4. Her Table #3
"Tonight," he said, his voice low and rough, "I want us to remember our beginning.
" His gaze locked onto hers, unblinking and intense.
"I want your eyes on me, just like the first time—the way you come apart on me, the adoration I saw in your face.
Tonight, I want the love that was so much a part of you it diffused into the very space around you and seeped into me.
I want that peace." His words came out scratchy, as if he was in a type of pain she was blind to.
Unconsciously, she nodded her head in agreement.
She could no more deny him than she could stop breathing. Not when he looked at her like that.
His breath audibly hitched as she nodded her agreement to him.
The sight of him so affected had a profound effect on her.
She felt almost mesmerized by the intent behind each of his movements.
As he approached her, her own hands trembled with eagerness, desperate to pull at the last remnants of his clothing.
Her body was a landscape of arousal, every nerve ending alive and singing for his touch.
She wanted the skin to skin connection more than she wanted to draw breath.
Finally naked, Nash moved closer, his presence commanding as he crawled onto the bed dwarfing her much smaller frame.
Large hands cradled her knees, parting them with a care that she wouldn't have thought him capable of.
But regardless, there was no denying his gentleness.
She could feel the power of his body as he positioned himself between her thighs, but he held that power under tight control.
The heat emanating from her core drew him in, the magnetic pull of her desire undeniable.
His eyes flashed with an unnamed emotion when he carefully pressed his groin into hers.
Running himself through her folds, but making sure not to penetrate her.
She reveled in the sensation of him against her, the hard lines of his body pressing into the soft curves of her own.
And then, with a precision that shouldn't have been possible, he aligned himself with her entrance.
Their shared gaze held a thousand unspoken words, a testament to a connection that had defied time and all the turmoil.
It was more than clear, no matter what he did to her, her link to him couldn't be broken.
In one fluid motion, Nash drove home, breaking his control with delicious violence.
The world narrowed down to the point of their union, the place where passion ignited and set them both aflame.
Nash's movements were an example of a controlled explosion.
Their bodies moved in sync, as if no time had ever passed between them, each motion infused with unspoken words and pent-up longing.
This time, unlike all the times since she gave herself to him that car on a small airstrip in Arizona, was bursting with intimacy.
His movements were precise, instinctual.
His eyes never left her face. This was no succumbing to lust like she did in his office, this was two bodies making love.
As he took her, his voice, thick with desire, cut through the haze of Iris's arousal.
"Say my name," Nash demanded, each syllable a stroke against her heart.
She knew exactly what he meant. What he wanted. And she gave it to him.
"Ricky," she cried out without hesitation, the name tumbling from her lips in a crescendo of ecstasy.
His answering growl was one of primal satisfaction, resonating deep within her chest. It was more than a name; it was a memory, a plea, an admission.
And as she said it, Iris's mind reeled with the love for him that she had never managed to extinguish—the love that now threatened to consume her.
She willed herself to be strong, to keep the truth of her feelings shrouded behind the facade of gratitude and pleasure.
To remember that he was blackmailing her.
That this was the same man who tricked her last time.
Who never cared for her. He was not the man he pretended to be.
But even as she fought this internal battle, her body betrayed her, responding to Nash's every touch, every thrust, with a hunger that echoed her heart's silent cries.
In the midst of their passion, Nash's command was a low rumble that broke through the intensity of their coupling. "Look at me, ma fleur."
Reluctance warred inside her, but ultimately, she lifted heavy lids to meet his gaze.
There it was—a flicker of something tender and raw in the depths of his eyes, something that reached out and wrapped around her soul.
It was warmth; it was a connection—it was something unnamed and untamed.
How could he fake this? Maybe her leaving awoke something in him? Could she risk her heart again?
Before she could even think of unraveling that new mystery, before she could make the mistake of giving him her heart once more, the wave crested, and she fell desperately into it.
Pleasure, sharp and all-consuming, ripped through her with the force of a storm.
The world spun, colors burst behind her eyelids, and then darkness swept in as she succumbed to the intensity of her release, slipping into oblivion with only one name a whisper on her breath.
"Ricky."