“Why didn’t you run when I gave you the chance, Melanie?”
She pulls in a breath through slightly parted lips, but it’s nothing close to a denial. The slender bicep caught in my loose hold offers no resistance at all. She won’t fight this any more than I can.
I’m still holding the whisky bottle in my left hand, but I move my right up the curve of her shoulder, then into the warm silk of her hair. Her breathing speeds in time with mine. Her eyes pull me in as I lower my head to hers. Our mouths meet and a rough groan rumbles out of me, half in curse for my own weakness, and half for hers.
Her lips are softer than I imagined, giving way beneath mine as I curve my palm around to the back of her head and pull her closer. I want to be careful with her. I’ve already scared her enough. I want to be gentle, even though this desire inside me burned right past that marker the instant she followed me out of the studio.
She moans against my lips, and her indrawn gasp is all the permission I need to sweep my tongue into the sweet inferno of her mouth. Her hands move up to my shoulders, and for the briefest second I wait to feel her push me away. She doesn’t kiss like a woman who belongs to another man. She kisses like a woman created specifically to drive me mad.
Still, I can’t ignore the fact that she’s isn’t mine. No matter how right she feels in my arms, against my questing mouth, she doesn’t belong there.
I wait to feel her retreat, but it doesn’t come.
Lifting up on her bare toes, she brings herself closer. Her palms create two points of heat that root me in place as I deepen our kiss. I try to rationalize it’s the whisky burning away my control with this woman, but that’s a lie.
It’s her. It’s the incandescent flame that is Melanie Laurent.
It’s us, on fire together.
And I fucking can’t get enough.
Arousal pounds in every pulse point in my body. I’ve been enduring the agony of that lust since the minute she arrived at my Lenox Hill address this morning in another prim summer dress, her naturally beautiful face pink and fresh, devoid of makeup or artifice, looking for all the world like a virgin on her way to be sacrificed.
And I am the Beast lurking in the dark, intent on devouring her.
A fitting growl unfurls in my throat at the very idea. The erection I’ve been trying to ignore all morning has surged to rampant life now. I can’t get enough of the taste of her kiss, my tongue thrusting and demanding, my hips crushing against hers.
I drag her closer with my right hand still tangled in the soft hair at her nape.
I need her.
I think I’ve needed this woman even before she had the misfortune of walking into my club those weeks ago. Christ, I needed her even before I heard the name Daniel Hathaway and set out to claim some overdue payback. I just didn’t know how much I’d need her, need this, until I met her.
I let go of her neck and bring my hand around to the front of her. She’s free to move away, free to leave, and some desperate part of me hopes like hell she will. Instead, she moans against my questing mouth and I am lost.
Her sweet summer dress is already half-opened in front. Her breasts are bare beneath it, her nipples peaked and hard as pebbles under my palm as I run my trembling hand over one, then the other, caressing another moan out of her parted lips.
She’s hot against me, her breath deep and rapid, her heart galloping at a pace to match my own. Her soft belly contracts as I skim my fingers downward. Her skin is impossibly soft, as warm and smooth as velvet under my rough fingertips.
Without breaking the contact of our mouths, I let my touch drift lower, down into the trimmed, silky curls of her sex. The fact that she’s not shaved bare as a baby or waxed into the mere suggestion of a grown woman had made me hard as granite when I first watched her strip for me in my study back in the city. Now, with her body arching against me and the sweet, earthy scent of her arousal swamping my senses, I am beyond erect.
My cock throbs with hunger for her.
Everything male in me is gnashing with the need to taste her. To take her.
She gasps into my mouth as I cup her pussy in my palm and give the tender flesh a possessive caress. She’s drenched and hot, searing my fingertips as I delve into the wet seam of her sex. I push inside, groaning at the snug fit of her around my finger.
She moves with me, not fighting the invasion as I explore her tightness. She melts into my palm, her juices searing my skin. I can’t resist seeking out the swollen bud of her clit. With one finger inside her, my thumb caresses the taut pearl until her breath pants into my mouth as I kiss her and a climax shudders through her.
“Oh, God,” she whispers brokenly around my fevered kisses.
My curse is guttural, a strangled noise. It’s all I can manage when every cell in my body is ablaze with the need to get my aching cock inside her. “Christ, Melanie. I want to fuck you so bad.”
If her breathless moan in response is meant to be a denial, my lust-fogged brain isn’t getting the message.
One hand on her isn’t enough. Not when the animal in me is gnashing with the impulse to throw her over my shoulder and drag her off