He drew it out, teasing and tempting her, so that by the time he moved between her thighs she’d been shuddering on the edge instead of tipping over into her sugarcoated orgasms.
That was why he eased inside her, slow and sure. Filling her but never quite giving her what she needed to make it over that cliff.
And he fucked her like that, slowing down every time she tensed against him, until she was beating at his shoulders with her fists. Glaring at him, her eyes damp with her sensual misery.
“This is supposed to be fun,” she hissed at him.
He smiled and slowed down even more. “Maybe this is fun for me, Indiana.”
By the time he finally let her come, she had to bite her own fist to keep from alerting half of Prague to their illicit behavior.
When she tried to put a little distance between them as they walked back to the car at last, he didn’t allow it. He pulled her tight, wrapping his arm around her shoulders, and kept her close. Making sure she could feel the heat in him just as he could feel it in her.
As if it marked them both.
When they got back to the villa he did the same thing all over again, but this time stretched out in that wide bed upstairs until she was nothing but a sobbing, writhing, begging mess.
And in the morning when she wouldn’t meet his gaze he fed her, fucked her again, and when she made a move to leave once more, only smiled at her.
“Surely not,” he said. But lazily, as if he didn’t care one way or the other, which made her eyes darken, there where she was sitting cross-legged on the bed. “You had your fun. Surely it’s time I had mine.”
“You already had your fun,” she flared at him, pausing in the act of braiding her hair again to glare at him. “Ruining mine in the process.”
“You seem ruined,” he agreed. “But not in the way you mean, I think.”
“Whatever. I told you, this is supposed to be—”
“Fun, yes.” He lifted a brow. “I never thought I’d see my foolish girl, unafraid to walk into dark alleys and take her chances with questionable men... Afraid.”
“Is that... Are you daring me?”
Stefan shrugged. “If you are too afraid to play with a little intensity, Indiana, I cannot help you with this. I have learned to live with other disappointments.”
He saw a series of emotions move over her heart-shaped face. Temper. Dismay. And then, more interesting, that amusement she usually wore so easily. He had never seen her put it into place in quite that way before. Like she was settling into a mask.
She laughed, because she always laughed. Because he thought she’d decided that made her seem exactly as fun—and as bulletproof—as she thought she needed to be.
“You’re reading this all wrong,” she told him lightly. Always so lightly. “I’m not afraid, I promise. I’m just not an intense person. It’s not how I’m made.”
He thought of the way she’d sobbed beneath him last night, her gaze slick with hunger and need, every part of her so tuned into him it was like its own, sweet agony. He thought of the way she had kissed her way over his scars, finding them in his tattoo and taking her time. Making sure she found every last one of them.
And he knew that she was used to controlling things this way. Her carelessness. Flitting from place to place, lover to lover, to the endless soundtrack of her own laughter.
But Stefan knew she was a liar.
All he did was study her until she flushed. And she did, bright and red.
“Bullshit,” he said.
And he made sure that when he smiled this time, it was a weapon.
CHAPTER SIX
HE WASN’T EVEN touching her and yet Indy felt splayed wide open like they were back in that alley.
She’d thought she’d made such a good choice after playing tourist. After wandering around in the summer night, making them part of the crowds doing the same—and therefore not strung out on their connection and all that electric, breathtaking need—she’d thought she could pull him into a dark alley to reframe the admittedly intense beginning of their relationship.
The joke had been on her. Because he’d wrecked her.
Indy felt turned inside out. She didn’t like it.
“It’s not bullshit,” she said, frowning at him.
It was another beautiful, breezy summer’s day in the Czech Republic. Everything outside the endless sweep of windows was green and lush and beautiful. She could see the bridges spanning the Vltava and the spires of Prague Castle from the center of Stefan’s bed, where he’d ruined her fun. Repeatedly and deliberately, all night long.
Last night she’d been so sure that she had this situation under control. She’d been convinced that she could simply be herself—because she didn’t accept what he’d said, that she was manipulative or unconsciously trying to handle anything—and he would somehow start behaving in a way that made sense to her.
Yeah, she thought now, finishing up her braid while holding that gaze of his. That didn’t work.
Today she was a little bit wiser, maybe. And dressed, thank you. Because she certainly had no intention of prancing around naked in front of him when he was far too good at using her own body against her. One more thing she’d never experienced before, she could admit. Normally she was the one who used her body. And she’d never met anyone who was better at it than she was...until now.
But that didn’t make her afraid. And it didn’t make him right.
“It is bullshit,” he said again, his voice implacable.
And God, the way he looked at her. That hard and steady gaze that left her in absolutely no doubt that he could see straight through her. That he saw everything. Maybe even things she didn’t know about herself, a notion that made her feel far too
