Those thoughts crumbled when he took another step toward her. He was so beautiful, broadly muscled and intimidating. But she liked that. Maybe it was why Asher had never appealed.
He was a handsome guy, nice enough, too. But what she loved about Wolf was the difference in them. He was like a completely different species. The masculine to her feminine so extreme that it couldn’t be denied. And she loved that. Loved the impossible solid breadth of his body. Loved the immensity of his form, which made her feel small and delicate.
Danger.
She had been good for so long, and standing this close to danger was electric. This close to rebellion. She was incandescent with it.
And then he kissed her, his rough hands dragging along her jawline, and she sighed, folding into him.
“Condoms,” she said against his mouth.
“Yeah,” he growled. “I have one.”
“Good,” she said.
There, she had been responsible. Clara couldn’t be mad at her now.
The kissing intensified, and he moved his hands over her curves, down beneath the hemline of her dress, pushing his hands upward, cupping her butt. She wiggled against him, feeling the hard length of his arousal against her stomach. He was so... She couldn’t even think of the words. She couldn’t think of anything. Need pulsed through her like an insatiable thing. And suddenly...none of the labels mattered anymore. Good girl, bad boy. Virgin. Whore. None of it meant anything. Because there was only them. There was nothing outside this room. Nothing at all. There couldn’t be. Because her world now turned on Wolf Garrett’s kiss, on the touch of his hands. The masculine grip that he held her in. The orbit that kept her enthralled.
He kissed her neck, his whiskered jawline teasing her, tantalizing her. He moved down to her collarbone, gripping the neckline of her dress roughly and pulling it down, his lips brushing against the top of her cleavage.
“So pretty,” he muttered. “I want you. I want you.”
And the way he said that left no room for her to wonder whether that was significant or not. It was. That he wanted her meant something. It made her shiver. Made her ache.
“I want you,” she said, stretching up on her tiptoes and kissing him on the mouth. Softly at first. But then it began to intensify. She felt like she was caught up in a storm, encircled by a cyclone of desire that pressed them against one another, impossibly. Inseparably.
He jerked her dress up over her head, leaving her in nothing but her lacy underwear and matching bra. She was very glad she had chosen the underwear she did, because the banked fire in his eyes leaped higher, an incalculable need that she felt echoed inside herself.
He was breathless. Over her. Because she was his forbidden fruit, and she was glad. Because she was as singular to him as he was to her. And she was going to cling to that. Desperately, maybe. But who could blame her? She couldn’t have forever. But she wanted him to remember her. Remember this.
And what he told her? That he’d slept with women he couldn’t pick out of a lineup. But she always wanted him to know whoshewas.
Maybe that was small and silly. Maybe it was the reasoning of a virgin. But she would always remember him. Because he would always be her first. Not just the first man she’d ever slept with, but the first man that she’d ever wanted to. Even if she hadn’t actually slept with him, that would’ve been true. He would’ve been the one she wanted. The only one she had ever wanted like this. And it mattered.
He pushed his hands beneath the waistband of her panties, his hands large and rough on the globes of her rear, and she gasped. She had never given a lot of thought to the realities of being touched so intimately. She liked it, she was surprised to discover. She liked it a lot. She wiggled against him and kissed him harder, then she pulled her mouth away from his and whispered against his ear, “I like that.” Because Clara had told her to do that.
He growled, squeezing her tight as he walked her back toward the bed. The bed. Her heart leaped. And at the same time, a pulse beat between her legs, hard and insistent. Spurring her on. Giving her the confidence to know that this was exactly what she wanted. And there was no mistaking that.
You want him.
She did. She really did. The consequences of it be damned. The aftereffects be damned. If it left her burned up, then it did. At least she would be burned up by the passion between them, and not by the bitter ashes of regret.
He deposited her on the center of the mattress and stood back, wrenching his shirt up over his head.
Her jaw dropped. Literally dropped.
He was huge. Thickly muscled, his body the perfect specimen of masculinity. Hard, defined lines that showed deep cuts in his abs, his chest thick and deep, sprinkled with dark hair.
He was like a sensory overload. Beautiful and deadly to look at all at once.
“Don’t look at me like that. Or it’s going to finish before it starts.”
She didn’t really understand what that meant. “Oh,” she said, nodding.
“Violet, do you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” she said while simultaneously shaking her head.