He was such a beautiful, sinuous male animal that it seemed a shame to cover his body.
He never responded to her attempt at small talk, but Niall found that his silence didn’t make her feel awkward. When he handed her a glass through the window, she held it up in a brief salute and took a drink. Her sensual appreciation of the taste must have shown on her face, because he gave a small smile before he took a swallow of his own. Heat expanded in Niall’s lower belly at the sight of the muscular movement of his throat.
“You approve,” he stated rather than asked.
Niall blinked. Had he been reading her mind? A modicum of common sense returned to her, however, and she realized that he’d been referring to the liquor, not his beautiful body.
“I don’t drink much, but when I do, I’m a Scotch drinker. This happens to be my favorite brand,” Niall said. She realized that her voice had become unintentionally husky as she stared at his mouth. His upper front tooth slightly overlapped the one next to it. She thought of what it would feel like to run her tongue over that sexy little imperfection, and then wondered how many women he encountered every day who had the exact same fantasy.
She forced her eyes away from him and transferred her gaze to the windows. It unnerved her, this strong, unprecedented physical reaction to him. She felt awkward and foolish, like a gangly teenage girl.
She took a deep, uneven breath and tried to focus on what she saw.
His apartment faced east, granting him a spectacular panoramic view of Chicago. The lights of the high-rises shimmered in the black, winding river. The Riverview Towers offered their residents every luxury and convenience: a concierge, a dry cleaner, grocery delivery, shopping, and a central location in downtown Chicago. Residents and the corporations for which they worked paid sky-high prices for the flexibility and conveniences of the apartments. But to Niall the temporary residences felt depressingly sterile. She longed for the stability of a home again.
“So what’s your excuse for staying in this god-awful place?” she asked him when he came around the corner into the living room. She glanced up when he leaned his hip against the counter next to where she sat on a stool.
“I’m working in the city for a while. I sleep here Tuesday through Thursday nights and drive home on Friday.”
“To the suburbs?” Niall asked as she took another sip of Scotch. With him standing and her sitting, her eye level was at his chest. His nipples were dark brown and even more erect than she’d speculated when he was feet away from her instead of inches. She inhaled slowly, and the male scent that she recalled all too well from sharing the elevator with him filled her senses, more subtle, but nevertheless more potent, than the fumes of the Scotch.
The desire that he’d awakened in her reared its head, causing a shimmering sensation of heat to spread along her tailbone, only to surge and swell at her sex, liquefying her in a matter of seconds.
His singular gray eyes flickered down to her lap when she stirred restlessly on her stool.
“I have a farm downstate. You?”
She blinked. “Oh . . . I’m waiting for my condominium to be finished. Hopefully, I’ll be out of here in a month or two, but they keep putting me off.” She shrugged and gave a shaky laugh. “It could be worse. I work downtown at the Chicago Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art, so Riverview Towers are convenient. If it weren’t for the fact that I feel like I live in a beige and white nightmare, things would be great,” she added with a chuckle.
“What’s your name?”
She paused in her mirth. “Oh, sorry. I’m Niall. Niall Chandler.”
She started to put out her hand for a friendly handshake but paused in surprise when he began to laugh. “What’s so funny?” she asked in amazement.
He set his drink on the counter as he stilled his mirth. “Your name. You’re the most feminine thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and you’ve got a boy’s name.”
Niall inhaled sharply. He was usually so terse and impassive that it unsettled her to hear him compliment her—for that was undoubtedly what it had been, given the warm, husky tone of his deep voice.
Her anxiety mounted when he took her glass from her stiff hand and set it next to his on the counter.
“I’m Vic.”
His hand rose to cradle her chin, lifting her face until she met his gaze. Niall’s pulse throbbed madly at her throat when she saw the heat in his gray eyes as they fixed on her mouth.
“Now that we’ve got that out of the way . . .” His head dropped slowly. “Let’s get down to the good stuff, Niall.”
From the very first, Vic incinerated her. The thought of pushing him away never entered her mind, Niall realized the next day. It
should
have, logically. Not ten minutes before, she’d put a halt to Evan’s attempts to get her into bed.
But this was different. Vic seduced her so effortlessly. The strength of her desire for him burned away the few remaining insubstantial shadows of rational thought.
The hand that wasn’t already holding her chin came up to join its twin, holding her steady for the onslaught of his kiss. His tongue drove between her lips without preamble. He didn’t seem particularly interested in mutuality at that moment. He probed deeply, sweeping his tongue everywhere, establishing dominance over her body with a stunning attack on her senses.
Niall moaned as his taste registered in her brain. Her hands clutched desperately at his back as he continued to fuck her mouth with his tongue. He tasted like premium Scotch with just a hint of mint. Her fingertips explored the sensation of smooth skin stretched tautly across dense muscle. Heat resonated off his body. Niall pressed closer, wanting to share that heat,
needing
to be thawed . . . desperate to be burned.
Her hands began to move over him greedily. He groaned, deep and savage, and tore his mouth from hers. For a tense moment, he just stared down at her. Then he lifted her in his arms. Niall held on tightly to his shoulders. A kaleidoscope of images from his apartment spun before her eyes as he quickly moved toward his bedroom, adding to her chaotic emotional state.
He tore off the wrap that she wore around her shoulders before he lowered her to his bed. The zipper of her sophisticated little black cocktail dress came down next.
“Arms up,” he muttered.
She complied. He tossed aside her black dress a second later.
Niall’s hips moved restlessly on the bed, instinctively trying to relieve the pressure growing at her sex when his gaze dropped over her. She wore a black bra and panty set and some thigh-high stockings. And her pearls.
As if that counted for anything
, she thought with a touch of hysteria.
Vic’s expression didn’t alter much, but his eyes blazed so hot as they toured her body that she felt sexually scorched.
“Take off your panties and move back on the bed.”
She felt like she was in a dream as she did exactly what he’d demanded. But it was a very hot, exciting dream . . . and she hadn’t the slightest desire to resist the carnal allure of it.
He covered her body with his own by the time her head hit the pillows. He palmed her thighs, spreading them to accommodate his body in the process. He immediately took possession of her mouth again. Their tongues tangled and mated wildly. His hands ran down her sides, one pausing at a small, silk-covered breast, the other sliding down her waist and cradling her hip.
He tilted her pelvis up and pressed himself to her, forcing her to feel the strength of his desire.
Niall moaned into his mouth. He felt so vibrant next to her, so alive. It was a dizzying sensation for someone who had been one of the walking dead for the past three years to suddenly awaken as if from a jolt of sexual electricity. He molded her breast in his palm gently, then roughly . . . always surely. Niall strained up, desperate for more of the sensation of him. Her hands ran over his back and shoulders, sliding and rubbing, consuming him with her touch.
Vic grunted at the feeling of her slender, curvy body pressing to him so tightly. Her skin felt like warm silk. Her nipple pressed into the center of his palm like a hard little dart, maddening him. The feeling of her hands moving anxiously over him blinded him with lust.
He rolled off her onto his left hip, ripping at the button fly of his jeans. He shoved them down his thighs with precise, rapid movements. His cock sprang free, stiff, tight, straining toward her. His eyes caressed her body. She was the color of pale honey, looking like she could tan easily if she chose, but refrained. She’d tasted so good . . . her skin, her mouth, her sweat.
He couldn’t wait to eat her pussy.
He winced in agonized pleasure when he moved and his cock brushed the bare, satiny skin of her thigh. She whimpered.
She reached for him, but he stopped her by grabbing both of her wrists, then transferring both of them to one hand. The feeling of her small, cool hands on his body had enflamed him earlier. Vic didn’t think he could take it right now and maintain his control. He pushed her wrists down over her head at the same time that he reached between her thighs.
He watched her face while he burrowed his fingers through damp, silky pubic hair, dipping into the warm cream of her pussy before he spread the abundant moisture between her labia, sliding and pressing against her clit.
Her back arched up off the bed. She squirmed frantically at the restraint of his binding hand.
But he only gripped her wrists and held her tighter. He played a hard, ruthless rhythm with his fingers, plucking and strumming the nerve-packed flesh until the tension in her body broke and she cried out sharply in stunned ecstasy. Two of his fingers plunged into her tight sheath. He watched her intently as her body clamped and convulsed around him.
She was ready for him so quickly. It excited him to know that she was as hungry for him at that moment as he was for her. He stretched, reaching for a condom in the drawer of his bedside table. His excitement to be inside her made him roll it on his cock in record-breaking time.
Without a word he spread her thighs and arrowed into her. Her body resisted him, but he was crazed by the sensation of her hot, narrow channel as it enclosed the thick head of his penis.
“You’re tight,” he grated. He held the base of his cock with one hand, working it into her clamping channel with subtle up-and-down motions while his hips provided a steady, hard pressure. She moaned, still in the aftershocks of her climax. Her slender body undulating and straining against him made him desperate. He thrust.
Hard.
He might have been half-crazed with lust, but he paused when he heard her cry out. His cock had burrowed less than half its length into her.
“Shhh, try to relax, baby,” he soothed. His head dropped next to hers. He pressed hot kisses along her neck, pausing to run the elegant strand of pearls that she wore between his lips, licking at the smooth globes lightly before he nipped at her tender skin. Her lips were parted when he found them, the taste between them sweet and addictive. His cock throbbed painfully inside of her as his tongue sank into her warm cavern.
Pearls and honey.
She was driving him right over the edge. Her pussy gripped at him mercilessly.
He pushed back a smooth thigh, opening her body to him, demanding admission. His thumb found her clitoris, circling, plucking, and coaxing. She groaned into his mouth and pushed up for more pressure, seating his cock farther into her body in the process.
“That’s right,” he whispered gruffly next to her damp lips. “Let me in, Niall.”
Niall cried out in sharp desire as he began to pulse his hips. His cock felt too large to be in her body, invading her, forcing her to make room for him . . . but indescribably good as well. His pressing thumb on her clit drove her further into a frenzy of lust. A friction began to build in her unlike anything she’d ever known. She began to push and rotate her hips around his cock, up and down, around, in and out, desperate to feed the mounting flame that grew and expanded in her sex and belly. Niall saw the way his lip curled, the way his light eyes gleamed as a result of her actions. She mewled in pleasure and increased the pressure against him, desperate with need.
She writhed and whimpered beneath him, begging him in a primitive fashion to take total possession of her. He accepted her wordless invitation. He drove his cock into her, pressing his balls tightly to her damp hilt, grunting in animal-like pleasure. When she cried out and arched her back, he secured her wrists tighter, pushing her back to the bed.
He began to thrust into her with tight, concentrated strokes.
“You’ve got a hot little pussy, but you’re teasing me with it, aren’t you, Niall?”
Niall just shook her head when he growled out the question ominously. She was too tight with mounting pleasure, too full of him . . . too close to orgasm to speak. His cock massaged her more deeply than she’d ever been touched, stimulating her with a hard, relentless pressure. He pried her body open to make way for him, but she was wild to get him back deep every time he withdrew from her, needing to have the thick, hard knob of his penis stabbing and rubbing and demanding something from her that she had only just learned she could give.
She gasped loudly when he leaned down and encircled her silk-covered nipple in the heat of his mouth. The suction that he applied made the inferno at her sex flame higher. When he bit at the tender morsel and thrust into her hard, creating a loud smack of flesh against flesh, she exploded again.
Vic grunted savagely as he felt her squeeze and convulse around his cock in orgasm. Her heat flooded around him. His eyes crossed at the sensation.
He reached up and roughly pushed down both of the thin pieces of black silk that covered her breasts. He bent and sampled one hard, pointed crest, lashing with his tongue, sucking hard, nipping and biting with his front teeth. She tasted so good—like berries, sweet cream, and musky woman. He wanted to eat her up in two ravenous bites. When he leaned up slightly, the sight of her white, thrusting breast capped by an erect, glistening pink nipple nearly sent him over the edge.