For delirious moments, he stilled inside her. This was the ultimate embrace he’d been going insane for. Everything he’d ever craved.
Then the urge to conquer her, to lose himself inside her crested again, and he withdrew, then plunged again and again, harder each time, faster. Her cries punctuated his thrusts. Every time he sank deeper, the need to breach her, to bury himself into her recesses, blinded him.
He lodged inside her to the root, and she arched in a deep bow, her inner muscles clamping his hardness in unbearable tautness, her face clenching in agonized urgency, her every muscle beneath and around him buzzing on the edge of a paroxysm. Another thrust would make her explode in release.
He gave it to her, with everything in him.
Her shriek pierced him as her core splintered around his girth and his body all but detonated in the most powerful orgasm he’d ever experienced, even with her. His roars echoed her desperation as his body caught the current of her convulsions. Excruciating pleasure shot through his length in jet after jet of white-hot release until he felt he’d drained his essence into her depths.
The world seemed to vanish as he slumped on top of her, nothing left but feeling her beneath him, still trembling, her core still milking him for every last drop of sensation.
In what could have been an hour, the arms and legs that lay nerveless with satiation around him started to tighten, as did the velvet gripping his erection.
She wanted more. She always had. Once had never been enough for her. Or for him. With her, he’d always wanted more, longer, harder, over and over.
Feeling disgusted with himself, he pulled out of her depths, yanked himself from her clinging limbs.
As soon as he stood up, she slipped off the counter, and the dress he’d only pushed out of the way to take her now tumbled down to cover her seminakedness. In seconds she looked as if nothing had happened.
Tearing his gaze away, he tugged his zipper closed and stuffed his shirt back into his pants in suppressed violence before he strode out to the living room to pick up his jacket.
At the door, he turned, found her standing in the distance, the face that had been gripped in feverish passion just minutes earlier a mask of inanimate beauty.
Flicking her one last contemptuous glance, he said, “Now we’re done.”
Four
Scarlett felt done in, done for. Just done.
As Raiden had said they were.
Last night, his explosive lovemaking—what she’d been yearning for for five interminable years—had inundated her with the physical satisfaction only he had ever given her. But she’d wanted more, far more. A whole night in his arms. A night of worshipping him and giving herself to him in the intimacy she’d only ever had with him, could never have with another. She’d wanted a new intense memory of him to help keep the frozen wasteland inside her from claiming the last flickering flame of life. What had sprung into existence in the first place because of him.
Keeping obsessive track of his news in the past years had been the one thing that had kept that flame from being extinguished. As long as he’d been safe and soaring from one success to a higher one, it had been enough to keep her going.
Then he’d taken her, what she’d never even dared dream would ever happen again. And as he’d filled her arms and body, his eyes burning her with his ferocious hunger, an insane hope had ignited among the hopelessness she’d been resigned to all her life. That she might have him again, without the need to hide anything from him, for a whole night. More, if he would allow it.
But that wasn’t what it had been about for him.
He’d needed to get this, and her, out of his system. He’d needed the closure. Now that he had it, he’d finally move on. As she wanted him to. She’d never wanted anything but his peace.
But the way he’d ended the delirious interlude—with disgust, clearly at himself more than her...
Her phone rang. She grabbed for it, thankful for the distraction. It was Hiro. After he’d once kept insisting she was his hero, she’d laughingly told him she’d make his ringtone “I Need a Hero.” She had.
Affection welled inside her, played on lips still stiff with Raiden’s rejection as she hit Answer.
“I kissed Megumi.”
After a moment’s surprise at Hiro’s blurted confession, she chuckled. “And I thought I’d be apologizing for leaving last night without telling you. Seems I did you a favor. The moment I left your side, you pursued your fantasy woman, got her alone and did what you should have done long ago.”
“It’s no laughing matter, Scarlett.” Hiro sounded as if he’d suffer a heart attack any second now.
It never ceased to amaze her how the ruthless financial mogul could be so different on a personal level. With her, he had a center made of marshmallow. But when it came to Megumi, his insides were clearly more the consistency of Jell-O.
Not that anyone would believe it. The Japanese weren’t given to expressing their emotions, even with their closest people. It was probably because she was a gaijin and a friend who had no contact with his close circle that Hiro felt safe to show her a side of him he’d never show his compatriots and kin. Of course, there was also that life-changing experience he’d shared with her, making her closer to him than almost everyone. Certainly closer than the woman of his dreams, whom he’d finally taken a step toward. If a very belated one.
Scarlett didn’t understand why he’d never taken it before. He’d tell her why if and when he saw fit. Or not. She’d be there for him, as he was for her, no questions asked.