Nik’s lips left her all of a sudden, and Daria had to swallow back a moan of protest. While she wasn’t shy about showing her affections, Daria also knew she had to at least try not to crowd him. At the end of the day, she and Nik still barely knew each other. While she was almost 100% sure about his place in her life, she had to take it easy on the poor guy and not terrify Nik with how much she, well, liked him.
“We should go.” Nik’s tightly spoken words drew Daria’s attention back to him. He was breathing hard, fierce hunger glittering in his dark eyes as he stared at her. Even so, it was just as evident Nik was determined not to let his desire take control.
And that’s probably why there weren’t any frog alerts, Daria thought dizzily. Aside from being the only man who hadn’t assumed she would be an easy lay just because she liked to flirt, Nik was also the man she had asked God for.
She knew the reason would sound silly to most people, but Daria believed in it with her whole heart. She had sincerely asked God for someone He thought was good for her, never mind what Daria thought she wanted, and He had given her Nik.
And sure, their first meeting hadn’t exactly screamed serendipity – in fact, Nik had initially thought she was mental for throwing a Gatorade bottle at his head, twice – but who cared about that?
God works in mysterious ways, Daria told herself. That their first meeting was more like grounds for a lawsuit shouldn’t and didn’t matter.
As Daria raised her gaze to Nik, something inside her turn warm, soft, and gooey when his gaze immediately captured hers like it was his right to have her stare at him all the time.
This was what mattered, she thought feverishly. This feeling that she had been waiting for him all her life—-
This.
Something that she shied away from labeling just yet, mostly because in her own mind, she was scared saying it out loud would make her seem crazy. People didn’t feel this so soon, and this happening at first sight could only be make-believe but—-
Daria mentally shook her head. None of that mattered, she reminded herself. She could leave it unnamed for now, and it wouldn’t make a difference. What she should concentrate right now instead was—-
Nik stiffened at the look in Daria’s gray eyes. “No,” he rejected in a clipped voice. Whatever she was planning, it was certain to be a bad idea.
But it only made Daria plant her hands on his shoulders, and stiffening even more, he demanded, “What the hell are you doing?”
She didn’t seem to hear him, too busy looking around them, and Nik found himself doing the same. The empty alley, a narrow sanded pathway, led straight to the island’s tourism office behind them. It was closed for the weekend, but there were posters on its windows, encouraging guests to download the office’s free app.
That was interesting to know, Nik thought with a frown, but what did that have to do with them? He turned his head back to Daria to ask, but the moment he did, Daria rose to her toes and, clutching his shoulders more tightly, covered his mouth with hers.
Nik froze.
His entire adult life, he had only two important rules.
Never mix business with pleasure.
Never let pleasure rule him.
Nik had seen how sex – often masquerading as love – ruined the people he had foolishly trusted. His own foster mother, one whom he had lived with for years and thought of as his own parent, had turned on him in the end, and all because she had supposedly lost her heart to a greedy con artist.
He had never allowed anyone to be close to him since then, had never allowed himself to be in a situation where he was not fully in control, and yet with the woman in his arms – the woman trying to seduce him with fake, innocent kisses and succeeding –
Nik had ended up violating almost all of the rules he stood for, and he had no damn idea why.
Forcibly ending the kiss, Nik shook his head at Daria. “This isn’t the time or place—-”
Most would have quaked at the forbidding note in his voice, but it only made Daria laugh and shower tiny and arousing kisses all over his face as she whispered, “Of course it is.” More kisses. “We’re alone. I checked.”
Ah. So that was why she had looked around. Even so, he didn’t do stuff like this, and Nik struggled not to let the seductive trail of Daria’s kisses sway him. “It does not matter if we are alone. We must stop—-” But instead it was Nik who stopped talking as Daria sucked on his lower lip.
A vision of Daria sucking on his cock teased his mind.
His imagination ran wild, and he found himself releasing her hair so he could hold her by the nape and keep her in place.
Sensing Nik’s control was starting to slip, Daria kissed the corner of his mouth, wanting to destroy it completely. “I’m only going to stop if you can say that like you mean it,” she said throatily.
Her words inflamed him, but bitterness also ate at Nik because of it. “For someone who only had sex once in her life,” he said tightly, “you’re certainly too good at this.”
“Only because of you,” Daria answered honestly, too lost in the heated feel of Nik’s presence to notice the emotion underlining his words. Even though she had a long dating history behind her, none of those frogs had ever seen her naked. None of them had made her want to see any of them naked, and none of them had certainly managed to make her interested in going beyond kissing...