A husky masculine chuckle, his lips moving over her shoulder, his hands on her hips. “Because I’m a smart man.” Playing his fingers across her abdomen, he undid the top button of her jeans. “Take these off for me.”

That slow, slumberous heat flamed, burned, but she took a step forward, lowered the zipper and then—taking a deep breath—pushed down both the jeans and her panties. Leaning forward to pull them off her feet, she could barely hear anything through the thunder of her heartbeat. Max didn’t say a word until she straightened back to her full height. But then he spoke . . . and she melted.

CHAPTER 38

“Beautiful.” A rough sound, impatient hands that turned her to meet his kiss.

And oh, his kiss.

It held the same wild tenderness, the same protectiveness that had torn through her every shield from the very first. But it also held something else—a raw, dark pleasure, a hotly sexual aggression. Shuddering, she pulled at his shirt. Buttons went flying every which way as he cooperated with her frustrated need to touch him, but his attention was on her mouth, his hunger inexorable.

His hands back on her body as soon as his shirt fell to the floor, he squeezed and petted until she broke the kiss, unable to take any more. But he wouldn’t let her go. Kisses on her jaw, on her neck as he walked her backward, the heat of his chest an exquisite caress. She was more than ready to fall onto the bed when it hit the backs of her knees. Not waiting for him to nudge her, she crawled on and turned over to brace herself on her elbows.

He was watching her with a glittering kind of focus, one that made her skin tighten until it almost hurt. She swallowed as his fingers went to his jeans, as he undid the snaps and peeled the denim down his legs, along with his briefs. Her eyes were riveted to the thick length of his erection . . . to the hand he clasped around it. He stroked once, and her body arched. She couldn’t explain it, didn’t understand it, but the sight of him stroking his own flesh was the most erotic thing she’d ever seen. “Max.” A shuddering plea.

Coming over her as she lay back in unspoken invitation, he lowered himself just enough that their thighs brushed, the hardness of his erection pushing at her abdomen in blatant masculine demand. Sucking in a breath, she slid her hands up the beauty of his chest and over those magnificent shoulders. “Yes.” It was an answer to a question he hadn’t asked.

But he understood. Relaxing his muscles, he allowed his body to touch her all over. The full-body contact was an erotic lightning strike, an electrical storm. Moaning at the pleasure-pain of it, she tangled her fingers in his hair and took his mouth in a kiss of her own. He shuddered against her, his hand clenching on her hip. When he moved that hand to push at her thigh, she spread her legs in silent invitation.

He touched her slickness, and it made her tremble. But he didn’t stroke her with lazy patience as he had once before. This time, his touch was deliciously, demandingly rough, as he used his knowledge of her body to make her twist beneath him. “That’s it,” he murmured, his shoulder muscles bunching against her palms as he played with her. “Scream for me, Sophie.”

She managed to tighten her thighs, trapping his hand in between. “I,” she gasped out, “am not a screamer.”

A wicked, unexpected smile, that lean dimple flashing in his cheek. “Well now, a man’s got to take that as a challenge.”

She adored him. Tugging down his head, she pressed a line of kisses along the dimple, even as he began to tease her with small movements of his finger against her clitoris. Her breath caught. “Max, you’re rushing me.”

The sensual complaint made him chuckle. “Fair’s fair.” But he withdrew his hand, leaning down to kiss her slow and lazy though his body thrummed with tension above her. His hair was a cool stroke across her skin as he moved lower, nuzzling at her breasts before taking a tight little nipple into his mouth.

It was an agony of sensation, and it was magnificent. “Oh!”

Grazing her with his teeth, he released the nipple. “That,” he said, circling the wet nub with his tongue, “was close to a scream.”

“Gasp,” she breathed out. “It was a gasp. Now please do that again.”

“What?” Another wicked smile.

“Max.”

Chuckling, he dipped his head to tease her neglected nipple, curving his hand possessively over the roundness of her other breast.

Shivering, she found she’d spread her thighs again, that she was cradling him in the most intimate of ways. The depth of pleasure was a knife, sharp and edgy—she shifted restlessly, her hands running up and down his back. Mine, she thought with a primal possessiveness, he’s mine. Her hands touched his buttocks when he raised his head to kiss her on the lips, and she found she really, really liked stroking her hands over the sleekly muscled strength of him.

A groan against her. “Stop that.” He nipped at her lower lip when she didn’t comply. “Or I’ll play the same game with you . . . in front of the mirror.”

Her hands went motionless.

Max braced himself on his forearms, intrigued enough to fight the pulsing need of his cock, the drive to sink into Sophie’s silken heat. “So, Ms. Sophia Russo has kinky fantasies about mirrors. Interesting.”

Heat colored her cheeks, but she tilted up her head. “Tell me one of your fantasies.”

He loved that she trusted him enough to not back down. Fighting fire with fire, he made a slow, deliberate move . . . until his erection nudged at her clitoris. Lord have mercy. It felt so good, he wanted to slip a few inches lower, take everything. But this was Sophia’s first time, and he damn well intended to drown her in pleasure—it was a matter of determined male pride . . . and of how much he felt for this woman.

Whose eyes drowned in black as she said, “Don’t think you’ll distract me.”

Smiling, he kissed her, nuzzling at her throat as he spoke, “You know those suits you wear? The prim ones with skirts to the knee and jackets that button below your breasts?”

“Mmm.” She made one of those little movements that drove him insane, rubbing herself against his cock. “My suits are boring.”

It took him several seconds to find his voice. “Au contraire.” Husky words, his breath caught in his throat. “Those suits give a man ideas. Like, for example, catching you alone in a deserted office”—he gripped her earlobe in a quick, teasing bite—“bending you over a big wooden desk, pushing up that sedate skirt to find you wet for me.” The image drove him one step closer to insanity.

Then Sophie said, “Would you touch me?” in a sultry voice that wrapped around his cock and squeezed.

Shuddering, he lowered his head, sucked hard at her neck, leaving a little red mark. “No, this is a Neanderthal fantasy”—one of his favorites—“I just rip off your panties and thrust into you.”

“That—” She swallowed, wet her lips. “I have . . . um, nothing against that fantasy.”

Now that deserved a hot, open-mouthed, inferno of a kiss. “I have another version,” he told her afterward.

Fingers clenching on his biceps, her breasts rising up and down in jagged breaths.

“This time, I get you to stand in front of me, and I push up your skirt inch by inch, while stroking my thumbs along the insides of your thighs.” Rising to kneel above her, he mirrored actions to words, parting her thighs to afford him the most delicious of views. “I know you’re not wearing anything underneath—though sometimes, I let you wear silk stockings and a suspender belt—”

Her breasts turned a hot blush pink as heat rolled over her body. “Max.”

He moved his hands over her in a sweeping caress. “Shh, this is getting good.” She shivered under his touch. “And so I shove the skirt to your waist, bare you all pink and damp for me”—sliding his hands under her bottom—“tug you close”—positioning himself lower down her body—“and eat you up like candy.”

And then he took her. Hot and deep and with an open possessiveness. She bucked under him, lush in her femininity, making small sounds of pleasure that urged him to drive her ever higher. But today, he didn’t want her to go over without him. He needed to hold her in his arms, feel her pleasure. So when he felt intimate little muscles clench, her breathing alter, he took one final taste and rose over her body, his hand on her hip. “Together this time, Sophie.” The words were so deep, so hoarse, as to be almost unrecognizable.

Sophia realized her cop had reached the end of his control. “Yes, oh, yes.” Feeling wild and needy and hotly female, she wrapped her leg over his hip, opening herself even further for him.

He didn’t ask again, kissing her with a gut-wrenching blend of tenderness and an almost violent need as he nudged at the entrance to her body. The sensation was . . . indescribable. It might have driven her to madness if she’d tried it when they first met. But now . . .

Burying her face in his neck, breathing in the intoxicating blend of his scent, she gripped his body tight as he slid inside her. His entry burned a little, but that was a small thing subsumed in the agony of sensation. Shaking, she wrapped her other leg around him. The sudden act opened her up, made him slide inside faster than before.

They both cried out, and Max froze above her. “Sophie?”

She ran her teeth up the line of his throat. “Yes.” Always, yes for this man.

Tugging off her hands, he twined them with his own as he pressed her to the sheets, his mouth claiming hers. She felt deliciously exposed and shockingly exhilarated as he flexed his hips and buried himself to the hilt inside her. Her cry was torn out of her, her body arching toward his in primal response. When he began to move, she tried to follow. She was a fraction of a second out of sync . . . but only for the first few strokes.

And then, there was no more thought. Just the slick, hot glide of his body against hers, inside hers, the rasp of his jaw against her cheek as he lowered his head . . . and finally, the turbulent beauty of a sexual storm that threw them both against the rocks and broke them wide open.