faded. She stopped tugging at her hands. They stared at each other, somber and cautious.
Raine took a deep breath, and broke the heavy silence. “You can, you know.”
“Can what?” His eyes were cool, watchful.
“Trust me “ she said.
His mouth hardened, and a tiny muscle pulsed in his jaw. His hand tightened painfully around her wrists, and she gasped in alarm.
“Don't go there,” he said flatly. “I'm having a good time. Don't ruin it.”
“Why would trust ruin it?” He did not reply, but slowly let go of her hands. She rubbed her aching wrists, and gently persisted. 'Tell me, Seth. Why can't you—”
“Drop it.” He yanked her down against his chest and rolled her over, pinning her beneath him. His face was frozen, but his eyes were like pits of fire, burning with inexplicable rage.
She gazed up at him, shocked and bewildered. “But I—”
She knew this was important, dangerously important, but she dared not push it. She, of all people, knew a stone wall when she hit one. If she pushed him he was going to get furiously angry.
Raine did not know this man at all. And he was very big and strong, and fully aroused, and she was lying underneath him, stark naked
She did not want him furiously angry with her.
“All right,” she whispered.
The coiled tension in his body relaxed, almost imperceptibly. He shifted against her, lifting off enough of his weight so that she could breathe. They stared at each other, afraid to speak.
He was hiding something behind the rigid mask of his face. She read it in his eyes. An aching loneliness that spoke directly to her own.
Something turned over in her chest, sweetly painful. She pried her arms out from where they were pinned between their bodies. She cradled his face in her hands, stroking the harsh, angular lines of his jaw and cheekbone. She slid her fingers through the silky black brush of his hair and pulled his face to hers in a burst of tenderness, covering it with soft kisses; his cheek, his jaw, the corner of his mourn.
Her impulse was to soothe and comfort, but it had the opposite effect. Heat flared inside him, like a flame leaping when gasoline was thrown upon it. His arms tightened, and his mouth slanted hungrily across hers, his tongue thrust into her mouth. The hot brand of his penis swelled against her stomach, prodding her. She responded, softening and opening even as she braced herself for the stinging discomfort of penetration.
He wrenched himself suddenly up and off of her with a low curse, turning his back and sitting on the edge of the bed. “God, you are dangerous,” he muttered hoarsely. “You keep driving me to the brink.”
Raine pulled herself up onto her knees. “Sorry,” she said, in a small, careful voice.
He twisted around and looked at her, his eyes sweeping the length of her body. He shook his head, passing his hand roughly over his face. “Listen carefully,” he said. “Ground rules for the next round are, you keep your hands to yourself, and make believe my cock doesn't exist until I tell you otherwise. Got it?”
She gazed at him, bewildered. “What am I supposed to do, then?”
His grin flashed, brief and ironic. “Nothing,” he said. “You let me keep my promise. You let me touch you and pet you and go down on you and make you come, over and over.”
“Oh,” she said in a tiny voice.
He reached out and cupped one of her breasts. “Yeah,” he went on softly. “And then when you're liquid and shivering and boiling hot—” his hand slid down over her belly, then lower, “—when you're writhing and begging me, when you've forgotten your own name, then we'll try this again. Then you'll see how well we fit together.”
“Oh,” she said inanely. Her heart thudded heavily in her chest
His fingers tangled themselves tenderly into the curls between her legs. He slid his hand lower and pushed her thighs apart. “Put your arms around my neck,” he breathed into her ear.
She did as he asked, quivering. She already knew how this would play. He would strip her bare, and watch her with that calculating glitter in his dark eyes as he pushed her over the cliff, utterly in command of himself and of her.
Her arms tightened around his neck as his hands roved expertly over her body. She wanted him to lose control, too. She wanted him to follow her over the brink. The defiant thought took form on a deep, hidden level of her mind, even as she ostensibly yielded to him. He would never willingly let her push him so far, but she would find a way inside his defenses.
Seth buried his face against her neck, biting her just hard enough to make her gasp, and parted the soft folds of her sex with exquisite care as he licked the tender place on her throat that he had just bitten. “I'm going to make you come while I'm inside you,” he told her, his voice rough with excitement “I can't wait to feel your orgasm when I'm shoved as deep inside you as I can go, and you're clenched around me.”
She moaned, her legs opening, seduced by his words and his tender, ravenous kisses. His teeth sank into her shoulder, tasting, licking her while he spread her own hot, silky juices tenderly over her labia. “That's right, baby, that's perfect,” he crooned. “You're already getting ready for me, soft and wet for me.”
He thrust a finger inside of her, a hiss of excitement rasping through his teeth. “Move against my hand,” he demanded. “Show me how you'll move when my cock is inside you. Move!”
His voice cracked like a whip across her naked nerve endings, making her jerk in his grasp. She clutched his neck for support and tentatively rose up on her knees, acutely conscious of the blunt presence of his long ringer invading her body. She sank down onto him with a shuddering moan, pushing him deep inside herself. She could barely hear his low, rough encouragement as her sheath tightened and clutched around him. She slowly found a rhythm, working herself against his clever, thrusting fingers with increasing urgency until her hips were moving sensually against his hand, craving more of the sweet, gliding friction, straining for release.
He grasped her hips with his other hand, forcing her to stop, and she struggled against him, shaking with confusion as his words penetrated her consciousness. “Not yet. Not yet, sweetheart,” he was repeating. “If you wait a little longer, I can take you higher.”
“I can't wait” she sobbed out, her thighs clenching desperately around his hand. “Please, Seth.”
“You can't wait, hmm? Do you want me to fuck you now?”
In another lifetime, his crude language would have chilled and offended her, but she was beyond pride, beyond all boundaries. “Yes. Please. I can't wait,” she pleaded, hiding her face against his shoulder.
He seized the hair at the nape of her neck and pulled her head back until she was forced to stare directly into his eyes. The full power of his forceful personality blazed out at her, and he smiled, a cool, dangerous smile, and slid his tongue slowly across her trembling lower lip. He took it tenderly between his teeth, nipping her. “You can't, but you will” he murmured, as he withdrew his finger slowly from her clinging depths. “You will, because I'm not giving you a choice.”
The dark current in his voice was threatening to pull her under, into cold, unknown depths. She writhed in his tight grasp, and the fluttering surge of fear that she had felt before returned, sharper and colder. “Why are you doing this, Seth?” she asked in a shaky voice. “You can have anything you want from me. There's no need to play power games.”
Soft laughter rumbled in his chest, and she felt his mocking smile against her mouth. “Two reasons,” he said. “One, power games the way I play them are going to make you come ... screaming.”
“Seth—”
He silenced her with another long, savage kiss. “Two,” he went on, his voice deliberate. “Two is because it's all about power in the end, angel. And if you don't know that by now, it's time you learned.”
There it was, hard and cold, a gauntlet thrown down in front of her. It chilled her melting excitement as nothing else could have.
She went very still in his hard grasp, and stared into his eyes. “I think you're wrong,” she said quietly.
Tension was building inside him like a deadly wave gathering force. She could see it in his narrowed eyes, in the muscle that twitched in his jaw, but still, she somehow found the force of will to hold his gaze.
A low, bitter laugh rumbled in his throat. He pushed her down onto her back and shoved her thighs apart, so suddenly that she didn't have time to react. “We'll see how wrong I am,” he muttered, arching over her.
Something snapped inside her at the savage, predatory look on his face. Like a wild animal suddenly realizing
