STELLA
Delamonte’s wrapparty should’ve been the crowning highlight of my trip, a celebration of everything we’d accomplished over the past three days.
Instead, I spent the entirety of it replaying that afternoon in my head.
The memory of my kiss with Christian stayed with me through dessert, as did the phantom brush of his touch. With one zip of my dress, he’d awoken more heat in me than any of my previous partners had with actual sex.
I’d suppressed it during dinner, but the heat blossomed again as the bedroom door closed behind us.
We hadn’t spoken since dinner ended, but the mere anticipation of what could happen rasped against my skin as surely as a calloused touch.
The air hummed with breathlessness as Christian walked to the dresser, his lean, powerful form slicing through the darkness like a freshly honed blade through silk.
Blood roared in my ears and drowned out everything except my heartbeats and the soft rustle of his movements.
“You don’t have any other commitments tonight, I presume.” His tone was relaxed, but when he turned, his eyes smoldered with so much heat I thought I would combust from the sheer intensity of it.
An electric current tied our gazes together as he removed his cufflinks with a slow, deliberate preciseness that made my mouth go dry.
Rough hands. Whiskey eyes. Control.
“No.”
The whisper drifted down and tightened my nipples into hard, aching points.
My lungs barely expanded with my attempts to inhale and exhale.
“Good.” Clink. Clink. The sounds of his cufflinks hitting the silver tray echoed in the dark and throbbed low in my belly. “Take off your dress, Stella.”
His deceptively soft command burned up all the oxygen in the room and set every molecule of my body ablaze.
My breaths shallowed.
This was it.
The fork in the road.
I could stick with the safe path and tell him no, or I could throw caution to the wind and do what my heart and body were screaming at me to do.
I held Christian’s gaze as I reached behind me.
A minute later, my dress pooled around my feet in a puddle of white silk.
No bra, no accessories, just a tiny scrap of underwear and a heart beating too fast.
Christian’s expression didn’t shift.
Standing there bared and open to him, I would’ve thought him unmoved had it not been for his eyes. Black pupils swallowed amber as he closed the distance between us, and the closer he got, the hotter I burned.
“Tell me.” The tiny glide of his finger over my hip was enough to send my pulse into overdrive. “Do you want sex, or do you want to be fucked?”
My thighs involuntarily clenched at the way he said fucked. It was the dark purr of a predator toying with its prey, making them beg for their own destruction before it pounced.
The only difference was, I didn’t feel like prey.
I had a choice, and I’d never felt more powerful.
Moisture gathered between my thighs. I was so wet I could feel it slicking my skin, but I was still half tempted to take the safe route. To have easy, ordinary sex where I didn’t have to bare any part of myself except my body.
My mind warred with every other part of me for control.
Do you want sex, or do you want to be fucked?
I’d kept my desires caged for so long, but perhaps it was finally time I set them free.
I didn’t want soft kisses and gentle caresses.
I wanted skin and blood. I wanted nails scratching down his back and bruises on my hips.
The commands. The release. The oblivion.
I wanted it all.
“I want to be fucked.” My whisper was barely audible.
“I can’t hear you.” His fingers glided over the dampness of my panties, and I fought back a moan at the delicious friction.
Embarrassment and lust blazed through me in equal measure.
“I want to be fucked,” I repeated.
Stronger this time, more confident, but it wasn’t enough.
“Louder, Stella. Use your voice.” His voice hardened, his words pitiless. “Tell me what you want.”
He pressed a firm thumb to my clit, his touch as brutal as his command. White-hot sensation sparked through me and drowned out my embarrassment.
“I want to be fucked!” The words exploded out of me, raw and filtered, followed by a needy moan when Christian rubbed his thumb over me.
His smile was that of a dangerously seductive monster promising all sorts of filthy, debauched deeds. “That’s what I thought.”
He tore my underwear off with one sharp tug before his mouth crashed over mine, swallowing my gasp and ensuing moan when he fisted my hair hard enough to make my eyes water.
The hard tug arrowed to my core like there was an electric wire directly linking the two. My scalp throbbed in rhythm with my clit, and my mind was so clouded by desire I didn’t notice we’d moved until my back hit the bed.
I watched as Christian shed his clothes, revealing broad, sculpted shoulders and a sexy V-cut that led down to his…
Oh my God.