Читать книгу From Enemy's Daughter to Expectant Bride - Olivia Gates - Страница 9

Two

Ellie was drowning. In pleasure. The pleasure of this man’s kisses. The man she’d met only minutes before.

But it was okay to drown. Since this had to be a dream.

In the waking world, it was unthinkable for her to lose her head at the sight of a man, let alone her sense of self at his touch. Perfect pleasure like this couldn’t possibly exist. Not for her. She was the last woman on earth to get zapped by attraction at a literal hundred paces. And then came this man. He was what proved this must be a dream. He couldn’t be real.

No real man could have compelled her like this. Even the way he’d materialized out of the darkness had been unreal.

One thing explained all this. She must be dozing off in her car, lost in the most outrageously erotic dream ever.

Which figured. After two days of continuous work, exhaustion had been another reason she’d hated having to go to that ball. She’d been asleep on her feet by the time she’d dragged herself home at three to throw on “something appropriate,” then driven to that mansion in Armação dos Búzios, the “Hamptons of Brazil.” The damn place was over two hours away. And she’d been lost an extra half hour before finding it.

After she finally did at six o’clock, she had memories of valet parking and walking through the ingeniously landscaped, multilevel gardens into the splendid, four-level edifice sprawling over what she thought was no less than ten thousand square feet. Outside, each spray of indirect illumination enhanced every white-painted arch, column and molding in its neo-Renaissance architecture, giving it the grandeur of a temple or cathedral. Inside, the pervasive, festive lighting came from an abundance of all-crystal chandeliers and antique brass lampadaires, giving the Portuguese-French–style gilded interior the feel of a fairy tale. Then she’d reached the ballroom, which was right out of one.

She remembered pausing at the threshold, wrestling with her dislike for crowds, then finally walking in since braving it was preferable to being subjected to more pleading.

Then as she’d kept to the periphery, avoiding the forced gaiety, she’d felt as if she was hit by lightning. Her eyes had jerked to the bolt’s origin. And she’d met his gaze.

As her heart had stumbled like a horse on ice, he’d raised a hand made of elegance and power, and beckoned.

Breath hitching, she’d looked around to see who he was beckoning to. Once sure he was actually motioning to her, she’d had no thought of resisting. He’d kept receding, and she’d kept moving toward him, no volition involved. Then she had been within touching distance, and nothing had remained in her stalled mind but...wow. Wow.

Even at five-foot-ten with four-inch heels, she was dwarfed by him. Besides his towering height, his shoulders, torso and arms were daunting, his waist and hips narrow, his thighs formidable. And his legs went on forever. And that was what she could see through his slate-gray suit. She couldn’t even imagine what his body would look like out of it.

But one thing she saw clearly. His face.

Ruthless planes and stark angles composed his forehead, nose and jaw. His cheekbones slashed so sharply against his polished teak skin, she felt she could cut herself on them. His lips were sculpted from decadent sensuality. Put together, his features were a standard of male beauty no one would ever come close to measuring up to. Not in her eyes.

But what captivated her went beyond his physical endowments and sexual magnetism. It wasn’t even those stormy eyes, surrounded by lashes as raven-black as the layers of his vital hair, and slanted to the same mysterious angle as his dense eyebrows. It was the entity that looked back at her through them.

Then he’d thanked her, for coming when he’d summoned her.

The dark spell of his voice hadn’t stopped annoyance from registering at his arrogance. Even when nothing else could describe the way she’d walked to him as if in thrall. Then he’d cupped her cheek and the world disappeared.

Nothing was left but his touch, and the building urge for something...more. And he gave her more. Like a hungry panther, he backed her against the wall only to hover over her lips, tantalizing her with the dizzying scent of his maleness and desire.

She started trembling, fearing her heart would stop if he didn’t kiss her. Then he did. And that intensity between them manifested into a literal spark, zapping what remained of her coherence. She looked up into his eyes when he jerked away, confessing her helplessness. And a change came over him.

As overriding as his approach had been up till that point, there’d been restraint in it. But now his eyes explicitly said there’d be none from this point forward. He wouldn’t stop at a kiss. He wanted more. Everything. Then he told her just that.

Yes, my beauty, yes. Everything with me. Now.

On some level, she realized this was insane. But when he swept her up into his arms, she melted in his hold, let him take her wherever he would.

Then he crossed into a semidark room, an opulent study. He set her back on her feet only to press her against the door. Before she could draw another breath, he thrust his tongue deeper in her mouth as he undid her hair clip. Her hair swished down over his hand, and he combed his fingers through it, sending pleasure cascading to every root. Then his other hand found her zipper and slid it down.

She moaned a sound she’d never before produced—the sound of relief-laced shock—as her bodice released her breasts with a rustling sigh. His lips swallowed her moans, drugging her with delight. One thing kept repeating in her brain.

She’d wake up any moment now.

But she didn’t wake up. And now she knew she wouldn’t.

This was just too overwhelming to be a dream.

This was real.

Another shock zigzagged through her as his fingers splayed against her back, and her flesh almost burst into flame. She jerked away from the burning, then pressed back for more. And he took his onslaught to the next level.

He yanked up her skirt, cupped her buttocks beneath her panties and hauled her up against him. She gasped at his grip over her intimate flesh, at his effortless power. Gasps became moans as he ground the steel of his erection against her core, flooding it with another rush of liquid heat.

Something scalding rumbled from him as he tugged one thigh, splaying her around his hips. Then he thrust against her to the same rhythm his tongue plunged inside her mouth. His powerful chest rubbed against her breasts, the friction of their remaining clothes pricking her nipples into pinpoints of agony.

She trembled in his hold as his lips burned a trail from her lips down to her neck, settling there to ravage her with tugging kisses that sent pleasure hurtling through her blood with each savage pull.

It felt as if all existence converged on him, became him, his body and breath, his hands and mouth. She was no longer herself, but a mass of needs wrapped around him, open to him. The flowing throb between her legs escalated to a pounding that needed something to assuage it. When it tipped into sheer discomfort, she cried out.

He shuddered against her, as if her cry electrified him, then he snapped his head up and crashed his lips on her wide-open mouth, thrusting deeply.

She plunged into his taste again as his tongue dueled with hers, as his lips and teeth mastered her. This was nothing like the slow seduction she’d imagined her first intimate encounter would be. This was an invasion, a ravaging. And she wanted it that way.

In unison with her feverish need, he snatched her off her feet again, crossed the room. Lowering her on a massive couch that would accommodate his full length, he straightened and looked down at her. In the dim light coming from somewhere in the spacious room, his gaze reflected the illumination, sparkled silver, devouring her. Hers druggedly luxuriated in gliding over his awe-striking figure.

Then he finally came down over her, his powerful limbs a prison of muscle and maleness.

“Estou louco de desejo por você, minha beleza única.”

I’m mad with wanting you, my unique beauty.

She would have said the same to him, if she could. But all she could do was silently arch up to help him when his hands dipped beneath her to undo her bra. He peeled it off and spilled her swollen breasts into his palms. She lurched as he growled his appreciation, pressing them together, mitigating their ache, heightening her fever. Then he bent and showed her there was more exquisite agony, grazing one nipple then the other with his teeth, swirling them with his hot tongue. By the time he suckled them, she was writhing beneath him as he built to long, hard pulls.

Then he blew his scorching confessions on them. “You made me lose my mind with a look. Then I touched you, tasted you, felt you like this, beneath me, open for me, needing me.”

She could only nod jerkily, her teeth starting to clatter as his hands squeezed her buttocks, then slid her soaked panties off her quivering legs. He then discarded his jacket, undid his shirt and flung it open before pressing back over her. His silky hair-roughened flesh rubbed her into a frenzy, then suddenly...he stilled.

Disentangling their bodies, he rose on extended arms and loomed above her. “You’re trembling all over. Are you afraid?”

Surprise made words catch in her swollen throat. “O-only that my heart might stop...or I might faint.”

Something more dangerous than anything he’d exposed her to spread on his face. A smile. Predatory, starved, unbearably arousing. “I feel the same. Minus the fainting. My heart might stop if I don’t have you naked beneath me.” But instead of extracting her from her undone dress, he bunched it at her midriff. “Next time, I’ll worship you from your lashes to your toenails. But now I need to be inside you. Say you need me, too. Say you can’t wait. Say it.”

There was no voice left in her. She was coming apart, the pounding in her core rising to a frantic hammering. Her head jerked on a nod, a tear slipping from her left eye.

He swooped down, closed his lips over her earlobe, catching the moisture. With his first nip, she arched up into his arousal with a cry, her legs falling open, giving him license to take, to possess.

His breathing as harsh as hers, he rose to his knees, and in barely suppressed urgency, released himself. Her heart rammed her ribs. With intimidation at the size of him.

Then he took his erection in his hand, and she could only lie there, waiting for him to do whatever it took to satisfy this gnawing hunger. Her heart thundered, expecting him to drive into her, filling that maddening emptiness he’d created inside her, bracing for the pain. But he didn’t, only squeezed his eyes shut on what sounded like a vicious curse. When he opened them, they almost vaporized her. Then pushing her thighs wider apart, his hand slid beneath her, tilting her hips. His gaze swept downward, dragging hers with it. With a stuttering heart, she watched him open the engorged lips of her sex, then, making no attempt to penetrate her, he rubbed the scorching length of his manhood between them.

The pleasure was so acute she bowed up on a shrill cry.

His other hand clenched her buttocks, he bent and clamped her lips in a fierce kiss.

“Do you feel how wet and hot and ready for me you are?”

He glided up, nudging her most sensitive knot of flesh. She shrieked in his mouth, ecstasy almost too sharp to bear. He circled her swollen knot with his crown until everything in the world focused on the point where his flesh tormented hers.

“Please, please...”

She pleaded with him even when she didn’t know if she could accommodate him. But this...this was what she’d been waiting for all her life. This was why she’d never been tempted to share her body with a man. Because she’d never experienced anything like this mind-searing, caution-annihilating lust.

His lips possessed hers again, swallowing her pleas as he thrust against her, prodding her nub over and over.

The pleasure became an unbearable pressure that clamored to unfurl. When she felt she could stand it no more, he quickened his tempo and snapped the tension inside her.

He pinned her beneath him as she bucked and shrieked, release tearing through her. Continuing to pump his hardness against her quivering flesh, he drained her of the last spasm of pleasure her body needed to discharge.

She slumped beneath him, depleted, sated, her intoxicated gaze fixed on him as he rose to his knees between her splayed legs. Pumping his erection, groans gusted from his depths as he climaxed, his blazing eyes never leaving hers.

She’d never known anything as incredible as the sight and sound of him in the grip of orgasm, nor felt anything as fulfilling as knowing she’d given him as much pleasure as he’d given her. Breathing slowing down, she spiraled into a chasm of satisfaction and melted deeper into the plushness beneath her....

Awareness flooded back into her as she felt him gently wiping her belly before he came down over her, claiming her lips in luxurious kisses. It was as if after devouring her, he was now sipping her, savoring her. Each clinging kiss solidified the intimacy they’d shared, and told her the explosive episode had been a prelude to a deeper passion.

When he finally raised his head it was to reach above her. A light burst on. Even though it was soft and soothing, her eyes squeezed shut. When she opened them again, she found him looking down at her indulgently.

“What—what just happened?”

She hadn’t intended to speak. Certainly not to say something that moronic. But she had, her voice deep, husky and nothing like she’d ever heard it.

Expecting ridicule to enter his gaze, his hypnotic eyes only turned serious. “No idea. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. But if I have to guess, I’d say...magic.”

Relief swamped her. He didn’t consider her bewilderment an act, or stupid. And he felt the same way.

She exhaled in relief. “In the absence of any other explanation, I’d have to agree.”

Yet now with the madness-inducing arousal sated, embarrassment started to submerge her.

What had she done?

She sank deeper into what she now saw was an oversize, dark green and gold silk brocade couch, acutely conscious of their state of undress, of every inch of his flesh that was still pressed into her most intimate parts.

As if attuned to her needs, as he’d seemed to be from the start, he rose off her, slid to the ground and kneeled beside her. After forcing his unabated erection into his pants, he retrieved her panties. Navigating the high-heeled shoes he’d left on her, he slid the panties over her shaking legs, caressing and kissing his way from her foot up. Her senses had ignited all over again as he fitted the damp garment back on her hips. And that was before he pressed a hot kiss on her core through the fabric, and almost blew out any fuse left intact in her brain.

As she struggled to deal with the new blow, he rearranged her skirt over her legs, then eased her up to a sitting position. He was so tall he was on her same level even on his knees. Before he pulled her bodice up, he cupped her heavy breasts in his large palms and saluted each gloriously sore nipple with a soft kiss. Every string holding her up gave. She slumped forward against his endless chest.

He received her weight with a shuddering groan. Then after a final kneading caress, he scooped her breasts back in her bra, rearranged the bodice over them, reached behind her and pulled her zipper up.

Brushing her hair back, he cupped her jaw and claimed her parted lips. He drew back, pausing for a moment before he came back over her, plundering her lips and body.

Deepening their kiss, he rose and pushed her back against the couch. When he finally tore his lips away, her head was swimming and her body had ignited all over again.

“It’s actually physically painful to stop ravishing you.” His teeth gritted. “I thought taking the edge off would cool us down long enough for us to get introduced. Seems I was wrong.”

“Ellie.” Her name left her in a rush as he moved to gather her to him again. Her heart would burst if he resumed kissing her. “My name is Ellie.”

“Ellie.” He frowned as he sat back, repeated the name as if tasting it. Then he shook his head. “It doesn’t suit you.”

“Why, thanks!”

His lips pursed at her sarcasm, an imperious eyebrow raised in disapproval. “How could your parents see the glorious baby you must have been and give you such a nondescript name? Ellie? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“My parents actually gave me a pretty lofty name. I extracted a nickname from it as everyone thinks it makes me sound like a character from a medieval play.”

“I take back my condemnation of your parents if they gave you a distinguished name. What is it?”

“Eliana.”

His eyes suddenly grew soft. “Eliana. God has answered.”

He understood the meaning of her name. He was the first one to ever do so.

He took her hand, pressed his lips in her palm. “Now, that is you. You must have been their every prayer answered. As you are the answer to my every fantasy.”

Her blood blazed as it rushed to her cheeks. “You’re poetic, too? Isn’t it enough you’re...all that?” She made an encompassing gesture, then rushed to splay a hand over his chest as he surged toward her. “We aren’t anywhere near introduced yet, and if you touch and kiss me again I—I...”

“You’ll catch fire again.”

She turned her head against the couch. “I can’t deal with the way I did the first time, so give me a chance to...”

A gentle finger on her chin brought her eyes back to his. “I thought I was imagining it before, but you are shy.”

“Pretty laughable, I know, after...after...”

“You went up in flames in my arms?” he completed for her again. “I find your shyness no such thing. But I felt it even through your mind-blowing response.” She hid her face in his chest, felt his chuckle rev below her cheek. “Don’t be even shier now. You affected me the same way, minus the shyness part. Meu Deus...the way you surrendered to me, as if you couldn’t help yourself, as if I’d overwhelmed you.”

“No ‘as if’ about it. You more than overwhelmed me.” She burrowed deeper into him, arousal mingling with relief as he crushed her harder in his embrace.

So this was what desire was all about. This was what had been missing all her life. Him. She must have felt him out there, have instinctively known that accepting anything less, with anyone else, would be shortchanging herself.

Out loud, she whispered, “So this is the kind of crazy attraction that drives people to commit insanities, huh?”

His beautiful lips curved. “Delightful insanities.”

She couldn’t have put it better. “Yes.”

“But even in my insanity, some fail-safe mechanism kicked in and pulled me back from possessing you without protection.”

She gaped at him. That hadn’t even crossed her mind!

Then the enormity of the whole situation hit her. Hard.

He smoothed a hand over her flaming cheek. “I only did so for you. Another unprecedented thing for me.”

“You mean you usually don’t consider your...partner?” she croaked, reeling with belated shock at her own folly.

“I usually consider my partner and myself. This time I only considered you. This was so out of the blue, progressed with such blinding speed...at the last moment I thought you might not even realize what you were risking. So even though it was beyond me to stop pleasuring you, I had to protect you.”

“Oh...” She found no words to express what she was feeling. This was...huge. He could have just taken his pleasure, but he hadn’t. He’d put her safety before his own carnal needs. Her hands squeezed his arm in gratitude, loving the sheer power her fingers felt beneath them. “Thank you.”

He gathered her tighter to him and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Anything for you, minha beleza, anything at all.” He drew away to look down at her. “But now that I’m not about to have a heart attack with arousal, I will procure all precautions, and props.”

Props? The word ricocheted in her imagination as he leveled the full force of his gaze on her.

“Give me your promise.”

“Wh-what promise?”

“That you’ll spend the night in my arms.”

“Oh...”

She really had to stop saying that!

“Then after this night, the next night. And the next.”

Throat closing at his intensity, she murmured, “Wouldn’t you want to see how one night goes before committing to more?”

“I know how this night will go. I will pleasure you to within an inch of your life, make it impossible for you not to crave more.” At her head shake his eyebrow rose again, what she felt certain sent powerful men cowering. “How can you think this won’t happen?”

“Because I have no idea if I can make it impossible for you not to crave more nights.”

“Have I blown a fuse in there with too much pleasure already?” One finger gently tapped her temple, his smile lazy assurance itself. “It’s the only explanation as to why you’d even consider something so ludicrous.”

“If you say so,” she mumbled.

“I do. Now give me your promise.” At her hesitation, he frowned. “Are you worried I might turn out to be a nutcase?”

She coughed. “That is one thing that didn’t even cross my mind.”

“So you’re saying you trust me?” He dragged his teeth along her neck like a vampire searching for the sweetest spot for a bite. Her head fell back, giving him the exposure he needed to find the best one.

A shudder of acute pleasure shook her whole frame as he took that nip. “I’m saying I couldn’t even think about anything beyond what you made me feel. If you didn’t notice, I haven’t exactly been functioning on any logical level since you...‘summoned me.’”

He raised his head, pure male satisfaction gleaming in his eyes. “No, you haven’t. But neither have I.”

It was so gratifying that he confessed her equal effect on him so openly. “I was and still am operating purely on instinct.”

“And your instincts are telling you to trust me?”

“I can’t explain it—” she dived into him again, nodding against his hot-velvet flesh “—but they do.” She looked up, whispering what felt like a pledge. “I do trust you.”

His eyes blazed in response. “Implicitly?”

She nodded again.

“You won’t freak out when I make unusual demands in bed?”

Her eyes grew wider as his filled with that predator’s gleam that made her pulse race in anticipation.

Still, she had to ask. “Define unusual.”

“Unusual in quantity...not quality.” Before she could tell him that wasn’t much better, he added, “At least, not too unusual in quality.”

“There you go again with unrealistic expectations.”

His lips twisted. “You think I’m false advertising?”

“It’s me who has performance...or rather conformance anxiety. I don’t think I can meet your demands in quantity. It’s out of the question I could in quality.”

“Just leave everything to me. As you’ve done so far.” He took her on his lap, caressing her all over. “Any complaints?”

“Only one.” She fidgeted over the massive hardness beneath her, the simmering inside her flaring up again. “That you seem to have created a monster.”

Those perfect teeth flashed as he pressed her against his arousal. “You want more.”

“I want you,” she moaned.

“Not as much as I want you. Ah-ah-ah...” He placed a silencing finger on her lips when she started to protest. “You just have to trust me again on this. Now...your promise.”

She pushed out of his arms, trying to scramble off his lap. “I can’t. My brain feels like I was in a collision and I...”

He let her separate them, his face suddenly chiseled from granite. “Are you regretting it?”

“God, no. It was...beyond magical. But...but...”

“It’s too much, too fast.”

She nodded, anxiously probing his reaction. And it felt as if a cool balm had spread over her burning flesh. There was only self-deprecation on his lips, empathy in his eyes.

After the way she’d surrendered to him, another man would have accused her of leading him on, then playing hard to get. A few men had even called her a tease.

But he wasn’t like those men. He was like no other.

She wanted to kiss him for being so wonderful. But a kiss might destroy his control, the only thing that stopped her from getting in over her head. More than she already had, that was.

“It isn’t too much or too fast, not for me,” he said, his voice a dark caress. “Every second with you is how I’ll define perfection from now on. But I will slow down—for you.” He swept her into his arms again and she succumbed on a ragged sigh, sank back into the luxury of his embrace. “But there are so many more intimacies I need to share with you, many untold pleasures. I need to keep kissing and touching and talking to you. So when everyone goes away, you’ll stay.”

“Yes.” Then she frowned. “But what do you mean stay?”

“The night. In my bed. In my arms.”

“I got that. But stay where?”

“Stay here, of course.”

“You’re staying here?”

“I should think so. I own the place.”

And suddenly, all the details she’d missed—in him, in what he’d said, which should have made sense before now but hadn’t—coalesced. Into one big wrecking ball.

It swung into her so hard, it knocked her out of his arms again. “You’re...him?”