Emily …
Shane’s eyes glint with satisfaction at my agreement but he doesn’t release me. Instead, he spreads my arms until they align with the railing, his body draped over mine and my nipples rasping against the starched material of his shirt. He lingers there, pressed against me, his teeth scraping my shoulder. Tiny darts of pleasure shoot down my arm, intensified when he licks the offended area. I shut my eyes with the impact of a breeze rushing over me, and while it is chilly, it does nothing to cool all the places he’s made hot.
His lips traveled over the skin his teeth and tongue have already visited, to my neck, my jaw, and then settling a breath from my mouth, his breath a warm fan promising me a kiss he does not deliver. He lingers right there, teasing me, driving me crazy, his hands flexing over mine, as if in warning. A beat later, he releases them and me, putting a step between us, and leaving me free to let go of the railing, and I almost do but his withdrawal seems to be a message. He won’t touch me if I let go of the railing. My grip tightens on the steel beneath my palm, holding on the way I want him to hold on to me.
“Close your eyes,” he orders.
I blanch, already feeling exposed and vulnerable. “What?”
“Close your eyes, Emily.”
This time it’s a command and I have no idea why, but I not only willingly take the order, I’m wet and achy, and I want this man more than I have ever wanted anyone. My reward is the very thing I want most. Him touching me, anywhere, everywhere, and for now that means his hands cradling my neck. “Don’t open them or—”
“You’ll stop what you’re doing,” I supply.
His breath fans my ear. “I’m glad you understand.”
“You haven’t done anything to stop yet so I feel—”
He kisses me, a lush slide of his tongue against mine gone too soon. “You feel what?”
“Like I want you to kiss me again.”
“Not yet,” he says, and like his mouth, his hands are once again gone, but I can feel him close. I can feel him everywhere and nowhere. I know he is a lean away, a reach of my hands that might as well be bound. But then, I wouldn’t choose to give him control and I think … I think he is all about choices. I think I’ve given him more control than I’ve ever give anyone.
The air shifts abruptly and I know he is no longer as close as he was moments before. I listen for movement, and there are random, barely there sounds but nothing I can place. Is he undressing? I hope. Maybe? An array of sensations roll through me. Nerves. Eagerness. Arousal. I can barely take it. “Shane.”
“Open your eyes.”
I blink my eyes open and he’s sitting in front of me on a chair. Another blink and he’s moved it, and himself, closer. “Don’t let go of the railing,” he warns and I’ve barely processed that order before he’s cupping my backside and dragging me to his lap to straddle him, the angle forcing me to lean into the glass wall behind me.
Fear rushes through me, my pulse all over the place. “Shane, damn it. “What if the glass breaks?”
“Easy, sweetheart,” he murmurs, his hand flattening on my belly. “It’s reinforced and there’s horizontal steel bands supporting it. I have you and I won’t let you go. Relax.”
I inhale and try to calm my body. “You’re sure it won’t break?”
“One hundred percent.” He leans over me and kisses the spot between my breasts, cupping one of them, and looks up at me, his eyes smoldering as he says, “Trust me.”
Trust. The word guts me and throws me back into a reality I don’t want to visit but he doesn’t let me stay there long. He fingers my nipples, sending a rush of sensation through my body with the delicate, sensual caresses that become rougher and rougher. I am panting again, conflicting pain and pleasure wreaking havoc on my body.
And his assault on my senses doesn’t stop there. His mouth is still between my breasts, tongue tracking towards my nipple. I arch into him, and on some level I know I’m increasing the pressure on the wall behind me, pressing harder, but I no longer seem to be capable of caring. His mouth closes around me and he suckles deeply, and at the same moment, his hand on my belly moves lower, his thumb stroking my clit. Every part of me is alive, aroused, and unaware of anything but what he is making me feel.
I am so on edge that I barely register the way he cups my backside and shifts our bodies. There is just the moment his mouth is in the most intimate part of me, closed around my nub, while his fingers slide inside me. And he is licking and teasing and I am … I am on the edge of that cliff where I want to be but don’t want to leave. But he pumps his fingers into me, and suckles me deeper and I can’t stop it. My body tightens and I can’t move or breathe. Another second and my sex clenches around his fingers, my body spasming with such intensity I’m quaking inside and out. I slip into a sweet, pleasure-laden oblivion that seems to last forever and yet not long enough.
The present comes back to me with several blinks, and Shane seems to know, his fingers sliding from inside me, leaving me aware of the angle of my body that traps me against the glass at my back. “Shane,” I whisper, a plea he answers by flattening his hand on my back and dragging me from the wall to sit fully on top of him.
He cups the back of my head, bringing my lips to his. “Now I taste like you,” he proclaims, his lips slanting over mine, the taste of him, of his desire, raw and ripe, but there is more. There is a salty sweet taste that is me, and I don’t expect it to turn me on, but it does, or he does. And the way my hands are on his shoulders, and his arms, and he isn’t stopping me, only drives my need to a whole new level.
I moan, impossibly aroused all over again, brutally aware of the empty spot inside me yet to be filled. He deepens the kiss, and I sink into it, tunnel my hands in the thick, dark strands of his hair, but I can taste the restraint in him, the part of him he’s containing, not yet setting free. And I want it free. “You have to get undressed,” I pant into his mouth, and I have no idea what gets into me, but I reach up and grip his shirt, and yank, fully intending to repeat what he’d done to my blouse. I fail. Nothing happens aside from heat rushing to my cheeks. I look up at Shane, who is stone faced as I admit, “In my mind that went much differently.”
He stares at me, unreadable, intense, and then I don’t know how it happens but we are both laughing. “Not as you planned, huh?”
“No. But I’m not exactly what anyone would call a seductress.”
“I like you just the way you are.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“But I’m about to.” He seals that sexy promise by dragging my hands to his shoulders and announcing, “Hold on. We’re going inside.” He’s standing by the time the warning is issued, cupping my backside.
He starts walking and I cling to his neck, my legs around his waist, my heels still somehow on my feet, thigh highs the only other thing I am wearing. But it’s not being naked on the outside that has a hotspot in my chest. It’s how oddly naked inside I feel with this man, like he really can see inside me and discover my secrets. It’s guilt that makes me paranoid. I hate the guilt. I hate the bad decisions that have changed my life. No. One bad decision. One stupid, stupid, decision.
Shane stops in the living area, and sets me down on top of a giant tan ottoman, some sort of soft material framed by leather replacing his hands on my bare backside, and one of my shoes comes off. I kick the other one free of my foot and he settles on one knee in front of me, reaching for the buttons on his shirt, his lips curving. “I’ll do it this time.”
My worries fade, amazed that the same person who stirs darker emotions in me manages to make me smile so easily. “I could try again,” I offer.
“Not necessary,” he assures me, and already four buttons down, he reaches behind him, and pulls the shirt over his head, a sprinkle of dark hair over his chest, and delicious muscle ripping as he tosses it on the coffee table behind him.
My gaze immediately lands on the unexpected tattoo on his arm of a lion, with an eagle sitting on its head with its wings spread. I reach out and touch it. “Why a lion and an eagle?” I ask.
His expression tightens, unreadable but hard, and I do not miss the fact that he is not touching me.
“The eagle is knowledge, strength, and leadership. The lion is cunning and vicious. He’ll rip your throat out if you give him the chance.”
I blanch. “Are you the lion or the eagle? Or both?”
He reaches for me, dragging me to the floor in front of him and then turning me to face the ottoman, his big body framing mine, his hands cupping my breasts. “I’m the man who’s wanted to fuck you for hours and it’s time for me to be inside you.”
An onslaught of sensations and emotions overwhelm me, and I decide I’ve hit a nerve with Shane, like he does too easily with me. “You’re the one who won’t get undressed,” I accuse.
He nips my shoulder as if punishing me for seeing too much, and this time it’s harder than when we were outside. “Shane,” I object at the same instant his tongue licks away the sting, his mouth finding my ear.
“Don’t move.” He doesn’t wait for my agreement, lifting off of me, and the truth is, I could turn around but I don’t want to move. I’ve stirred some demon in him the way he does me, and he is taking us back to the place we were meant to be. Sex. Just sex. He wants it. I want it.
There is movement behind me, the rip of a package that has to be a condom, and almost immediately Shane’s wrapped around me again, his hand on my breast, the other sliding the thick ridge of his erection along my sex. And then he is inside me, burying himself to the hilt and I can’t breathe for the sensations rolling through me.
His mouth finds my ear. “You feel as damn good as I knew you would.” He pulls back then, and I am certain he will pull out, before he finally drives into me again, deep, hard, pleasure spiraling through me.
Now both hands are on my breasts, his body snuggly molded to mine, and I swear I lose everything but this moment, and the next. My fingers curl into my palms, the ottoman too wide for me to hold the sides. I arch into the next thrust of his hips and he lifts me until we are both almost upright, me leaning into him. We stay like that a moment not moving, just breathing together, just feeling each other, and then he’s moving again, his fingers sliding to my clit and caressing.
I can’t move. Not at this angle, but I don’t have to wither. He moves for us both, and oh so well. I give myself to it, to him, and just feel. A tight ball is forming in my sex, and somehow my hand is in his, and he’s pressing it between my legs, using it to please me. And somehow he thrusts all the right ways and I’m gone. I’m lost and my head falls forward with the tightening of my body. I come with a fierce quake of my body, my sex spasming around him, and this deep, guttural sound rumbles from his chest, telling me that he’s right there with me.
I have goosebumps all over my skin when I realize it’s over, and we’re just together, unmoving, still holding each other. Shane leans me forward, and I catch myself on my hands. He pulls out and I am instantly awash in a cluster of emotions that have me spinning around only to find his hands on the cushion on either side of me, his strong arms caging me.
I turn around, and he sits there, staring at him. And he is stone, his expression is unreadable, his jaw set hard. I hold my breath, waiting for something I think he wants to say but has not. “There is nothing about you, or this night, that is uncomplicated or what I expected.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I say, and it’s true. Or maybe it’s not, but this time it’s not an intentional lie. “What are you saying?”
“Think about it. You’ll figure it out. Stay here, I’ll be right back.” And just like that he’s on his feet, pulling up his pants, which he never even took off,. I’ve been naked on top of the damn city, and he never even undressed. He turns away and I watch as he crosses toward the fireplace and then disappears down a hallway.