Chapter Seven
CHAPTER SEVEN
S HE AVERTED HER GAZE , MUTTERING , “Quit calling me that.”
“Evie? Why?”
“Because it implies we’re more familiar with each other than we are.”
His hoot of laughter cracked the air like a gunshot.
“Would you stop ,” she implored. “You’re behaving like a child.”
“No, you are. Budapest happened, Evie. Walk out of every restaurant in Manhattan just because I’m there. Tell people you don’t know me and look right through me. I don’t care. It doesn’t change the fact that we turn each other on. Or that I hate it as much as you do.” The bitterness in his voice was an insult.
But she knew exactly why he was being so acrimonious. She resented him for still enthralling her after all this time. She despised him for making her feel more during the dispassionate wrap of her ankle than any other man had ever made her feel with French kisses or romantic gestures.
And she was so tired of feeling stuck and frozen. Rebuffed. Denied. She was stunted by her experience with him because he had been the first and only man she had wanted to have sex with. He had taken her to a height she hadn’t known existed then plunged her abruptly back to earth before abandoning her altogether.
She’d never recovered. It wasn’t even a matter of courage when it came to other men. She simply didn’t want them. She only wanted this man. She feared that would never change and that filled her with despair.
“Well, I’m not going to have sex with a man who is involved with another woman so...” She said it as much to forestall any ideas that might crop up in her own mind as his.
“Cat and I aren’t involved,” he muttered.
“Oh, please. You’re her date for a wedding.”
“Because the timing worked with my takeover of the resort in Airlie Beach.” He was staring dourly toward the water. “My sister has been trying to set us up for a while. I had dinner with her twice before this. We’re not sleeping together. Either,” he added with quiet significance, alluding to her arrangement with Logan.
That shouldn’t make a difference, but it did. There was no obstacle of other people that would have kept her from sleeping with him. Now there was only a potent silence that thickened with sexual tension.
“So what?” she blurted. “We have sex just to get it over with?”
“Possibly the sexiest invitation a man has ever received.”
“Oh, go to hell, Dom! You just said you hate that you feel this way. You think that was the romantic sentiment I’ve been waiting for?”
She immediately wanted to bite back her words, thinking they were too revealing. She braced herself for some arrogant, sarcastic remark, but he only expelled a grim curse.
“We’re like cats in a cage, aren’t we? We’re going to keep swiping at each other until it happens.” He didn’t even turn his head to look at her, but he seemed to cast out a net that snared her.
She felt his proximity. She refused to look at him, either. She was fearful he’d see the tears of frustration standing in her eyes.
Outside, the clouds had turned sooty and thick. The wind was gusting hard enough to pick up the awning and make the shack rock on its pontoons.
“Do you have more condoms?” Dom asked gruffly. “If you don’t, that will end this. I cannot get you pregnant.”
A pang hit deep in the bottom of her heart while a fearful excitement filled her lungs.
Lie , she told herself. Just say no.
“Two. They’re in my bag.”
“You couldn’t lie?” he asked with exasperation, twisting his head around to glare at her.
“You could simply not use them,” she suggested with a bat of her lashes.
A wild flash of lust glinted in his eyes, one that seemed very excited by the idea of naked sex.
“I always use them,” he said in a voice that dropped several octaves so it abraded her skin as he spoke. “And you could say ‘no,’ Evie. Say it,” he commanded.
She stubbornly sealed her lips and lifted her chin in challenge.
“You’re such a pain in my ass.” He reached for her bag where it was lying on the floor and passed it to her, holding onto it when she started to take it. “It would only be sex, Eve. Once. We get it out of our system, then we never tell anyone. We don’t talk about it. We never see each other again. This isn’t the start of something.”
“You’re saying that as if I want it to be.” She noted that he called her Eve when he wanted to impress the gravity of his words upon her.
She took the bag and brought it into her lap, realizing he was doing it again, making her offer him the condoms as a tacit demonstration that this was her choice.
She dug around, brought out a protein bar. “Still hungry?”
“Not for that.” The grit in his voice was making her skin feel too tight to contain her. She remembered that voice all too well.
“You have to tell me you want this, Evie.”
She found the condoms, two squares stuck together, and offered them.
He didn’t take them. He clasped her wrist and said, “You’re shaking. Is that fear?”
“No.” She wished the helpless pang in her voice didn’t make it so obvious this was desire. Yearning.
He lifted the bag off her lap to set it out of the way, then edged into the space between her outstretched leg and dangling calf, pushing her thighs farther apart.
“If you want me to stay on my side of the shack, say so.” He waited a millisecond before he clasped her hips and dragged her to the edge of the counter so the placket of her shorts was flush to the hard ridge inside his.
A squeak left her.
He might have breathed, “Last chance,” then his hand was clasping her ponytail to drag her head back while his mouth came down on hers.
Lightning struck again, strong and sharp enough to hurt. Eve moaned and his arms wrapped around her, almost reassuring before they crushed her. She wormed her arms out of the space between them and up around his neck, then opened her mouth wider beneath his.
No soft seduction here. They picked up where they’d left off in Budapest, kissing as though the other held the last drop of water available on earth. He cupped her head and kept her where he wanted her as he angled his mouth across hers and delved for all the secrets of the universe. He stole and plundered and gave. He poured heat and passion into her. Want. Feral, angry, desperate want.
She absorbed it all with a groan of delight and dragged his shirt up, trying to find his skin. He wrenched it up and off, then pulled her T-shirt over her head. Her bikini top was a tug of two strings, then it also fell to the floor.
His wide hands shaped from her waist up her rib cage, covering her breasts in heat. His mouth dragged from her lips to her neck, heading down.
“I want to give you a collar of hickies,” he said against her throat.
“You can’t,” she moaned.
He lifted his head long enough for her to see the bitterness in his gaze, then his thumbs dragged across her nipples and he was kissing her again.
She wrapped her good foot behind him and levered herself almost off the counter, balancing on her tailbone as she rubbed and rocked, inciting them both.
Or so she thought until he drew back, expression remote and harsh.
She dropped her hands to the counter and inched herself more firmly onto it.
“Don’t lose your nerve now, Evie. We’re getting to the good part.” He released the button of her fly and lowered the zip, then clasped the waistband of her shorts with two hands. “Lift.”
Heart slamming with a sense that she was doing something very bad, she did as he ordered, letting him drag away shorts and bikini bottoms in one go.
She’d been here before, naked while he was still half-dressed and fully in control. She licked her lips and looked for the condom, but he dropped to his knees.
“Like it was built for this,” he said with guttural satisfaction. “Like you were. No, keep your leg up like that. I want you right on the edge. Hold on, Evie. Hold on.”
He draped her good leg over his shoulder so the contact with his skin burned the back of her thigh. He blew softly across the fine hairs protecting her mound. She twitched and wriggled, but he wrapped his arm behind her hips, not letting her retreat as soft kisses made her thighs twitch, trying to close.
“If you want me to stop, say so.”
She couldn’t tell if he was mocking her reaction or being sincere. She could only bite her lip and close her eyes as he nuzzled closer. Her flesh was so sensitized and swollen with anticipation, she couldn’t speak.
Please , she thought. Please.
Without any hurry at all, he painted a slow wet stripe against her inner lips, then again, with more pressure. Deeper.
She groaned. And shook.
He rumbled a noise of satisfaction that she barely heard over the sheets of rain and the crash of surf and the rattle of the awning in the keening wind. As the storm closed in and the day turned to dusk, her world shrank to this, the clever play of his tongue on her most intimate flesh. He brought his hand into the game, delicately parting her, fondling and adding to the sensations so she was nearly arched right off the counter. She pressed her head to the wall behind her, vaguely appalled at how uninhibited she was being, but she had yearned for this for four years. She needed it more than she needed air.
Why was it him that did this to her? Why? Why was he so perfectly skilled at swirling sensations through her like a tornado, teasing her and drawing her up and up into a greater storm of pleasure. Climax beckoned, glowing, expanding.
He gave her inner thigh a juicy, openmouthed kiss then stood.
“Don’t stop,” she panted, hearing herself beg and hating herself for it.
“I told you I wanted you right on the edge,” he said with a cruel grin.
Her stomach clenched and, for one second, she thought he was doing this to her again. That he’d wanted to bring her to this point of flagrantly offering herself so he could reject her.
But he picked up a condom and tore it open with his teeth. He pulled the drawstring on his shorts at the same time, dropping them. He wasn’t wearing underwear and his thick erection sprang out, ready and hot as it brushed her thigh.
“It’s time.” He efficiently rolled the condom down his length.
It was past time. It was the only time.
“Help me. Show me you want this,” he urged, guiding his tip against her aching flesh.
She did, bumping her trembling fingers against his, touching the steely shape of him, exploring briefly then catching at his shoulder as he notched the wide dome of his head so he could penetrate her.
The pressure increased. She tensed, nervous.
“Hurt?” He flashed a frown up at her.
“No.” It didn’t. Not really, but it was more profound than she had expected. She wanted to cry, she had waited so long for this. And she had always thought that lovemaking would fill her with a flood of love, but she hated him. Didn’t she?
Not right now. Not when he said in a voice that was almost gentle, “It’s okay. I won’t let you fall.” He took a firm grip of her thigh. “Tilt your hips.”
She did and the thick shape of him slowly filled her, stretching and forging his way in until he was, as he’d promised in Budapest, buried to the root.
She couldn’t breathe. She could only hold onto his shoulders and press her open mouth against the side of his neck. She swore she could feel his heartbeat inside her. Her abdomen began to shake. A symphony of contractions worked through her pelvis and loins and she simply lost .
She felt his jolt of surprise, then his arm locked low behind her tailbone, securing her exactly where she was. His other hand cupped her neck while he covered her mouth with his own, drinking every cry and moan from her lips as he pulsed his hips, holding himself deep inside her while subtly riding her through the shudders of her climax.
Was it supposed to happen like this? He wasn’t even thrusting. All he’d done was arrive inside her and she fell apart. She could have wept, she felt so overwhelmed and helpless. So completely at his mercy.
“I’m starting to think they’re going to find us like this,” he said in a rasp, scraping his teeth along the edge of her jaw. “Because if that’s what I can expect while I’m here, I’m never leaving.”
She was still shivering in the aftermath, leaning weakly against him, trying not to sob over how powerful that had been. He kissed her once. Twice. Bordering on tender as his mouth traveled into her neck and across her shoulder while his caressing fingertips teased along her spine and rib cage, then grazed the underswell of her breast.
“Lean back.”
She did, not wanting to lose the warmth of his chest against hers, but she braced her hands behind her.
He trailed his touch across her belly and down to where their flesh was locked. His caress was sure and intimate, but light and frustrating as he avoided the spot that would provide the sharpest sensations. Then he brushed the knot of nerves that was still so sensitive she gasped in a mixture of pleasure and discomfort.
“Mmm.” She jerked and he did it again. The thickness of him filling her amplified everything, bringing an immediate flood of heat.
“Mmm,” he mocked. “You like that.” He circled his thumb, avoiding, avoiding, then skimming across in a tease.
She gasped again, accusing, “You’re mean.”
He dragged his gaze up from watching the play of his thumb. “When it’s necessary. Tell me if I’m too rough.”
Her heart lurched, but he was rubbing her own moisture against the swelling bundle of nerves at the top of her sex. She bit her lip and arched in reaction, starting to need more of that. Starting to think she needed that for the rest of her life.
Her movement shifted him inside her, promising the friction she hadn’t known she desired. His free hand braced her hip as he withdrew in a sensual drag before returning in a slow, deliberate penetration that sent delicious shivers through her nerve-endings.
A small cry of joy escaped her.
This was what it was about, she realized as she splayed her hands behind her, holding herself still for his steady thrusts. This was why there were eight billion people on the planet. This was what everyone was chasing, this sense of being made from gold dust. Of being made for this. For him.
She gloried in the pace he set, layering sensation upon sensation into her. They were folding time so it was compressed and stalled and they could be right here, like this, forever. Like ancient life trapped in amber.
“Evie.”
She dragged her eyes open to see his eyes were glittering through the fading light, his cheeks dark, his teeth bared.
“It’s me.” He lightly pinched her nipple. “I’m the one doing this to you.”
“I know.” Did he think she was fantasizing about someone else? He was her entire world.
“Good.” He set his hand on her lower back and brought her all the way off the counter before he began to thrust with more power.
She grunted in surprise and clasped onto him.
She was bathed in fire, open and defenseless, but safe. Even as tension wound through her, even as she wanted to claw his back for the release he was promising, and even though she knew he resented this as much as she did, she knew they were in this together. That made it better than okay. It was wrong and messy, but perfect.
The rain had cooled the shack, but they were both sweating. They were sticky and clinging and making noises as though working hard.
“Don’t stop,” she cried as climax danced tantalizingly close, yet remained out of reach, like a star at her fingertips. “Don’t stop.”
Now he did get rough, shifting to hold her tighter as he thrust with wild, barely couched power. She loved it. She had needed to know she could wreck him as thoroughly as he wrecked her and she could feel how he was shaking and about to shatter.
“Come, damn you,” he ordered.
She opened her mouth against the crook of his neck and bit him. Not hard, just hard enough for him to feel her teeth.
They detonated. She didn’t know whether it was him or her that hit the culmination first, but they were thrown into the abyss together, screaming and shouting with pleasure. He kept thrusting and the edge of the counter cut into her backside and her ankle bumped something sending a zing of pain through her, but none of that mattered.
Only this mattered. The feel of him buried deep inside her, pulsing against her internal clenches. His arms were locked around her and the slam of his heart was against her breast and pleasure radiated through her whole body.
It was a glorious disaster.