Her mind hurt from all the plans, all the scheming, all the different possibilities of where this night could have gone and would go now. She wanted him. She needed him to take it all away and fill her with the simplicity of a desire that was already stoking its flames within her.
The air changed, and she couldn’t tell if it was her fault or his. She could hear her breathing—loud in her mind, full and quick—and struggled to slow it. She fought it because she knew that even just one more touch from Odir would turn those flames into an inferno.
Never before had she experienced desire like this. Oh, she had wanted him before their marriage—she had lusted after him. But now that she knew where that desire led...now that she knew what could happen between them...it was enough to make her heart explode within her chest.
‘Eloise...’
He spoke her name as if it were a warning. As if it were a promise.
‘Make me forget. Just for now, Odir. The morning will come, but not yet. So for now...please.’
She hated the way her voice begged him. She hated the helplessness it made her feel. She hated that she feared he would refuse her request. It was a fear so much greater than she could ever have imagined.
Odir shifted on the bench and pulled her back against his chest. He was bewitched by her. Somehow she had done something to him—something that called to his every sense, that dragged him back from dark thoughts and turned him towards an impossible desire. His arousal was quick and hard, and he knew there was no way he could stop the avalanche of need crashing through his body.
‘One day, habibti,’ he managed to grind out. ‘One day I will take you to a proper bed. But right now I just can’t.’
She lay between his legs, her slim pale shoulders just close enough for him to press kisses on skin bare of the black material that gathered around her neck. He thrust his tongue out to taste her, clean and fresh from the shower. There was no perfume, no flavour of anything but her in his mouth, and he wanted more.
He gathered her hands in front of her and ran his open palms up her toned arms, spreading his thumbs out to feel the swell of her breasts, and she shivered in his hold, pressing down against his erection. He pressed his hips upwards against her. God, she was going to kill him.
He flattened his palms against the sides of her breasts and pushed, passing the pads of his thumbs over her hard nipples visible through the thin silk fabric, and he thanked every god that anyone had ever prayed to that she wasn’t wearing a bra.
She twisted in his arms, her mouth seeking his, but he pulled his lips away from her reach and almost laughed at the sound of her frustrated growl. Once again she reminded him of a tigress—powerful and feline, her every move a sensual delight—and he was teasing them both.
He ran his hands across the silk covering the flat of her breastbone, sliding them further to the juncture of her thighs, relishing in the warmth between her legs, gathering the fabric beneath his hands as he pressed down.
Enough. He wanted his skin on hers. He reached beneath her slender neck and released the halter neck of the dress, baring her breasts to the night sky. In the shadows her pale skin shone like marble, but it held none of the qualities of that cool stone. Eloise was flesh and blood and he wanted it all.
He caressed her breasts, skin on skin, the heat of his hands against her cooling skin enough to drive him mad—just as mad as he was driving her. She arched her back, thrusting her small but perfect breasts into his palms. Her legs were restless against his and he knew what she was searching for.
He gathered the skirts up around her waist, felt her long, shapely thighs pressing outwards against his and nearly lost his breath. She wasn’t wearing the thong that he had enjoyed so greatly before, she was naked, and he knew in that instant, just as he had known earlier, that nothing would prevent him from taking her.
He slid a finger into the blond curls between her thighs and her groan of need floated on the night air. He played with her, his fingers delighting over the small bundle of nerves at her core, her gasps like music to his ears. Again and again her need was a vocal thing, encouraging him further.
He had never seen a woman like this, glorious and lost within the world of sensation that he was providing. He had never thought that pleasing a woman could be more pleasurable than seeking his own, but he had been wrong. This was truly and singularly the most erotic thing he had ever experienced. His wife—Eloise—was the most stunningly sensual creature, and it was his name on her lips. Over and over again, pleading, begging, needing.
Her body was taut, every muscle, every line of her poised on the brink of climax, and he had the power to give her that. He withdrew his hand, preventing her from disappearing over the edge, and smiled into her neck as she growled her frustration once again. He revelled in the control he had over her, wanting to take her to the brink again and again, wanting her completely mindless, as she had requested.
If that made him a bastard, so be it. But then she did something that made him realise, once again, that he should not ever underestimate his wife...
* * *
The moment he withdrew his hand Eloise knew that he was playing with her. Not that he wouldn’t make good on
