Page 47 of Lethal Obsession

To the illicit fantasies that have been bringing me to orgasm for the past six years.

I turn my own head, not missing how tense and still he becomes when my lips near his skin. “Touch me,” I whisper.

I shift my mouth to the soft skin beneath his jaw.

He trembles slightly, and I feel the unmistakable surge of his arousal against me. Then he rears back onto his knees, raking his hands through his hair, his eye darting toward the door. We’re in one of the bedrooms off the main suite, but the door is locked, and the crowd either haven’t returned yet or are all asleep, because the room beyond it is silent.

He turns back to me. My legs are bent up, open wide around the place his body recently vacated. My dress is still hitched up around my waist, and I don’t need a mirror to know that my underwear is soaked through. My arms are up, hands open on the pillow from where he flung me down, and some loose strands of hair that have pulled out of my updo are caught between my fingers.

For a long moment we stare at each other, the grainy darkness cloaking our faces in shadowy deception. But I don’t need light to feel his inner conflict—nor to know that in a moment he will pull away, leaving me with yet another frustrated fantasy to fuel my hopeless state of limerence.

Except this isn’t limerence, I think in a sudden moment of clarity.

Alexei took me home and carried me upstairs.

He fed me.

Then he carried me to bed—and stayed with me.

And now he wants me, just as much as I want him.

Driven by some dark instinct, I raise my hips and slowly run my hands down over my breasts, my eyes never leaving his face.

Alexei doesn’t move, but his eye follows my movements all the way until my fingers slip beneath my underwear. Then his hands move swiftly, covering my own, his lone eye flashing. “Don’t,” he breathes.

But despite covering my hands, he doesn’t move them away. The broad pads of his thumbs move slowly across my silk underwear. Then, as if it was inevitable, they move downward with unerring accuracy, to the thin scars left by his blade.

I freeze. My heartbeat slows to a heavy, rich pulse, as if even my blood recalls his touch.

His eye never leaving mine, his thumbs move along the innermost creases of my thighs, tracing the barely discernible silver lines. I lie utterly still in his hands, hardly daring to breathe, as acutely aware of his touch now as I was all those years ago.

But this time, there’s no knife. No spectators urging him on. No Masha cowering in terror against the wall.

Only the slow, sensual pressure of his thumbs, edging closer to the molten heat craving his touch.

I close my eyes and my body pulses in anticipation, sending a trickle of moisture along the path of his thumbs. They find the slick heat and halt abruptly, his sudden intake of breath audible in the hushed silence of the room. My hips strain toward him as I take shallow breaths, too fiercely focused on his touch to be ashamed of the blatant evidence of my arousal.

Finally his thumbs move again, with slightly more pressure this time, stroking the slickness along the silver scars then returning to rest just either side of my opening. Beneath the silk of my knickers, his thumbs find the wet trail that began before I even woke.

“Fuck.” He barely breathes the word, but it slams into me like an aphrodisiac.

I arch off the bed with a small cry, my hands slipping from beneath his to clench the bedsheets.

Alexei holds me surely as I buck and strain in his hands, but I can feel his indecision in the same way I can see his own savage arousal straining against his pants.

Seeing me staring at his cock, his eye darkens. Slipping one of his hands out from beneath my underwear, he puts a warning finger over his lips.

I nod slowly, biting my lip, and his eye narrows.

I lift my hips, almost sighing in relief as he slides the silk down my legs and throws it aside. His hands encase my ankles and for a moment rest there. My dress is around my waist, my knees up, baring me entirely to his gaze, but he isn’t staring between my legs. He’s looking into my eyes, his own narrowed in a silent question.

Yes. I mouth the word, reaching blindly for his kneeling figure but falling short. Oh, God—yes. I lift my hips again, my body saying what my mouth is forbidden to.

His gaze slips between my legs, his hissed intake of breath as he blatantly stares at my swollen, dripping pussy almost as much of a turn-on as the pounding shaft straining for release.

I want him to take it out, want to touch him, want his mouth on mine.

But I know Alexei’s every subtle signal as if it was a flashing neon light. His hold on my ankles might be featherlight, but I know better than to move.