Chapter Seven #2
Recklessness intensified, rushing through her veins like the sweetest narcotic. ‘Then tell me, what are you, truly?’ she challenged harder. ‘Say it, Valenti. Why are you being intransigent about this? Why does my every move fascinate you so much.’
His nostrils quivered. ‘No.’ The word pulsed with warning.
‘Then I’ll say it for you. Because you want to be my sugar daddy.’
Unholy fire blazed through his eyes. ‘Dios mío! Stop,’ he breathed.
She clamped her lips shut, but her eyes spoke volumes. And he saw everything. Saw and cursed some more before snatching her into his arms and marching into the cabin.
Taking the stairs two at a time he was in his bedroom in under ten seconds.
Only then did he set her down, one leg kicking the door shut. She planted herself in the middle of the room while he remained at the door, but his presence filled every corner of the space.
With anyone else, Lotte would probably have been frightened but not with Valenti. It stuck in her craw to admit he was probably the safest person for her to be around physically. That his iron control—and probably the way he could so easily dismiss her—meant he would never harm her.
But she wanted to test that control.
Wasn’t that truly what she’d been doing since she looked up and saw him in that nightclub?
‘You’ve found a hot little button you’re enjoying pushing. Brava,’ he growled. ‘But before this goes any further you need to be very sure it’s what you want,’ he added. Succinctly. His eyes never leaving her face.
More than anything.
She was glad her mouth remained clamped, sealing the fervent, exposing response inside. Because apparently he wasn’t done.
‘Be sure you’re not mistaking your little rebellion for something else.’
She raised her chin. ‘Something like what?’ she challenged, a small kernel of alarm inside her threatening to expand because he wasn’t far from the truth. She feared this chemical reaction would lead to a startling conclusion.
‘Like an inconvenient attachment that might not be altogether wise.’
That stung. Again because it strayed far too close to a truth she didn’t want to admit. ‘If that’s your clever way of hinting that I’m in some way infatuated with you, you can kill that thought. I liked kissing you. And I want to…do more. Does it really need to be more than that?’
His eyes narrowed to molten slits. Then he prowled towards her with miles more swagger and finesse than she would ever manage.
Three feet away he paused. She wanted to believe it was to safeguard against temptation to reach for her.
But she knew otherwise. Valenti had more control in his little finger than she did in her entire existence.
He exhibited that by lazily resting his hands on his lean hips, watching her with the indolent regard of a predator completely confident in the vanquishing of its prey.
‘If you’re absolutely sure this is what you want, that this will remain here in this place strictly between us…then come here, Lotte. Let me deal with that insatiable need for rebellion.’ His voice was low, mesmeric. Thickening that narcotic in her blood, making her dizzy with it.
That dizziness swayed her towards him. One step. Another. Until a mere half foot separated them.
‘Undress me,’ he instructed next.
Oh God. She couldn’t help her swallow. The shudder that surged up her body lingered in the hands she raised hesitantly to his chest. A little terrified of the rage of emotions consuming her, she kept her gaze on the buttons of his outer jacket as she slid her hands beneath the lapels.
‘No. Look at me,’ he rasped huskily.
Raising lids that felt far too heavy, she met his mercurial gaze. Shadow and light. Fire and ice. A heavy, solemn watchfulness trained with singular focus on her, a specimen beneath his microscope.
Lotte discovered she didn’t mind it, at all.
She’d wanted to be seen. Accepted. Even now when she felt more naked than she’d ever felt in her life. But curiously, any urge to hide had fled.
Her gaze fully fastened on his, she slid her hands beneath his lapels, the warmth of his rich wool-covered skin making her breath emerge faster as she tugged the coat off him. The long-sleeved polo neck moulded to his skin was next.
Hunger lent power to her as she took the hem between her fingers and started to lift.
She only reached halfway before he helped, reefing it over his head and discarding it.
Baring her gaze to the honed gladiator’s torso, the mouth-watering ridges of packed muscle and hair-roughened chest that announced him as fully, completely masculine.
A specimen she wanted to explore to her heart’s content.
That chest expanded with a rough inhale when the tips of her fingers whispered over his skin in awed exploration, pausing at the puckered skin on his shoulder, a clear mark of his dangerous profession, possibly a connection to the harrowing incident that connected their lives.
She couldn’t bring herself to ask then. So she moved on.
Her lips parted, the better to breathe him in. To fill every corner of her senses so there would be room for nothing else.
Like the whispered query as to how she would deal with what came next when they left this room. Like how that sizeable addendum he’d spelled out as to exactly what this was left a bubble of desolation within her.
Her fingers coasted lower, over the rough outline of his belt, and the even thicker outline of his cock, straining behind his fly. With that same hypnotic compulsion, her gaze dropped.
She swallowed. He was big. Almost intimidatingly so. What if—
His finger curling beneath her chin redirected her gaze up.
‘Too damn slow,’ he rasped, his tone full of hungry gravel.
With his other hand he knocked her fingers out of the way.
Then the whip of his belt sliding free whistled through the room, sending further shivers racing through her.
Somehow, being deprived of watching him complete the undressing heightened every last sizzling nerve.
Or perhaps it was the slow morphing of the shadows and ice to pure fire and hunger that held her in thrall.
Whatever it was, she couldn’t look away from him as he propelled her back into the wall and commanded her to ‘Stay.’
Then Valenti proceeded to undress her at his infuriating leisure, entirely contrary to his own demand.
Lotte felt every stitch teased off her body, every maddening, shiver-inducing pause as he inhaled sharply, his own fingers lingering over her clavicle. Her inner arms and wrists. The upper slopes of her breasts. The outer curve of her hips.
But with each caress, she realised he was gauging her reaction. Studying her gasps and moans the way he observed every private and public interaction.
Seeking signs of a change of heart? Or taking ownership of every crumb of her pleasure?
She gasped when without warning, he dropped into a crouch before her. Insistent fingers hooked into her lace panties, and with his eyes still on her face, Valenti slowly drew them down and away.
Only then did he conduct a thorough inspection of her body, leaving her even more exposed and naked than before.
She’d wanted to be seen. Now there was nowhere to hide. Inside or out.
‘So maddeningly breathtaking,’ he muttered, almost to himself. ‘Is this what you wanted, querida? Incite that beautiful chaos so I end up at your feet?’ he demanded thickly, while showing zero signs of subservience.
In any other being, she would’ve been truly puzzled as to how he could be on his knees and still command so much power and presence.
In Valenti Domene it came as naturally as the royal blood running through his veins. She imagined that even shackled and blindfolded, he would still command armies.
‘Only if that’s where you want to be.’
For some reason, her hushed response made his nostrils flare, his eyes darkening and pupils dilating.
‘Alas, it seems as if I have very little choice,’ he stated with that customary solemnity that made her heart lurch.
Before she could dig into what that meant, he was lifting her leg. Tossing it over his shoulder in an utterly masterful move that bared her sex to his intense gaze.
‘Dios mío. Very little choice, indeed,’ he said throatily. Then fused his mouth to her slick flesh, tasting and devouring while she cried out in sublime unparalleled pleasure.
Every bone in Lotte’s body melted as her fingers dug through his lush hair, gripping tight as he spun sorcery around her senses. ‘Oh… God!’
He eased the pressure, teasing mercilessly with his tongue so she remained dancing on the edge as he rasped, ‘You like that?’
‘Ja! Please, more,’ she pleaded. ‘I want… I want…’ Despite the very carnal act, she couldn’t quite articulate her need, her face flaming as he shamelessly explored her.
‘You’ll get what you deserve, mi preciosa,’ he promised darkly.
Another minute was all he required to crack her wide open, to push her over the edge so she could drop straight into unrivalled bliss. Lotte was wrapped tight in her climax when he rose, her pliant body draped over one shoulder as he headed to the bed and tossed her onto it.
The sublime drug of her release was nowhere near dissipated when he plucked a condom from the bedside drawer and catching both her hands in his, urged her to draw it over his engorged cock.
Her senses reawakened to eager life as she watched his head drop back, a starkly sexy grimace catch on his face as she moved her hands over him.
‘Enough, litla norn,’ he bit out on her third stroke.
A saucy smile curved her lips, delight still dancing within her. ‘I’m a little witch? Does that make you a sorcerer?’ she mused.
Dragging her exploring hands above her head, Valenti braced himself above her, then took her tempting lips in another kiss, his obvious hunger feeding hers. When the need for air drove them apart, he kissed his way to her throat, then bit her earlobe. At her gasp, he laughed, low and deep.
‘A sorcerer? I thought I was your sugar daddy?’ he whispered gutturally.