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Despite the undeniable sensual games he played, she believed that. He wouldn’t want a safe word because to Maxwell Black, respecting the word no was as important as keeping his word.
“I will know you trust me when you pull them out.” And there was that hurt again, but he seemed no more aware of it.
She nodded, her throat suddenly gone too dry to answer.
He took the blue silk away and part of her regretted it, but not enough to stop him.
If her refusal bothered him on a conscious level, it didn’t show. His erection had not flagged, his expression as filled with primal desire as ever. He came back to her, but didn’t blanket her with his body as he’d done before.
Instead, he leaned over her to adjust her hands above her head, one clasping the other wrist. “Okay?” he asked.
She jerked her head in affirmative. “Mmm-hmm.”
“Keep them there.” It wasn’t a question.
She answered anyway. “All right.”
With a gentle, but inexorable touch, he separated her thighs, opening her in unambiguous familiarity. She was his. “You are so very lovely.”
“Thank you.” Her voice was husky. So strange. So not like her usual perky tones.
He brushed his fingers through the curls at the apex of her thighs and she jolted. Who knew her hair could be sensitive, but did that feel good? It felt amazing.
He leaned down and breathed in deeply. “I want the fragrance of your desire.”
“Um, okay,” she practically whispered. She felt like maybe she should be embarrassed, but there was no room for that kind of reaction between them.
There was too much honest need.
“There is a school of sexual thought that claims there are four different areas of the foot that are particularly sexually stimulating. Did you know that?” he asked as he gently pressed into one that sent a sensual frisson straight up her inner thigh and into her core.
“No, oh…ohhh…” Her answer tailed off into a moan as he found another.
“I’m an eclectic learner,” he said almost conversationally, but the forceful desire in his dark metallic-gray eyes removed any casual feel to the words.
“Ye-esss?”
“I studied the pressure points of the body with a master of Dim Mak who had made it his life’s work to also discover the unexpected areas of the body that could give the most pleasure.”
“Aren’t pressure points about pain?” she asked uncertainly.
“Knowing them is as important for avoidance as knowing those touches that can bring the greatest pleasure. I will never take you over that edge between pleasure and pain, though sometimes the ecstasy is going to be so great, you will wonder how close you are.”
“Oh.” She stared at him in shock, which she knew reflected her own innocence. “You studied how to have sex?”
“Not just sex, dorogaya, but amazing, mind-melting sex.”
“The kind that makes you feel like you’ve had an out-of-body experience.” She could remember that from a year ago and they hadn’t even had intercourse.
His smile was both pleased and predatory. “Yes.”
“But you’re a Corporate Tsar. When did you have time?”
“Everyone needs a hobby. Naturally, my teacher also trained me in traditional kung fu.”
No wonder his body was so buff. “It was part of your exercise regimen then.” Even so, it was a little mind-boggling that Max had made a study of sex.
“Yes.”
“That’s a lot of work for part-time lovers.” Her words rose and fell several octaves as his touch grew more intimate, moving up to her inner thighs.
He shrugged, but she saw something in his eyes.
And she had her answer. Or at least part of it. Just as she was excited by him taking control, Max got something out of it, too. “Your pleasure comes from controlling that of your partner.”
“Part of it, yes.”
Of course it would. A man like him, whose whole life was focused on control. Sex would be no different.
“Maybe you were just practicing for me?” She liked that thought more than that he’d given this part of himself to others before her.
It was hers. She wasn’t sure where that possessive thought came from, but she did nothing to squelch it. Evidence to the contrary, it wasn’t as if he could read her mind anyway.
His sexy chuckle didn’t sound even a little mocking. “I think perhaps you are right.”
When he bypassed her most intimate flesh to move up her body, she wasn’t surprised. He’d done this a year ago. Built her pleasure until she was aching for touches her innocent body had never known.
Even so, she couldn’t hold back a sound of protest.
“Shh…” His caress moved up her waist, his expression so hot it burned. “We will get there, but you only have one first time.”
He was going to tease her more than before?
She realized the words had come out in a plaintive wail when he shook his head decisively. “I am not teasing you, dorogaya. I am pleasuring you.”
“Tom-ay-to, to-mah-to,” she gasped out as his thumbs skimmed over her rigid nipples.
Her breasts were small, but they had discovered together that the peaks were extremely sensitive.
“No, no, no…it is not just a different way of saying the same thing,” he assured her. “To tease is to make your partner wonder if you will ever give the bliss craved and you know I will.”
“On your time frame,” she gasped out.
“That is my way.” He said it with that Russian pragmatism she found both appalling and ridiculously appealing by turns.
“Sometime, maybe you should let me use the blue scarves.” Oh, gosh…every word required effort as his caresses grew more and more tantalizing.
He stopped, his entire being arrested by her comment. He looked down at her, an unreadable expression on his face. “I have never been open to another lover doing so.”
“But me?” she asked, knowing his answer mattered very much, though not at all sure why.
After all, she didn’t really want to use the scarves on him; she much preferred it the other way around.
“Yes.” Their gazes locked, as intimate as any caress. “Sometime, yes.”
Elation filled her, but she just knew if he saw it, he would mistake it for triumph. Which isn’t how she felt at all, so she did her best to simply nod and say, “I think I might like that.”
“We will see, won’t we?”
Yes, they would. But not today. Today, they would make love his way and she would give him the gift of her innocence. She didn’t care if that was an old-fashioned way to look at it, she suspected he saw it the same way.
He kissed her then, whether it was to stop the conversation, or simply because that was the next step in her very willing seduction, she didn’t know. What she did know was that it short-circuited her brain, which was already overloaded with pleasure.
His mouth possessed hers with the power of any tsar laying claim to his territory. Thrillingly. Absolutely. And with unmistakable intent.
Max’s caresses became more zealous, taking on a feverish edge and increasing the delight to her senses when she would have said the latter was impossible. But something deep inside her basked in the tangible proof of the knowledge he wanted to make her his own.
She wasn’t sure when her hands moved from above her head so she could wrap her arms around him, doing a little claiming of her own. Instead of stopping, as he might have done a year ago, Max’s touches turned even more passionate and less controlled.
Part of her reveled in that, but the rest of her just enjoyed the next level of sexual delight it inspired.
Romi’s hands lost purchase on Max as he moved to follow the touch of his hands with t
hat of his mouth. Masculine lips, talented tongue and careful teeth teased already sensitive flesh until she was whimpering with need.
And not in the least embarrassed by that fact.
He nuzzled into the apex of her thighs, making a fully masculine sound of satisfaction. Then he parted her with his fingers before flicking his tongue against her clitoris and she tried to come up off the bed.
Her cry echoed around them as he continued to kiss her in the most intimate way possible. His fingers slipped inside her, the only flesh besides her doctor’s that had ever been inside Romi’s body.
There was no impediment to his deep finger thrusting. There wouldn’t be after years in gymnastics.
The only area she and Maddie had diverged. Maddie had played soccer and softball. Romi had competed in gymnastics until her height decreed she would be able to take those aspirations no further.
Along the way, her inner barrier had stretched and finally broken, she was sure.
All thoughts of the whys and wherefores exploded in a cataclysm of bliss that had her shaking and screaming.
He gentled her through the climax and took her beyond to another layer of pleasure on the cusp of orgasm. Again.
Only then did he move to settle between her thighs, his swollen member pressing against the entrance to her body.
His expression was every bit as possessive as his position. “This is mine, dorogaya. Your innocence will never belong to another.”
She wouldn’t, either, in any way, she was sure of it. But there was no point in telling him. He was still laboring under the mistaken impression that if they married, it would be a temporary if years-long condition.
She knew better. Right then, she knew to the very depths of her soul and heart that this man would always be hers and vice versa. He might never let himself love her and that would inevitably bring pain with it.
But their souls were already entwined.
