Page 10 of Too Guarded to Love

One touch from her and he’d be sucked under, yet he couldn’t stop himself from taking a dip.

He wrapped his fingers around hers and guided them to his chest, relishing the scrape of her nails against his skin. She’d said to be quiet, but she hadn’t said anything about action.

As their gazes locked, she pressed her fingers into the VIPER logo tattooed on his chest. He hissed like the snake curled around the triangle that represented past, present, and future. The something he’d seen in her eyes earlier that he couldn’t define zapped again like a lightning bolt. For a moment, he swam in her vibrant blue depths until the light brush of her fingers against his skin coaxed him to the surface.

Unlike most women, she didn’t ask why he’d gotten the tattoo. She just touched it, touched him, like she understood the artwork on his skin embodied the purpose that kept his heart beating. The urge to answer her questions and then some, simply because she hadn’t asked for explanations, bubbled in his throat. He swallowed and focused on one purpose. Stand here and let this beautiful, inquisitive woman examine his body as if he were a supernatural being she’d stumbled upon.

And then she’d be on her way, and she’d be a sweet memory.

She traced the circular snake with the edge of her nail. “Beautiful.”

Chancing action instead of words again, he raised an eyebrow and smirked.

She smiled in answer to his challenge as she placed both palms on his chest.

He cast his eyes down and gently gripped her elbows. With a small tug, he guided her slender fingers with the pretty pink nail polish matching her sundress over the ridges of his abs. Satisfaction blasted through his body as she took her time traversing each dip and valley. His breathing sped up with hers in a natural rhythm.

VIPER instructed them to use caution and discretion when revealing their super limbs to the public. He’d never met a woman who made him want to deviate from the “look, don’t ask” policy, but the thought of sharing all the parts that made him exceptional soared his adrenaline higher than a helicopter.

With a not-so-gentle push, he guided her hand to his steel thigh.

Her eyes widened. “Oh.”

Her slight twang deepened as she drew out the word. Each nuance she exaggerated pressed his hard cock against his pants.

A look of delight crossed her features, as if she’d uncovered a two-for-one deal at her favorite store. She gripped his waistband. “Let me see.”

The command in her voice rippled through his core.

Slowly, making her wait because he enjoyed the play of emotions in her eyes, he brushed her hand away and obeyed her command.

A log in the hearth cracked behind them. The fire fizzed as the balance of control shifted. She tensed, still and silent for the first time since she’d come out of the bathroom. Pausing, he gripped the elastic waistband of his pants at the juncture where his bionic leg attached to his hip and held his breath.

She grazed his wrist with her fingers. “Please. Show me.”

Sucking in air to calm his rioting body, he yanked his pants to his thighs and pulled his boxers down just enough to reveal what she begged for.

“Thank you.” She lowered herself to her knees.

His gut dropped to the floorboards along with her desperate gratitude as he flung his head back. “Sirena.”

She spread one hand on his stomach and touched his steel with the other. “Hush.”

Why? So she could examine him like a specimen in a lab? Drive him to madness? He bit his lip and allowed himself to embrace the wild situation as she traced the second spot on his body where man seamlessly melded into machine. The same tattoo that camouflaged the scarring on his arm flowed underneath his boxers and ended inches from his stiff, eager cock.

“Olivia. Get up.”

She ignored his order and yanked his pants down farther. The urgency fueling her blatant insubordination nearly brought him to his knees.

With quick strokes, as if she didn’t have time to take in the entirety of the medical marvel at her mercy but didn’t want to miss a thing, she glided her fingers downward. He involuntarily flexed his knee. She let out a satisfied mewl, as if she’d pressed a button and brought a machine to life.

And she had.

After a week of feeling nothing but sorrow and anger, she’d awakened the potent, hot-blooded desire that made him one-hundred-percent male.

“Permission to speak.” He couldn’t wait another second to ask what part of him excited her the most.

She dragged her hand—and her attention—up his leg. A smile as sinful as his thoughts quirked her lips as her gaze landed on his erection.