The ferocity of arousal in his expression made her breathless all over again. She couldn’t yet speak. Couldn’t yet comprehend the power of what she’d just experienced. And that there was more to come?
‘Darcie?’ Strain tightened his face.
He began to slide free of her but she clamped down, desperate to keep him deep inside her. His gaze bored into hers.
‘I have many talents, but mind-reading isn’t one of them, sweetheart,’ he muttered roughly. ‘I understand that you don’t want to ask for everything all of the time, but you’re still going to have to communicate with me on some things.’
‘Like you do with me?’ she challenged softly, feeling a foreign power flood through her now. Feeling confidence in her sensuality for the first time ever. Feeling as if she knew what she wanted and she knew how she might get it. ‘It works both ways, Elias. And I don’t know that either of us is too good at communicating when it comes to personal things.’
He took a couple of deep breaths of his own. As if he, too, were seeking recovery. And control. ‘I wanted to hear you ask me again,’ he admitted huskily. ‘Last time I couldn’t answer the way I wanted, and I wanted a do-over. I wanted to feel that burst of...’
She fell a little harder for him, burned a little hotter. ‘Are you saying I made your day with my offer?’
‘You made my decade.’
Arousal flooded her and she knew he knew. Because he felt it—the slickening of her channel. His eyes smouldered and she felt his muscles bunch.
‘Yet you denied me.’ Her reproach was husky.
‘You know I had to. But I’ve thought about you for so long.’
She couldn’t resist rocking harder into his hand, seeking more from the fingers that had resumed their soft, skilled torment. ‘Elias—’
‘I watched you when I thought it was safe. When you were focused on your screen or had your back to me, and I wondered if you ever looked at me when I wasn’t looking at you, too.’ He pressed closer, quickly kissing her nearest straining nipple as he then confessed, ‘Like a teen with a crush. I wondered and wished and was so uncertain because you were always so aloof you didn’t even deign to dine with me. And then one night you appeared, and you looked me directly in the eyes and asked me to come upstairs with you.’
She was shallowly panting now.
‘Part of me wanted to shout in celebration but I had to say no. And then you didn’t look at me at all. I’ve still not forgiven you for that, Darcie.’
‘It’s scary how well you hid it,’ she breathed. ‘You seemed so cold.’
‘I wascontrolled. There’s a difference.’
She never would have guessed. She’d read his reaction as emotionless and she’d thought she could read him well—after all, it had been almost three years in which she’d seen that poker face in boardrooms and high-level meetings. She knew displeasure. She knew precision. Attack. But that most primal of emotions—lust.Thatshe’d not seen in him. He could mask up frighteningly well. Could he hide other emotions, too? Other real, deep feelings? That possibility was something she filed away. Yet she had seen more in these last couple of days. She’d seen anger.Amusement. She even thought she’d seen the flash of jealousy.
‘I never want to initiate something you don’t want. I always want to know you’re on board with me. It matters. I’m a powerful person. People say yes to me even when they might not want to. I never want that cloudiness so I always clarify consent. I always ask.’ His gaze skittered down her body, taking in the stiffness of her needy nipples, the sheen of her heated skin, the rhythmic rock of her hips as she met his teasing fingers.
‘That’s a good thing.’ She swallowed and licked her lips. ‘But I think...with this...maybe you don’t have to always ask. Maybe you can trust that if you start something, I’ll tell you if I don’t want it at that time...’
‘And now?’
‘You know I want it all. All of you.’
He closed his eyes briefly. Then moved.
Darcie was bereft at the sudden loss of intimacy, of any contact. But he was fast, reaching for the foil package he’d tossed down by the pillow. Her body went lax as she watched him discard his boxers and she saw him naked before her for the first time. She swallowed, nerves rising, as he rolled the condom down his broad, engorged length. He glanced over and smiled as he read her face.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll help you,’ he promised.
She nodded. She was going to need it, because she had no idea how—
He straddled her and began again—kisses, deep, lush kisses that made her brain evaporate, leaving her able to do nothing but feel. And that worry ebbed as his hands swept over her, reheating skin that had barely cooled, pushing her to an even higher state of need. She parted her legs instinctively, the empty ache at her core driving her.
He muttered something indecipherable and dropped his body onto hers. The weight of him was heavenly, offering both security and challenge. Looking into her eyes, he slid his hand between them, stroking her nub till she twisted, then he teased her apart. He nipped her lips and slid his tongue into her mouth, possessing her there as he retook her intimate space with not one finger, but two this time, gently teasing so she grew more supple and pliant with every caress. She moaned, drowning in desire. She knew he was preparing her, but she was more than ready now.
‘Please,’ she begged on a breathless groan. ‘Please.’
He nudged her legs a little farther apart and slipped his hand from her only to grip himself, guiding the tip of his length to her slick, heated space.