I took the bottle with shaking hands. I’d already had the equivalent of a couple of shots. But I put the glass neck to my mouth and tipped it back until the liquor ran like silver fire over my tongue and down my throat. I lowered it and took a long breath, the club’s warm air suddenly freezing next to the burn of the alcohol. “Limits are good,” I rasped. “Limits keep things safe.”
He smirked at that and patted his leg. It took me a second to realize that he wanted me to sit there. I stood up and walked over to him, my legs trembling.
I went to sit sideways on his leg, like a princess riding side-saddle on a unicorn. He admonished me with a little shake of his head and an amused crush of those sensuous lips.
I swallowed, stood slightly, and sat again. This time, I sat back on his leg so that I was astride it. I managed to keep my knees together, though.
I kept my eyes forward because I thought that, somehow, if I did that, I might not lose control. I felt his hand on my back—so warm!—and then sweeping up through my hair, letting the strands spill and play over his fingers as his thumb ascended my spine. I arched my back in response, trembling.
Suddenly, he lifted his knee, taking his foot off the ground and raising me into the air as if I weighed nothing. I slid backward, my thighs opening, my heels skittering for purchase on the floor. My ass pressed against his groin. His mouth was at my ear, his accent wrapping each syllable in ice before it slipped into my brain. “What are you really doing in Moscow, Arianna?”
My whole body went tense. My feet were still off the ground—I had no traction, no way of struggling up from his lap. I tried to lurch forward but that only made my ass grind more firmly against the hardness I could feel at his groin. Cold fear erupted inside me, freezing my brain, numbing my response. I opened my lips but nothing came out. I’m blown. I’m blown!
But then his mouth was at my ear again. “You come on vacation by yourself, but I don’t think it’s to meet people. You are too…” he fumbled for the phrase in English. “In own head.”
Introvert. A language geek, I thought. I’m just a language geek. I nodded, still rigid with fear.
His hands were on my thighs, steadying me as I balanced precariously on his leg. He still hadn’t lowered his knee. I glanced up for a second and spied the blonde again. She looked even angrier than before, and her gaze was locked on my open legs, and on Luka’s leg between them.
His hands started to slide upward, tugging the dress with them. I gulped. We were in the shadows, but still in open view of everyone. I watched as the hem rose up my stockinged thighs. “I think,” Luka said, “You came here to find something you couldn’t find at home. Something you needed.”
I shook my head. My cover wasn’t blown but I didn’t like the way this was going.
His lips were even closer, now, stroking the super-sensitive edges of my ear as he spoke. “I think you lie awake in America thinking of bad men.”
I felt myself flush with embarrassment, remembering the way I’d played his phone calls over and over. I had fantasized about him, but I hadn’t come out here to chase after him….
Had I?
One hand settled on my shoulder and then slid down my collar bone to my throat. I swallowed slowly. The feel of it resting there, massive and powerful, was frightening. Intoxicating. Dammit, how does he do this to me?!
The hand slowly rose, stroking up my throat to the underside of my chin and tipping my head back. My hair cushioned my head against his shoulder. Now I was nestled in his lap, my eyes looking up at him. My legs were either side of his, the hard bulge of his cock between the cheeks of my ass. Why wasn’t I running? Why was I just sitting there, staring up at him? I could feel the heat starting to build inside me, spiraling up in urgent waves.
He was looking at me with hooded eyes and his voice had gone deeper than I’d ever known it, almost a growl. The music was loud, but he could have whispered to me from twenty feet away and that voice would have carried. “I think you came looking for me,” he said.
I stiffened. The heat was rolling through me, leaving me throbbing and drunk with desire. My arms reached up and grabbed for him, seeking anything solid to cling onto and finding his shoulders. His fingers lightly touched my wrist and then traced all the way along my arm until it reached my upturned face. He brushed my cheek. “And I think that maybe...I’ve been looking for someone like you.”
I swallowed. “What am I?” But I already knew, because I’d already heard him say it.
He smiled a lazy, cat-like smile. “An innocent,”
I thought of all those sophisticated, beautiful Russian women. “Why do you want an innocent?” I croaked.
His lips twisted, the smile growing cruel. “To corrupt her.”
A deep, liquid heat pooled at my core and then rippled out to fill me, leaving me breathless. My own reaction scared me. But there was something else. When he’d said it, there’d been another flicker in those burning, frozen eyes. A glimpse of something behind the mask, a need that went beyond just lust. I felt my heart lift and open a little, tentatively unfurling for the first time in many years.
And then I saw him lean down, his eyes closing, and—
Oh God, he was going to—
I had time for a single, overwhelmed breath before his lips came down on mine. My hands came up off his shoulders in shock and I grabbed for his head—I’m not sure what I had in mind. Push him away? Pull him in harder?
His fingers knitted with mine, holding my arms out from my body.
The kiss was as urgent as that need I’d seen inside him, a release of something that must have been building up all day. His lips brushed mine and I just had time to take a shuddering breath. I could feel his need to own me, to possess me utterly. His tongue toyed with the chink between my lips. He didn’t want to force his way in; he wanted me to open up to him.
I opened.
His kiss was like a drug entering my body, one made entirely of blackness and heat and sin. I felt my insides turn to liquid, my legs at last relaxing and slumping either side of his, no longer caring who saw. My hands squeezed his and he squeezed back. His tongue thrust deep, exploring me, filling me, and I saw stars. I drew in air through my nose but it didn’t do anything to cool me or clear my head. I was sinking into him, becoming one with him, my ass grinding unconsciously against his cock through his jeans.
I felt as if some part of me that had never been connected before had just been hooked up to a live wire.
He broke the kiss, then kissed me again, open-mouthed and panting. His leg lifted more, tipping me, and I slid back until my whole back was pressed against his chest. I could feel my skirt sliding higher, pulled by his raised knee. I could feel air on the tops of my hold-ups, on my bare thighs. How much is on display?! But I was past caring.
The kiss went on and on, dark heat soaking down from my lips to my core...and I drank it down hungrily. Because on the way through me, the heat was awakening something, coaxing it from a three year slumber. Not my lust. Not even my closed-off heart. Something deeper and more vital than that. It felt as if he was waking up me.
He finally lifted his lips and it was like something had been ripped from me. I actually tried to pull him back towards me. He was staring down at me with an expression that I guessed matched my own.
Total. Loss. Of control.
But then he shook his head minutely and glanced towards the dance floor.
I sort of shook myself and returned to reality. I was still nestled in his lap, much tighter against him than I had been before. I flushed as I realized I was basically sitting on his groin, legs spread languidly either side of him, my dress up around my hips.
I let out a strangled groan and shoved the hem down as fast as I could, jerking it awkwardly out from between our bodies. I heard him give a low chuckle and the sound of it made me shudder in a way that was worryingly pleasant.
Get it together! This is not a guy you can lose control with! But I already had. Would again, as soon as he touched me. The vodka had made me merely tipsy, but I was drunk on Luka Malakov, utterly wasted. Right now, I’ll do anything he wants me to.
“Let’s dance,” he said in my ear, pushing me up to standing. I didn’t really have a choice, even if I’d been lucid enough to protest, because he almost lifted me to my feet. As we walked towards the dance floor, I wondered why he’d interrupted the kiss to go do something as tame as dance. Did he want to slow things down? That didn’t seem like his way at all.
Then we were in among the press of bodies. He stopped us in the shallows of the crowd, where bodies ground and twisted against each other. Where dancing was just an excuse.
Oh.
He swung around in front of me and suddenly I was up against him, as close as we had been in New York. Then, I hadn’t been able to move back; now, I didn’t want to. He was so damn big, up close, his chest like a solid wall. I laid my hands on his shoulders and pushed back to give me time to think but, as soon as I lost the warmth of him blazing through his shirt, I couldn’t think at all. I pressed myself close again. I needed that contact with him like I needed to breathe.
I looked up at him, lost..., and immediately lost myself even more when I saw the hunger in his eyes. There was an edge of anger to it...as if he resented wanting me so much.
As if he’d make me pay, for making him want me. But I’m not doing anything!
We began to dance.