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“I don’t care what you do, dammit,” he growled, gripping her shoulders harder. “It’s just not safe for you to be alone.”
“Alone?” she repeated in a harsh, mirthless tone. “Alone? We’re never alone.”
“We’re alone right now.”
It occurred to them simultaneously that they were standing chest to chest. One was breathing with as much agitation as the other. Their blood was running hot and their tempers were high. Avery felt her nerves sizzle like fallen hot wires that snaked across a rain-slick street.
His arms went around her, met at the center of her back, and jerked her against him. Avery went limp with desire. Then, moving as one, their mouths came together in a ravenous kiss. She folded her arms around his neck and provocatively arched her body into his. His hands slid over her derriere and roughly drew her up high and hard against the front of his body.
Their breathing was loud. So was the rustle of their evening clothes. Their mouths twisted against each other; their tongues were too greedy to exercise finesse.
Tate walked her backward into the wall, which then served the original purpose of his hands by keeping her middle cemented to him. His fingers curved tightly around her head and held it in place while he gave her a hungry kiss.
The kiss was carnal. It had a dark soul. It touched off elemental sparks that were as exciting to Avery as the first tongues of flame were to primal man. It conveyed that much heat, that much promise.
She attacked the studs on his pleated shirt. One by one they landed soundlessly in the carpeting. She peeled the shirt wide and bared his chest. Her open mouth found the very center of it. He swore with pleasure and reached behind her for the fastenings on her dress.
They eluded his fumbling fingers. Fabric was ripped. Beads scattered. Sequins rained down. Neither was mindful of the damage. He worked the dress down her shoulders and planted a fervent kiss on the upper curve of her breast, then reached for the clasp of her strapless brassiere.
Avery panicked when it fell open. He would know! But his eyes were closed. His lips were his sensors, not his eyes. He kissed her breasts, stroking the tips with his tongue, drawing them into his mouth.
He needed her. She wanted him to need her. She couldn’t give enough.
She tugged his cuffs over his hands without even unhooking his cuff links. He flapped his arms until he was entirely free of his shirt, then slipped his hands beneath the hem of her dress. They smoothed up her thighs, caught the elastic of her underwear, and worked it down. Then his palm was on her, his fingers inside her, and she was gasping hoarse, whimpering, wanting sounds.
“You’re my wife,” he said thickly. “You deserve a little better than to be banged against the wall.”
He released her and stepped away. In seconds he was out of his shoes and socks, leaving his trousers in a heap on the carpet.
Avery shimmied out of her dress, kicked off her shoes, and quickly moved to the bed. The housekeeper had already turned it down. She brushed the chocolate mints off the pillow and slid between the sheets. The lacy black garter belt came off with a snap. Her stockings had barely cleared her toes when Tate reached for her.
She went willingly as he pulled her against his warm, hairy nakedness. Their mouths met for another deep, wet kiss. His sex was hard and smooth. It probed the s
oftness of her belly, nestled in the vee of dark curls.
He cupped her breast, lifted it, ran this thumb lightly back and forth over her nipple, and applied his tongue to it. With no resistance from her, he separated her thighs. The cleft between them was soft and sensitive and creamy. She gasped several short, choppy breaths as his fingers played over her.
Then he rolled her to her back and guided his rigid erection into the moist, oval opening. Her body received him coyly because he was very large and hard and she was very small and soft. Man and woman. As it should be. His power was reduced to weakness; her vulnerability was made strong.
She marveled at the absoluteness of his possession. It was invasive but sweet, unencumbered yet yearning. Her back and throat arched in total surrender. He went farther, touched deeper, reached higher than she believed possible.
Above her, he was straining to withhold his climax, to sustain the pleasure, but that was asking too much of his body, which had been imprisoned by self-imposed abstinence for so long.
He sank into her only a few times before he climaxed.
* * *
The room was so silent she could hear the ticking of his wristwatch where his hand lay beside her head on the pillow. She didn’t dare look at him. Touching him wasn’t even a remote possibility. She lay there and listened as his breathing returned to normal. Except for the rising and falling of his chest, he lay motionless.
It was over.
Eventually she rolled to her side, facing away from him. She tucked the pillow beneath her cheek and drew her knees against her chest. She was hurting, but she couldn’t specify how or where or why.
Several minutes elapsed. When she first felt the stroking movement of his hand on her waist, she thought it was because she had wished it so badly that her imagination had made her feel it.
His hand settled in the curve of her waist and applied enough pressure to bring her over to her back again. She gazed up into his face, her eyes large and inquisitive and brimming with misgiving.
“I’ve always been fair,” he whispered.
