16. Ofelia
Ofelia
Later, I won’t remember if it was Alexei who kissed me or if it was I who leaned in first. What I will remember is the hunger.
It comes in a savage, sudden rush of heat and darkness, a force I’ve always known lived inside me but never dared truly touch.
Until now.
Until Alexei’s mouth is on mine, his long fingers touching my face where the last rays of the sun still linger, his body hard and fierce against my own.
His hands twine in my hair, his mouth taking mine like he’s always known it belongs to him. It’s hot and sweet—and it’s not enough.
Not anymore.
This isn’t my twenty-first birthday party, hiding on a dark terrace from watchful eyes. It isn’t my kitchen, with the dragons next door.
This is the deck of his yacht, miles out to sea, with the crew safely banished to their own quarters.
It’s Alexei finally admitting he wants this as much as I do.
It’s the rough note in his voice when he said the words, and the hard, blazing desire in his eye that has haunted my memory ever since he loomed over me in that concrete cell.
It’s his cock searing my skin through my dress, and me so wet I could come from the slightest touch.
Alexei breaks the kiss first, but only to take my hand, glancing around at the abandoned deck. “Upstairs.”
The word is a low, velvet command.
Spinning me in front of him, he walks us to the steep stairs leading to the upper deck, then practically lifts me onto them.
His hands slide up my thighs as I climb the first few, his thumbs sliding beneath the cheeks of my ass, his breath hissing as he finds the G-string bikini that does nothing to disguise the slick evidence of my arousal.
I part my thighs deliberately as I climb, thrusting my ass toward him, practically begging for his hands, then moaning aloud as he slides them over my cheeks, the movement massaging the wet heat between my legs so maddeningly I almost stumble.
His low laugh rumbles through me. “Soon, angel,” he says in that same rough voice that sends heat pulsing through me.
His hands bunch my dress up over my ass, and his mouth lands on first one cheek, then the other, biting it just enough to make me moan.
His hands close around my hips, lifting me over the last two steps, then sliding around my thighs as he emerges behind me.
“No,” he growls, as I go to turn around.
“Walk.” He steers me toward the door to his suite, sliding it open with his foot.
Seeing the enormous bed at the center of the circular room, I almost sag with relief, but instead of guiding me toward it, Alexei moves me past it, reaching around me to open the sliding door.
His arms close around my waist, and he lifts me through, then shuts it behind us.
We’re standing on the private upper deck. A sunken pool glows turquoise ahead of us. Facing it is a vast daybed. Above us there is only the deepening indigo sky and the first pinpricks of stars.
Alexei faces me toward the last thread of sunset on the western horizon. “When I saw you on that beach,” he murmurs, tilting my head to the side as his mouth travels up my neck, “I almost sent my men back to the yacht and took you there and then.”
I gasp as his hands slide my dress up my body.
“I almost carried you upstairs today, in the kitchen of your house.”
I raise my arms as he lifts the dress, sighing as he pulls it over my head and throws it to the deck.
“And that night in the Paris hotel?” His hands slip along my waist and up my rib cage, finding the clasp of my bikini top. “If the others hadn’t come back, there’s no chance I could have stopped myself from finishing what we started.”
One deft tug releases the string, and he slips the halter neck over my head and drops it to the deck.
Again, he stops me from turning to face him, one arm locking my body against his, his hand splayed across my abdomen, so close to the last scrap of material covering my body that I squirm against him, aching to have it removed.
“The night of your twenty-first,” he says, tonguing my neck until I’m moaning, “I wanted to take you in that fucking garden, and to hell with whoever might have caught us.”
He turns me slowly in his hands, his mouth never leaving my skin. I twine sinuously against him as we finally come full frontal and his mouth takes mine again, achingly slowly this time, his hands sliding along my waist and over my ass.
Then he pulls away, staring at my body. “Do you have any idea how fucking beautiful you are?”
Gathering me to him, he kisses me again, and the rough noise of satisfaction he makes in the back of his throat travels straight to the soaked string between my legs.
I twist my head so my mouth touches his ear.
“I wanted you long before that.” My tongue touches his skin, and he shudders slightly.
Taken by some dark impulse, I press my body to his, my hands curling around his neck.
“When I touch myself,” I whisper in his ear, “this is what I think about. You, Alexei. Your hands on me.”
Emboldened by his harsh intake of breath, I touch my lips to the place just beneath his jaw. “I think about your cock,” I whisper. “About how it would feel inside me.”
Alexei rears back from me, his eye glittering dangerously.
“Some other time, I’m going to make you show me exactly how you touch yourself when you’re alone.
” His voice is low and taut, and the way his mouth slants as he says it makes my belly curl in anticipation.
“But not tonight.” He pushes down his shorts, and I gasp as his dick leaps free, so huge and broad it slaps his navel.
“Tonight,” he says, advancing toward me with a slow intent that makes my pulse thud, “is all about you, angel. We’ll go as slow as you like—”
“I don’t want to go slow.” Hooking my fingers beneath my bikini, I wriggle out of it, never taking my eyes from his.
“I’ve been waiting for this,” I say, my voice not quite steady, “ever since the first time you touched me. I’ve been waiting for this so long it’s driven me half mad.
” I step toward him, savoring the way his eye travels over me, burning every inch of skin it touches.
I lower my eyes to his surging shaft, liquid heat trickling through me.
“I want you inside me,” I breathe, the words seeming to come from someone else. “And I want you now, Alexei.”
I know he wants me. Even if he hadn’t said it repeatedly, his iron-hard length is evidence enough. But he makes no move toward me. Instead, he just tilts his head at the daybed with that same dangerous, almost cruel slant to his mouth.
“Lie down.”
The low, rough command makes me shiver. I back toward the bed on shaking legs, Alexei advancing like a jungle predator with every step I take.
When the frame touches the back of my thighs, I lower myself to the mattress, but I don’t lie down.
Instead I place my hands on my thighs and slowly, never taking my eyes from his, spread my legs.
Fuck.
I didn’t know the night air would feel like a thousand light caresses. I didn’t know that seeing Alexei’s cock leap would make my entire body convulse like I’m already coming. And I didn’t bet on the sudden savagery in his face as he steps closer, wetting one thumb in his mouth.
“We’re doing this slowly.” His voice is rough as gravel. “Even if it fucking kills me.”
My laughter chokes in my throat as his hand trails down my shoulder until it finds my nipple, his thumb gently moving over it so the wetness mingles with the night air.
“Oh,” I gasp, my head dropping back as he slowly thumbs first one nipple, then the other, my entire torso rippling under his touch. When I open my eyes again, his cock is barely inches from my mouth.
My lips part, and Alexei gives a low cough of laughter. “That,” he says, “is definitely going to happen. But not tonight.” Sliding his hands down from my breasts and around my waist, he lifts me back onto the bed, propping me up on the pillows.
He stares down at me with that same dangerous smile.
“You’re not the only one who has thought about this, angel.
” One lone finger touches the arch of my foot and moves, agonizingly slowly, up my calf.
“As a matter of fact, lately I’ve thought about nothing but this.
” The finger travels over my knee, my legs parting and back arching as he moves tantalizingly higher.
“And you might think you want this hard and fast.” His knee comes between my legs, and his mouth drops to mine, kissing me with a fierce heat that makes me writhe beneath him.
“But I promise you,” he murmurs, moving his mouth lower, toward the nipple arching up toward him, “that this time, at least, slow is better.”
Then he finds my nipple, and I’m lost.
His tongue is slow, deliberate, and lethal, curling around the hot point until I’m breathless.
His body has me pinned in place, but I couldn’t move even if I wanted to.
I’ve gone utterly still, my entire world narrowed to the slow passage of his tongue lathing my flesh.
When he finally takes my nipple in his mouth, my blood is pounding, my entire body taut as a wire.
Achingly slowly, he shifts his mouth to the other nipple, his fingers replacing his tongue on the breast he just left, pressing the flesh beneath the throbbing point, his thumb barely touching it.
His mouth works my other nipple with the same unhurried certainty, each stroke of his tongue spiraling me further into mindless submission.
My eyes close, my breath coming in short gasps.
He tongues each breast slowly at first, then, as I start to ripple beneath him, with increasing pressure.
My hands clutch at his head, pressing it closer to my nipples, moaning when he leaves one to enclose the other.
His fingers move with his tongue until I can barely tell them apart, my world reduced to the movement of his hands and mouth.