Authors: Christine Warren
“Rafe,” she began, looking uneasy and hesitant, and he snarled again.
“Now, Tess. I’ll have you now.”
He set her down on the edge of the table and pushed her backward, stripping off her jacket and sweater as she went. He heard her gasp at the impact of cool wood against her suddenly bare back, but he didn’t care. He wanted her bare to him, and he intended to have her that way.
He followed her down, leaning over her and setting his teeth to the narrow spot that joined the cups of her bra. He sliced through it and the lacy fabric fell away, exposing her nipples to his avid mouth. He latched onto one immediately, curling his tongue around the hard little point and tugging it into his mouth to suck hard. He heard her cry out, felt her hands bury themselves in his hair, and he grunted in satisfaction. She tasted like spice and warm cream, and he wanted to lap her up until he lacked the strength to lick his whiskers.
“Rafe! God, how do you do this to me?”
He didn’t answer, just set his mouth to her other nipple and drew on it just as fiercely. She moaned his name and cradled him to her, already shifting restlessly against him. His hands insinuated themselves between their bodies and attacked her jeans, yanking the zipper the rest of the way down and then peeling the heavy, clinging fabric off her hips. She helped him, lifted her hips off the table, raised her knees to bring them into reach. He snarled at the way it put the cloth like a barrier between them, but as he took her panties down, too, her bare flesh distracted him. He tugged the whole lot past her knees until he realized he’d have to step farther away from her to pull them the rest of the way off. And that was not going to happen.
Leaving the fabric tangled around her ankles, he braced her feet against the edge of the table and grasped her knees, spreading them wide to make room for himself. Then he grabbed her hips and pulled them forward until her bottom bumped against her heels and she perched there, completely open to him. He shrugged out of his jacket as if it were on fire and reached down to open his pants. He grunted in satisfaction when he felt Tess’s hands on his shirt, fumbling with the buttons for a second before she uttered a frustrated cry and tore the fabric open. Buttons flew in all directions, clattering against the walls and the wood of the floor, but Rafe could see Tess’s gaze glued to his bare chest and felt a swell of pride.
If both of them hadn’t been so frantic, he might have taken a moment to savor the feel of her hands on him or the appreciative look in her eyes, but he couldn’t wait another minute to be inside her. He yanked down his zipper and freed his erection, guiding it to her dripping entrance. Poised there for a brief moment, he looked down into her eyes and felt an unfamiliar wave of possessiveness wash through him.
“Mine,” he growled, though he’d never said the word before in connection to a woman.
He felt his lip curl and his fangs extend, and he watched her eyes widen as he gathered himself. Then he drove hard and deep to her core with one heavy thrust.
She screamed and parted like liquid velvet around him.
“Yes,” he hissed, coming to rest deep inside her, buried to the hilt in her tight, hot core. She felt like heaven. She rippled around his penis the same way she’d rippled around his fingers, with slow, hot pulses and the slick flood of cream he knew he wanted to taste before too much longer.
But not now. Now he wanted to fuck her until she came apart around him and he spilled himself in her honeyed heat.
Bracing his hands on the table beside her head and his feet on the parquet floor, he let his muscles gather and began to pull back from her clinging heat.
“Wait! Wait.” She gasped and moaned, shifting restlessly beneath him. “Not yet. Can’t … I can’t. Not yet.”
He growled and continued to withdraw, sliding through her wet channel with slippery ease. Or it would have been easy, if she weren’t so tight and snug around him. Her body felt like a fist gripping him, and it was driving him crazy.
“You can. You will. Now.”
He heard her moan, whimper, heard a breathless sob as her body struggled to adjust to him. He knew he should go easy on her, give her time to get used to him, but he couldn’t. He needed her too badly to be kind. All he could do was try not to hurt her and make sure she came as violently as he intended to.
His hips stopped when she held just his tip inside her. He wanted to withdraw all the way so he could savor that first, maddening stretch as he entered her again, but he couldn’t bear to separate himself from her heat. This would be easier on her anyway. Now that he was already inside, he could ride her harder than if he withdrew completely and forced her to take him all over again.
He stood there, muscles trembling, bodies linked by a precarious inch, poised on the brink of his next thrust with her body soft and pliant beneath him, but he wanted more. He wanted her to look at him. To watch him while he fucked her, while he claimed her. Ignoring the unfamiliar feeling of possession, he leaned down to bite her lip, to get her attention. Her eyes flew open, once again dazed and dilated, and struggled to focus on him.
“Eyes open, Tess.” He order was gruff and harsh and he didn’t care. “Watch me. Watch me taking you.” She whimpered and shook her head, but she didn’t close her eyes. He grunted and leaned more heavily over her. “Good. Now take me.”
He thrust home with heavy force, spearing her so deeply he thought he could feel the back of her womb. She screamed and he froze, afraid he had hurt her, but her body trembled around him and her hips lifted toward him, so he relaxed and began to claim her in earnest.
Over and over, he thrust inside her, riding her hard. She felt so amazing around him, milking him, squirming and writhing beneath him. Her fingernails bit into his bare shoulders, cutting deeply, but the pain only egged him on. She cried out with nearly every thrust now, her knees gripping his hips as he drove high and hard inside her. He felt himself approaching meltdown and grabbed her hips to hold her still as he threw his hips harder against her. He battered into her, unable to be gentle, unable to hold back. All he could do was ride out the madness by riding her hard toward climax.
He felt it hit her unexpectedly. One moment she twisted and struggled beneath him, trying to get closer and get away all at once, and the next she clamped around him like a vise, arms, thighs, and body all tightening and gripping him to her. She screamed, the sound issuing hoarsely from her raw throat, and her body arched like a bow beneath him, coming up off the surface of the table until only her head and her hips supported her.
Rafe wrapped his arms around her, holding her steady while he continued to drive inside her. Thrusting was more difficult now, as her body struggled to keep him inside, but he forced through her resistance with half a dozen savage thrusts until the pleasure took him, too, dragging him over the edge of climax. He poured himself into her on a rough shout, feeling his very being drain out of him and into her tight, encompassing warmth. Then he collapsed onto her, pinning her to the hard table, thinking with a sense of dread and wonder that he hadn’t nearly finished with her yet.
Seven
Tess kept her eyes closed and tried to figure out what the hell had just happened.
Well, aside from the most amazing orgasm of her life, of course.
Somehow her evening, which had started with a bowl of pasta and a seven-hundredth viewing of her copy of
Best in Show
on DVD, had ended with mind-blowing sex on the entry table in the front hallway of the apartment of a man she’d never met before … oh, three hours earlier.
The man in question turned his head, stubble rasping against her throat, and swept his rough, agile tongue along the tendon connecting her neck to her shoulder. Then he purred, and Tess felt the sound rumbling through her, from where his mouth pressed to her shoulder to where his erection still pressed hot and hard inside her.
Her eyes flew open. Still hard?
He stirred on top of her, inside her, and his hands slid down from her hips, over her legs, stopping when they felt the bunched fabric around her ankles. Oh, God. She was still wearing her jeans. She felt her cheeks flame.
He murmured something against her throat, shifting his weight to keep her pinned while he tugged away her short boots and stripped her jeans and panties the rest of the way off. Now she was left naked beneath him, with only the scraps of what used to be a bra hanging from her shoulders. Oh, yeah. She felt dignified.
She tried to squirm away, but froze when she felt his teeth sink delicately into her shoulder and heard a rumble of displeasure. Apparently he didn’t want her going anywhere. She lay still while his hands shifted from her to his own clothes. She felt the glide of fabric against her skin while he shoved his pants to the floor. He shifted inside her when he stepped out of the fabric, and she bit back a moan. Her sensitized tissues took every shift as a caress, and she felt herself flooding around him. He gave a pleased rumble and licked her shoulder.
Tess cleared her throat. “Um, this table isn’t really all that comfortable.” She squirmed and pushed at his shoulders. “Do you think you could let me up now?”
There was a brief moment of silence. Then Rafe lifted his head and gazed down at her with lazy cat’s eyes. “Sure.”
She felt his body slip from hers and drew a shuddering breath. Okay, step one. Now for step two. But before she could even attempt to put her feet on the floor and lever herself out from beneath him, Tess found herself lifted, flipped, bent forward, and penetrated. He had barely let her get her feet on the floor before he kicked them wide, pressed her hips against the edge of the table, and slid into her from behind.
“This is not up,” she gasped, struggling to remain coherent even as her body urged her to surrender to the power of their connection. The traitor. Never before had Tess found herself at odds with her own physical being. Her mind told her that any further shenanigans with the werecat in the room would lead to bad, bad things.
Her body told her mind to get lost.
She heard Rafe groan above her and her head automatically came up. Instead of meeting a blank expanse of entry wall, Tess found herself unexpectedly staring back into her own wide, blue eyes.
She had forgotten about the mirror, but judging by the hot, feral expression on Rafe’s face, he had not.
When he’d first carried her into his apartment, Tess had been a little too preoccupied to pay much attention to the decor, so the huge, gilt-framed mirror above the console table had barely even registered. Instead, she’d been too busy registering the feel of his hands on her and then his body inside hers. But now, bent forward over the very same table with her hands braced on the inlaid surface and a gorgeous, feral shapeshifter draped across her back, she found the mirror hard to miss. It was about six inches from the end of her nose.
Startled, she tried to pull away, to stand up straight and put some distance between herself and her reflection, but Rafe would have none of it.
He leaned heavily over her, his chest against her back, pinning her in place with his bulk. He even buried one of his big hands in her hair and used it to tilt her head until she had no choice but to meet her own startled, aroused gaze.
“Watch.” His mouth pressed against her ear as he gave the raspy order. “I want you to see what it looks like when I’m taking you.”
She moaned helplessly and watched as his dark form began to move behind her.
The woman in the mirror looked nothing like Tess. Her eyes looked wide and wild, pupils dilated, expression dazed. Her hair was an undisciplined tumble of curls, all sense of style long gone. Soft tendrils had become glued to her skin with the sweat of their exertions, and the rest of the unruly mop curled and bounced with the impact of his thrusts. Her pale skin looked slick and flushed with sweat and arousal, and it contrasted a bright, milky white against his darker bronze complexion. It made her look even more vulnerable and him, even more powerful.
He looked, actually, like a conquering barbarian. His dark, angular features were drawn and tense as he thrust himself deeply, then recoiled to thrust again. His own dark hair was damp and mussed from her fingers, and his skin gleamed hot and slick in the dim, golden lights of the entryway. His body curled around hers, chest pressing against her back, thighs braced against hers, hands braced against the table beside hers, caging her. And all the while, he plunged in and out of her like a piston, hard and deep and relentless.
Tess cried out and felt her eyelids drift shut. Her head dropped back against his shoulder, and she moaned in heated arousal.
“No! Eyes open.” He punctuated the order with a hard thrust that nearly toppled her onto the table. Tess screamed breathlessly, her eyes flying open and meeting his in the mirror. He looked savage and dangerous, and she cried out again, in fear and desire. “Watch. Watch me taking you.”
She couldn’t do anything else, fascinated by the contrast of his big body overwhelming hers. She saw his hands shift from the tabletop and slide upward to cup her breasts.
“Watch your pretty breasts swinging while I fuck you.” He pinched the taut nipples and she moaned helplessly. “Watch the way your body shakes under mine.”
One of his hands released its grip on her breast and glided over her belly and between her legs, fingers scissoring around her clit and sliding through her stretched folds until he brushed her entrance. His fingertip rubbed against the tight ring of muscle, felt how it stretched to accommodate his thick shaft, and the caress made Tess burn. She felt her internal muscles clench and sobbed his name.
“Rafe! Please!”
He leaned closer, teeth tugging at her ear as his finger simultaneously closed over her nipple and her clit. “Watch,” he repeated. “Watch your face while I make you come.”
Then his fingers tightened, pinching delicate flesh and Tess screamed.
This climax hit her like a Mack truck, and it didn’t slow down after impact.
She watched her own face in the mirror. Saw her lips part on the scream, saw her eyes go wide and frantic, saw her skin flush red. Then she couldn’t see anything as the pleasure blinded her.