He shook his head grimly, but it was the fixed, hungry stare on her mouth that really silenced her. Her breath hitched, and suddenly his mouth was covering hers. It swept over her in a rush, the overwhelming, intimidating, compelling reality of Dylan Fall. Who had time to worry about insubstantial ghosts when he was here?
He pulled her closer, bending his arms to seal her to him tight. Her breasts crushed against his ribs. Her fingers flexed, the tips sinking into dense pectorals. Suddenly, her face was pressed against his chest, inhaling his scent, her lips moving, her tongue slicking against his skin. A profound need to drown herself in him overwhelmed her. He felt so good, so uncompromisingly solid. She twisted her face slightly, loving the slight abrasion of his chest hairs on her lips and cheek, the warm smoothness of his skin, the dense muscle beneath. Her fingers ran along the side of him, awed at his rigid strength. His skin roughened at her touch, and he palmed the back of her head. She delved her hands beneath his jeans and rubbed the tops of hard smooth buttocks. She quickened in excitement. He nudged her slightly, silently encouraging her, and her lips found a tight, hard nipple. She moaned, suddenly feeling fevered, and laved it with her tongue. His cock jumped against her.
“You look so hungry,” he muttered thickly, the proximity of his voice telling her he was watching her. “Are you really that hungry, little girl?”
“For you,” she muttered. “Yes.”
She applied suction to his stiffening nipple, running her tongue over the puckering disc. He gave a restrained, gruff moan. Her hands moved around his hips. One hand dipped into his partially opened fly as she scraped at his nipple with her front teeth. She’d show him just how hungry she was.
He groaned roughly, the kneading hands at her back lowering. He bent his knees. His hands spread on her hips and ass.
Then he was lifting her, his mouth fastening on hers. It felt so good. Alice encircled him with her arms at his shoulders and with her legs at his hips. His kiss was deep and drugging.
He broke their kiss roughly a moment later and began to stride down the hallway. He stared at her with a furious focus. His lust had the effect of sunlight on a nightmare. The dark hallway and the door, the calling voice and the woman, all were forgotten.
IT’D be convenient to say that his concern for Alice Reed was what motivated him to touch her. If he possessed her, he could control what happened to her. He could keep her—and in turn, a part of himself—safe and inviolate. They had more in common than she understood.
But all of that rationale would have been a lie.
He wanted her, plain and simple. He hadn’t been prepared for her beauty. She was lovely and scarred and defiant of those scars, and twice as beautiful because of her rebellion. She was vulnerable, and she was strong because she knew her weakness and had built up a commensurate defenses.
He was going to have to break her … break through those walls. He needed her trust.
She stared at him now as he soared down the hallway toward his bed, intent on ravishment. Amazingly, she didn’t seem to understand the spell she could cast with her eyes. They were large and magn
ificent, a unique and seductive dark blue color. But it was what he read in her eyes that made him hunger. Right now, he saw the uncertainty and mutiny he’d witnessed in them from the first. Now, something else was there, though, something as harsh as an electrical shock and teeth-grindingly erotic. Lust shone there. Need. She was young, and struck him as largely inexperienced when it came to sex, but she was honest about what she wanted. She was passionate, fierce … even wild when aroused.
Miraculously, her past hadn’t managed to spoil that freshness in her.
He lunged into the bedroom and kicked the door shut with a loud bang, never taking his eyes off her. Her lips were full and reddened from their former lovemaking and his kisses. There in the hallway, he’d wanted to derail her confusion and fear, but he’d become lost in his own hunger, a victim to his own machinations. He loved her mouth, and wanted to spend hours plucking at it, coaxing it, feeling her sighs run across his lips … ravaging it.
He bent, setting her at the edge of the bed. She remained in a seated position. Her smoky eyes lowered over him as he stood before her, his cock throbbing between his thighs. When her stare settled on the outline of his erection, he gritted his teeth. A vivid fantasy popped into his head of sliding his straining cock between her flushed lips, looking down into her eyes as he slid along her tongue—those eyes that belonged both to an innocent and a seductress.
Nevertheless, he moved his hand at the same moment that she reached for his cock, halting her. They’d had the same fantasy at the same moment—he’d read it in her eyes—and their mutual understanding strangely both aroused and intimidated. The need to take control swelled in him. He leaned over her, gently taking her other wrist and placing her hands behind her.
“Let me touch you.” He flinched slightly at her softly rasped words.
“You are, beautiful. With your eyes. And it’s more than enough,” he said, grimly going about the task of unbuttoning her shirt. Thankfully, she hadn’t put on her bra when she took her little nighttime stroll. His muscles tightening in anticipation, he parted the fabric of her cotton shirt, baring her breasts. Her smooth skin looked flawless and golden in the lamplight, her large nipples a dusky pink.
God, she was a fucking dream. He wanted to eat her alive.
Lust tore at him from the inside, demanding its due. For a moment, it blinded him. He sank to his knees before her.
He placed his hands on her rib cage, lifting slightly. She arched for him. So sweet, so generous in allowing him to consume her. He leaned down and took a nipple into his mouth, drawing on her with single-minded lust.
He wasn’t gentle. He was hungry, sucking sweet, responsive flesh, maddened by her large stiffening nipple and ripe firm curves. Filling his hands with her, he feasted while her soft cries and surprised-sounding gasps filled his ears. He held her breasts while he moved his mouth between each tempting crest, drowning in the bounty of her, every taste making him crave more.
Her nails scraped against his scalp, and a measure of reason returned. He slid his lips over her stiffened nipple regretfully, his tongue lingering for a moment. He stood. She looked dazed and startled by his abrupt movement, but he couldn’t think of what to say to reassure her. His need boiled inside him. It’d threatened to spill over at her desperate touch.
Without a word, he walked over to his bureau and opened a drawer. Her midnight eyes grew huge when he returned a moment later, carrying a pair of black leather padded handcuffs.
“You’re having difficulty keeping your hands where I ask you to put them,” he stated the obvious, attempting a small smile. It didn’t work. His muscles were too tense with need to relax into levity in that moment. She looked so tempting sitting there, her eyes shining with trepidation and lust, her breasts lush and vulnerable, flushed from his feasting. “Take off your shirt and move up on the bed. Lie down,” he directed. “Put your head on the pillows. The restraint will make things easier for you.”
“Easier for me, or for you?” she asked, the familiar Alice-wariness back in her eyes. Despite her suspicion, she twisted out of her shirt and slid along the sheets, lying back with her head on the pillows.
“Easier for both of us,” he replied, coming onto the mattress on his knees. He felt her gaze on him as he gathered her wrists and inserted them into the cuffs.
“You’re very … efficient at that,” she said. “I suppose you’ve had a lot of practice?”