Every breath buried temptation into the depths of my lungs and metabolized my rigid restraint into raw need.
My jaw clamped together, my teeth interlocking to absorb the strain.Dammit.I needed to control the way I wanted her.
“Good. Now, ladies, I want you to move onto your partner’s lap, straddling them in whatever way is most comfortable for you.”
Straddle—fuck.
My thoughts echoed in Lara’s eyes. She stared at me like a deer in headlights, and I like a buck in a hunter’s sights; we both knew one more move might be our end.
But what choice did we have? Get up and leave?
Even if we faked some kind of scene or emergency, it would only keep us away from the chance to find the answers we needed.
I glanced at Maxwell, making sure her focus was elsewhere—and it was, on Sarah and Trent—before turning to Lara and mouthingYour call.
A breeze swept between us, catching some of her hair in its fingers and threading it across her neck.
And then her chin lowered. An acquiescence to our unfortunate circumstance.
“You were the one who signed us up for this,” I grunted, thinking it would ease the tension woven into the air. It didn’t.
Her eyes snapped to mine, the glitter of determination cutting through the uncertainty as she put her hand on my shoulder.
“Is that your way of telling me you can’t handle it?” she taunted right back, but her words dissolved into a wholly different meaning when she swung her leg over mine and settled squarely in my lap.
On my thighs.
Against my cock.
The thin material of our pants wouldn’t have been a problem for couples who were real couples. Feeling the heat of her core directly on me wouldn’t have been a problem if we were real. Nor would knowing she could feel the growing length of my cock pressing—pulsing against her.
We weren’t real, but this, though ... this heat. Ache. Lust. Only a fool would claimthiswas all part of our deception.
Her weight settled, and the pressure—the heat on my dick—was incredible and so fucking dangerous, considering I’d been too close to this woman for the last four days to have any time to relieve it. Without warning, a low rumbling sound grated from my chest.
“Sorry,” Lara whispered, and then did the worst thing possible: She started to shift from side to side, seeming to think she’d hurt me.
Not realizing her solution was salt in the wound.
She wiggled slightly front. A little back. A rocking that was pure torture. I would’ve rather spent fifty days and nights in the winter wilderness or faced a raging bison or a pack of wolves ... I would’ve suffered any violent extreme of Mother Nature rather than the erotic temptation of her.
“Stop,” I growled and gripped her hips, forcing her still.
“I—” She swallowed. “I’m sorry. I thought I was hurting you.”
You were. You are.
“I’m fine. Just stop ... moving,” I ordered between clipped breaths, unable to steady my galloping pulse.
“Okay.”
Fuck, she was warm—and soft. Her bare skin felt like silk under my fingertips where they’d trespassed under the edge of her top when I grabbed her. Touching her fed my hunger. Cannibalized my restraint. I wanted to rip off her clothes and mark every forbidden inch.
“We’ll start the way every storm does: with the brewing.” Maxwell’s voice cut through the fog of lust. “Look into each other’s eyes. Deeply. Let yourself see and be seen, as though you are opening the very door to your soul.”
I dragged my eyes to Lara’s, sinking into the sweet trap of her gaze, deeper into the same molten mire that had consumed what was supposed to have been a purely practical kiss.
“Now, feel the breath. Your inhale is their exhale. Their exhale, your inhale,” Maxwell intoned with a hypnotic resonance. “Feel the exchange from the depths of your lungs—from the depths of your wild core. Your energy colliding with theirs. Transforming. Mating.”
