Authors: Christine Warren
He touched her, and she felt every single one of her protests melting. Just like her knees, her spine, and a percentage of her brain cells she didn’t even want to contemplate.
But none of that mattered, because the taste of him was the most perfect thing Tess had ever experienced, and the rest of reality ceased to exist when his hands settled on her hips and tugged her closer against him.
Tess wrapped her arms around his neck on a groan, her fingers burrowing into the thick silk of his hair and twining themselves in the strands. She heard him purring with pleasure and felt the rumble of it like distant thunder rolling through her. When he angled his head and deepened the kiss on a growl, she shuddered and forgot all the reasons why she’d intended to avoid this. All the reasons she’d thought of to tell Fate to take a hike and stop messing with her plans. Right now the only plans she had were to never, ever stop touching him.
Rafe didn’t seem likely to object to those plans. Not judging by the way his hands had settled on her ass again, like they had in the alley earlier.
The man seemed to have a thing for her ass, and used his grip to tug and angle her hips until she felt his erection settle into the groove between her legs. Tess moaned and, feeling benevolent, made it easier for him by pushing her feet off the ground, spreading her legs, and wrapping them around his hips.
She felt him shift to compensate for her weight, spreading his own legs and getting a firmer grip on her bottom. He shifted her higher and rolled his hips in a slow, lazy thrust, and Tess moaned against his mouth. He was driving her crazy. And this kind of crazy, she didn’t even mind.
She did mind when he tore his mouth from hers and avoided her whimpering attempts to recapture his lips in a deeper, hotter kiss.
“Damn it, come back here!” she hissed.
“No.” He turned his head and arched his neck to stay out of her reach, and the frantic tugs she gave to his hair, his cheeks, his ears, anything she could reach, seemed not to even register with him. She bit back a curse against all shapeshifters and their damned superhuman strength.
He reached up to peel her arms from around his neck, pressing them to her sides and trying to lift her away from his body. She clung like a barnacle, locking her ankles together behind his back and tightening her thighs to clamp herself in place.
“Yes!” She gave her own credible growl and glared at him. “Now get back here and finish kissing me before I get cranky.”
She hadn’t expected him to move, and sure as hell hadn’t expected him to move so fast. She didn’t even have time to gasp before she found herself spun around and backed up against a wall for the second time tonight. Only this time, she thought it was a safe bet that the man pinning her there had more on his mind than asking her some questions.
He grabbed her wrists and slammed them up beside her head. He leaned forward, using his weight to keep her still, and rolled his hips against hers. She cried out as her clit throbbed to life beneath her jeans. Jeans that would probably have a huge wet patch between the legs if he didn’t hurry up and get her out of them. She opened her mouth to tell him that, but he cut her off with a snarl and a sharp nip to her lower lip.
“Quiet. Not another damned word.”
Tess felt her eyes widen, and she went still. She could see a hot, savage glow in his cat’s eyes and suddenly remembered that for all this man’s sophisticated appearance and urbane polish, inside he harbored a beast that could make dinner out of her entrails. And if that thought wasn’t enough to get her hormones under control, she was a sad, sad woman.
“I’m sorry,” she managed, though her breath still came in ragged pants.
“Oh, it is much too late for that,
gatita,
” he informed her, eyes glinting. “You should have apologized back when I cared. Now I am far, far beyond such things. The only thing I want to hear from you is you screaming my name when I am inside you.”
Her mouth opened then closed, and she swallowed convulsively. His hips rolled in another lazy, taunting thrust, and she had nothing else to say. Not a damned word. All she could do was moan at the pleasure of it.
At some point her eyes drifted shut against her will, leaving her unprepared for the heightening of every feeling. Each sensation—the rasp of his stubble against her skin, the harsh sound of his breathing against her ear—was so intense, she had to fight the need to beg him to touch her.
“You know that I am going to get inside you, sweet Tess. Don’t you?” His tongue swept the pale curve of her ear in a rasping caress, and one of the hands that had moved back to her ass moved lower, sliding between her legs to cup her from behind. “I am going to take you until you cannot remember your name, until you cannot lick your lips without tasting me, until you make yourself hoarse from screaming my name.”
Her hands clenched, nails biting into his shoulders. The heat and tension inside her threatened to snap, and she thought she might break in half along with them.
“Your only choice is whether you want me to take you here, where half of Manhattan can see you writhing in pleasure, or whether I take you in privacy, where I can touch you all night long with no interruptions.”
His teeth closed on the sensitive skin at the curve of her throat and bit down, sending her desire into overdrive and making her body overflow with cream. “Which is it going to be, Tess? Here and now? Or in my bedroom until you cannot stand any more?”
In the end, it wasn’t the idea of being seen that decided her. It was the knowledge that one quick encounter against the side of a building, while it sounded great right now, was not going to satisfy the hunger he’d created inside of her. She needed more.
“Home,” she said, and cried out when he answered with a low growl and a hard shove of his hips. If there hadn’t been so much cloth in the way, she would have climaxed right then and there.
Instead, she had to get her feet under her and try not to collapse on rubbery legs when he withdrew the support of his body. He kept one hand on her elbow, and that alone was probably more responsible for keeping her upright than her own wobbly sense of balance. He never said anything to her, just tightened those fingers around her elbow and began dragging her through the dark streets toward Park Avenue.
The very first cab he flagged stopped for him. In any other circumstances, Tess would have snorted at that and said something about the perks of power, but as it was she didn’t think she could say her own name. She damned sure couldn’t remember her address, so she let Rafe tell the cabbie where to go while she climbed onto the big werecat’s lap and proceeded to try to undress him in the back of the taxi.
It was a surreal experience for Tess, almost like being drunk. There was one part of her mind still thinking clearly, and that part sort of stood back with its arms crossed and shook its head, while all her other parts attacked Rafael De Santos’s clothing as if he were a tightly wrapped present on Christmas morning. She fumbled with buttons, tugged at hems, and was reaching for his belt when the cab screeched to a halt.
The sudden stop sent her tumbling off Rafe’s lap and onto the floorboards. She sat there for a moment, panting and dazed, while the object of her lust climbed out and paid the cabbie. She stayed right there, too, until he reached in and hauled her out, swinging her up into his arms and striding toward the attended doorway of a posh uptown building.
She wrapped her arms around his neck for balance and set her spinning head against his shoulder, hoping the dizziness would fade before they got to his bedroom. She didn’t want anything at all to interfere with her ability to sense and savor every single thing he did to her.
“Good morning, Mr. De Santos.” A uniformed doorman with a studiously bland expression nodded to Rafe and ignored the fact that he was carrying a disheveled blonde with wide, unfocused eyes into the sort of establishment where these things tended not to happen. “Nice to see you again, sir.”
“I’m not at home, Carson.”
“Of course you aren’t, sir.” The doorman followed them into the building and strode ahead to a set of gleaming elevator doors. When he pressed the
UP
button, the doors slid open immediately, and Carson reached inside, selected the twentieth floor, and stepped back. “Enjoy the rest of your night, sir.”
Rafe growled something unintelligible as the doors slid shut in front of them, and the elevator started with a smooth glide upward.
Tess looked at the digital floor display above the bank of buttons and saw the difference between their current location and their destination. Even if she wasn’t capable of mathematical calculations in her current state, she was cognizant enough to realize there was a large gap between the two. She turned back to Rafe, blinked once as if in slow motion, then dove for his mouth.
She caught his lower lip between her teeth and tugged at it, as if trying to pull his mouth into hers. When she released it, she went immediately back for more, nudging his lips apart and plunging her tongue inside to forage for his own. His response consisted of backing her up against the wall of the car, flipping open the button on her jeans, and sliding his hand inside her panties. Tess screamed against his mouth and bucked her hips against his hand.
He tore his lips from hers and swore, something low and savage and foreign. He shifted to brace one arm under her bottom in order to raise her higher while his fingers sliced through her wet folds to find her opening and thrust deep.
Tess threw her head back and screamed again. Two long, wide fingers speared into her, stretching her and filling her. The unexpected penetration made her mind fog and her muscles clench, and she sobbed for the breath he had stolen from her. Her hips tilted and her legs climbed higher, until her knees were clamped about his rib cage and his fingers had slid as deeply as they could reach. His wrist twisted, fingers screwing inside her, and she moaned in pleasure and need.
“God, yes!” she panted, lips parted and eyes squeezed shut. “More … touch me…”
He leaned closer, clamping his teeth on the base of her throat, growling like an animal. Then his fingers moved and began thrusting, establishing a rapid, driving rhythm that caressed her internal walls and drove her closer to the edge. She could feel her muscles bunching and tensing in preparation for climax, and she whined at the unbearable pleasure.
Her fingers clutched at his shoulders, creasing the fabric of his suit jacket and biting into the flesh beneath. If he’d been shirtless, she might have drawn blood, but she didn’t care. Her body bowed in his arms, hips thrusting mindlessly against his hand. He shifted her again, his touch withdrawing momentarily and tearing a frantic cry of protest from her.
“No! More! Please, more.”
She could barely understand herself, but she needed him to understand. She needed him to understand that she would die if he stopped touching her.
She would die.
Then his fingers slid back, three this time, thrusting deep inside her, stretching her entrance and driving her higher. She thought she might have screamed again, wondered vaguely if the elevator was soundproofed, then squeezed her channel around him and forgot everything else. She could feel her moisture flooding his hand and shuddered. The awkward confines of her jeans meant his hand cupped her mound while his fingers drove her higher, keeping him from the deeper penetration she craved. She whimpered and squirmed and tried to draw the breath to beg. But he twisted his hand and pressed his thumb against her clit and nothing else mattered because she shattered, blind and breathless, sobbing in his arms.
* * *
Rafe felt her climax, felt the ripples of her contractions gripping his fingers, and fought for every shred of self-control he could muster. He wanted to tear off her jeans, throw her to the floor, fuck her right there in the elevator car, and to hell with the rest of the building. But he also knew that once he got inside her, he needed to stay for a good long time, and he could think of better venues for that. Simmering, he let her ride out her orgasm as the car drew to a halt and the doors slid open.
Her eyes had closed, and he doubted it had even registered that the elevator had stopped moving. Her arms still clung to his shoulders, her legs still gripped him like a vise, and her body still pulsed with aftershocks around his fingers. He didn’t bother to withdraw them as he carried her down the hall to his front door. There were only two other apartments on his floor, and if one of the residents happened to see, they could damn well deal. Rafe had no intention of removing his fingers until he could replace them with something infinitely more satisfying to them both.
He strode to his door and pinned her to the wall beside it, listening to the tiny whimpers she made every time his movements shifted inside her. Her face had the soft, dazed sweetness of an angel who had savored her fall, and he couldn’t resist kissing her, claiming her swollen lips and bruising them with the force of his desire.
When he pulled away, her eyes fluttered open, fogged and unfocused. She blinked up at him while he reached his free hand into his pocket and withdrew his key. He saw her teetering on the drowsy edge of sleep and growled, shoving the key into the lock and forcing the door open impatiently.
“Stay with me, damn it. I’m not done with you yet.”
He got no answer, but he didn’t think she was capable of one. Growling, he peeled her off the wall and carried her through the doorway into his entrance hall. He kicked the door closed behind them with no care for the resounding crash. He looked down at her, saw her eyes drifting shut again, and roared in frustration. Damn it, she could not fall asleep on him now. Fuck the bedroom. He needed to get inside her in the next fifteen seconds before she drove him over the edge. His head jerked up and he looked around him for one frantic moment before he saw his opportunity.
She gasped, her eyes flying open when she heard glass shattering on the gleaming parquet floor. He saw sleepiness evaporate and grunted in satisfaction, causing another crash of debris as he swept his arm across the surface of the inlaid art deco console table in the middle of his entry hall. He saw her look around, take in the gleam of the mirror behind the table, the smashed vase of tulips, the puddle of water, and the litter of broken pottery, and dented silver at their feet. Then her gaze flew back to his and her eyes widened.