Chapter 23 #2
As his shirt swept up, his whole body flexed, abs crunching into cobblestones, obliques twisting, shoulders hunching, biceps bulging with the contraction of his arms, the rising white fabric revealing his pale-tanned skin and that swirling black tattoo vining his left side.
He flung the shirts behind him, and they tumbled over the side of the bed.
He tilted his head as he crawled over me. “You like the visual, too. Don’t you?”
“You’re amazing.” I ran my hands up his torso, caressing where his tattoo covered his ribs and pec. My palms felt super-sensitized because I was touching this guy, this man, the hard edges and rounds of his muscular torso. “You’re so amazing.”
He dropped his head and mouthed my shoulder, my chest, and then shoved my other bustier cup aside to suck my breast with the wet heat of his mouth.
For a second, my whole body went limp, giving up and giving myself in surrender.
Then I was arching, my head spinning, and he slipped one strong arm under my back to lift me to him. I was bowed over his arm, my head and hips dangling as he laved each peak until my eyes were creased closed and I could only gasp for air and groan it out.
With a few more deft squeezes of the hooks, he released the bustier off me and shoved it away. It slithered off the side of the bed to join my dress on the floor.
And I was naked except for the black satin panties.
He lifted his head and rolled to lie by my side, bracing his head on one hand as he stretched out beside me, his torso wrapped with muscle and arms bulked, and splayed his hand on my stomach as he ran his gaze down my body.
A stupid old instinct ran through me, that I was shamefully naked, and I slammed my legs shut and tried to cross my arms over my breasts.
“No, my angel.” He caught my wrist and kissed my palm. “Don’t. You’re beautiful, and I like looking at you.”
Dropping my hands was difficult and layered weirdness upon shame. Laying my arms straight-down by my sides seemed like I was crowding Nicolai or poking my elbow into his stomach. My other arm felt loose over there with nothing to do.
Nicolai smiled at my flopping arms and lifted my hand near his side to his cheek. “Here.”
Yes, his jaw in my palm felt right, and I looked up, stretching my neck as his eyes met mine.
“Good,” he said. His bright eyes were steady, watching, his gaze flicking from one of my eyes to the other. “Don’t look away. Eyes on me.”
Nicolai spread his fingers on my stomach again, his eyes never wavering, and then slipped downward past my navel, his fingertips infiltrating the top of my panties and stroking that delicate skin.
His sharp gaze watching me was a question.
“Yes,” even though my throat clamped shut around the word.
His hand delved lower, gently stroking, caressing me.
The experience in the dark back seat of the SUV had been impulsive, my head spinning from champagne and lust, his hand under my dress and layers of clothes between us. It almost could have been an accident.
But now—
Nicolai’s torso radiated heat, warming my side pressed against his.
The late-night stubble on his straight jaw scraped my palm, and I flexed my fingers on his cheek.
His hand between my legs massaged gently, a careful caress that spun in my head.
I reached over with my other hand and tugged at his trousers’ waistband. “These?”
His lips thinned. “I’m keeping them on. Too much temptation.”
His hand moved lower in my panties, reaching the top of me. One finger touched the place between, slick and cool, the pad of his finger lifting pleasure through me with each gentle rub.
Every time he touched me, perfectly right in that spot, a wave of ecstasy billowed up my body, making me lightheaded, making me gasp.
He was above me again, one leg between my knees and the other beside my hip, and he kissed me before he started crawling backwards.
My head was still spinning. I reached, wanting to touch him, wanting his strong body to press me into the bed. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Show me you like it.” His voice was low, gravelly. “I like to see when you like it.”
As he crawled backwards, his mouth left a trail of kisses between my breasts and down my stomach.
Warm skin closed around my ankles, squeezed, and I was slid down the bed, or maybe he flicked the bed out from under me because I couldn’t tell until my eyes flew open and the chandelier zoomed backward across the ceiling.
My heels found and then slipped off the mattress’s edge.
When I half-sat up on my elbows and looked down my stomach, down my legs, Nicolai’s eyes were bright, and he caught my gaze from where he kneeled on the floor, his forearms resting on my bare knees like a king lounging with his hands on the arms of his throne.
“No talking, pillow princess. Close your eyes.”
Princess. Heh.
I shut them again, darkness all around me, and fell backward.
His hands pressed back on my knees, lifting them, and then my lower legs rested on warmth, on skin, on—
I slitted my eyes and peeked.
—on his shoulders.
His breath, sultry and humid in the cool air of the hotel room, misted over the inside of the arch of my right foot. He kissed that skin that should have been ticklish, but the warmth, the pressure, his touch, soothed me like a massage that could, should, become more.
He kissed the inside of my thigh from my knee, angling down. “So damn soft.”
I was shivering from his touch, still stretching from the compressing energy, and I peeked at him, past my boobs, holding my leg pressed against his mouth.
His eyes slipped to the side and caught my gaze, and he turned his head halfway, looking at me. “Your skin is like velvet. So beautiful.”
He placed my heel on the edge of the bed, and his eyes locked on mine.
There was nothing I wouldn’t do for this man.
That was it? I’d known him just over a day and he showed me a little attention, kissed me like he meant it, and I was gone?
Yeah, maybe.
Evaluating my feelings seemed like a problem for future-Lexi. Right now, I wanted to feel his hands and breath on my body, touch his skin, and not let go.
Nicolai gripped my thighs, strong fingers, indenting just a little bit into my flesh. “Delicate. So delicate. I don’t want to hurt you, and yet I can’t fucking help myself. I fucking can’t stop touching you.”
My whole body was quivering, wanting and afraid and desperate and starving. My arms slid out from under me to the side.
White laser-light sparkles flashed over the ceiling, twisting and spinning in circles. I thought they were from the chandelier, softly swaying in the air-conditioning breeze, but when I curled my hand into a fist, the spangles jolted over the white plaster.
No, the flashes of broken light were laser-refractions from my wedding ring set, still on my hand.
“Close your eyes, angel,” Nicolai said. “Close them. Or I’ll blindfold you.”
With my eyes closed, my body oriented on him. The velvet comforter was soft under my back.
He touched the outsides of my hips, and the elastic of my panties cut into my stomach and back as he dragged them down, and then over my thighs, and down my legs, and he lifted my feet to take them off me.
I was bare to him.
Before my other wedding to Jimmy, I’d gone to the spa at the hotel and had everything waxed from my waist to my pedicure in preparation for our wedding night, and I was still smooth.
Nicolai murmured, “So pretty.”
When I peeked again, he was looking between my open legs.
My whole body wanted to tremble, but the heat and soft sucks of his mouth crawled up the inside of my leg, a slow, deliberate quest that made my head pound from wanting him.
His teeth nipped the top of my thigh, and he pushed my thighs apart to suckle the crease where my panties’ elastic had been, and then he was there.
Feathery touches of his tongue first, then more, and more, and then a wave.
My knees folded, and my legs rocked up to my sides as he pressed me open to him, the warmth of his mouth caressing the tender skin.
Then a deeper kiss licking into me, and pressure at my entrance again. Gentle intrusion filled my core.
More this time than in the car. Gentle, careful pressure and then slow friction, movement within me, a caress inside me, the pleasure coming from within me, not just that electric jolt as his tongue circled the top of my folds.
The tension tangled me into knots. “Nico, Nicolai please—”
He didn’t reply, and thank God because I would have sobbed if he’d stopped.
“Nicolai, I’m—” My voice cracked. “Nicolai, please!”
Gentle suction, rougher friction within my folds, the deep pleasure inside rocking me backward with each stroke of his hand and compressing my breath and my body within.
I couldn’t see, couldn’t think, couldn’t stop.