deliberate, his lips are coaxing but not at all tentative.
My heart beats faster, my tongue meeting his, twirling and twining, inhaling—
“Lovely enough to eat.” Words. They’re just words he breathes into my ear, yet they detonate inside like a shower of tiny anticipatory fireworks. I recognise his fingertips, his fingernail trailing along the elastic of my tiny panties. My hips surge from the bed as Alexander’s hand slips between my legs, cupping me. Teasing me as he slides a finger over the fabric of my underwear.
He makes a noise of appreciation, feeling the evidence of my arousal as his gaze flits between my face and his hand. “You’re making these so, so wet.”
Oh, God. That accent. He should record naughty audiobooks. He could get women off all over the world just by his voice alone.
“Maybe you should take them off,” I whisper, arching under him.
“With my teeth?”
I begin to twist under him, to thrash, his wicked words a thrill.
“You’re so sweet. I can smell how much you want me. How you want to take all of me.”
“Yes,” I cry, my insides throbbing emptily. Fill me. Fuck me.
“That’s quite a mouth you’ve got on you.” I freeze under him, not quite daring to look him in the eye as I belatedly realise I’d given voice to my desperation.
But I do look. And Alexander seems . . . turned on. Judging by the way his gaze travels over me in a slow, heavy-lidded glance. “Anything else you’d like to share?”
“I-I’ve thought of you. Every time I’ve touched myself since London. It’s been you in my head.” The words fall from my mouth, unbidden, but I don’t regret them. Not as his gaze becomes pure liquid heat. “I’ve tried to think of others—”