Warmth pooled in her inner places while she cursed the darkness that seemed to magnify the electricity of his touch.
‘N-no.”
‘Once again and with meaning.” His lips played with hers and she couldn’t seem to work up enough self-preservation to tell him to stop.
‘you want me, cara. Admit it.”
Her only defense lay in the truth. ‘of course I want you. What red-blooded woman wouldn’t? What do you think I’ve been saying? But my body doesn’t always want what is best for my mind or my heart ”
His warm, masculine hand curled around her waist. ‘This time it does. Trust me, Elisa. I will not hurt you again.”
How could he help it? He didn’t love her and that in itself hurt. It shouldn’t. She didn’t love him anymore. How could she after all he had done? She should be able to take her pleasure the way he did with no emotional entanglement. Only she knew she couldn’t probably not with any man, but most definitely not with him. What she didn’t know was why.
Breathing in the scent of her body’s only acknowledged mate, realization blinded her like a lightning bolt in the darkness of the vault. She still loved him. Despite the way he had rejected her, she would always love him.
No. Her breathing turned shallow from fear. She’d thought her emotions were dead. Safely buried under a wall of pain so she couldn’t hurt any more. She didn’t want to love him.
His mouth pressed against the corner of her lips, his tongue flicking out to taste her and then retreating.
’Please cfo/cezza let me pleasure you.”
The shock of her inner revelation combined with the physical sensations overwhelming her in the absolute darkness of the vault. And her mind stopped functioning, shod-circuited by the words and tone that promised so much.
Her head turned and her lips sought his blindly, needing more than that brief touch.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LIPS hard with passion closed over hers.
Want need and love coalesced inside her creating an overwhelming ache that was b0th physical and emotional. A sense of emptiness in the core of her femininity craved the filling of his flesh. Her heart fed on the need in his voice, the tension in his touch that attested his need for her.
A year ago she had exulted in this hunger that was so much more than mere physical lust but now it terrified her. She knew what pain lay beyond the satiation of her senses.
But even her fear of the depth of emotion elicited by his kiss could not stifle the need, nor her body and head’s demand it be met.
While her mouth feasted on the taste of her lover so long denied her, her body shifted against him in voluptuous abandon. He groaned his hands closing convulsively on her. She pressed against his naked chest digging her fingers into the short curling hair and muscled contours.
Her eyes were open, but she couldn’t see anything. AII she could do was feel.
His fingers undoing the buttons on the shirt she wore. His mouth staking a claim on hers. His heart beating an erratic rhythm against her hand. The pebble-hard bump of his male nipple. Then the feel of his hands cupping her naked breasts kneading them with sensual urgency.
She let her hand slide down to measure his already hard male flesh through his trousers.
Moaning like a man in torture, he broke the kiss and she sensed his head falling back in abandonment to the pleasure of her touch. His hands continued caressing her breasts in what felt like a mindless pattern of squeeze and release… squeeze and release.
He strained against the fly of his trousers letting her know without words that his need was as much as or greater than her own. Carefully, with one hand she undid his fastening and pulled the zip down slowly enough to make him groan again.
‘Si. Touch me cara. I need your hand on me.”
But she didn’t touch him.
She peeled the fabric away, cautious not to so much as brush his rigid flesh with the backs of her fingers. Then she pushed the trousers down his hips, waiting for him to move so she could slide them all the way off. Taking her time, she was careful not to let even the tip of his shaft into contact with any part of her body.
She loved teasing him like this.
‘you are driving me mad.”
‘Do you mind?” she asked with gentle mockery.