His long, capable fingers reached out and gripped her hips, steadying her before he increased the rhythm of his thrusts. Mariana’s sense of control spiraled away as his body demanded more of her. She was reduced to a raw nerve capable of nothing other than giving and receiving pleasure.
And she cared not.
Not when the pleasure spiked ever higher and higher, winding her sex ever tighter and tighter until she reached the sweetest spot of anxiety.
“Nick,” she cried out, “please.”
His fingers found her face and pushed her hair back. “Look at me,” he demanded. Her eyes found his. “And do not look away.”
His gaze holding her in thrall to him, he returned his hands to her hips and began measuredly moving her atop him as if rationing out his strokes one . . . at . . . a . . . time.
Sudden and unexpected intimacy flared between them as their gazes held fast onto each other. Her sex began to curl inward and tighten. Storm cloud gray held and steadied her as a glorious and unstoppable momentum accumulated in her core and began to overtake her. She reached, she strived up toward a freedom that only he could provide. A few more strokes and her sex shattered in climax, tiny earthquakes of pleasure rippling through her as she shook off the bound world and tumbled into ecstasy.
“Mariana,” fell from his mouth as his hips continued their relentless thrust into her once . . . twice before he shouted out his own release.
All that remained of him and her was a confusion of breath. Lungs expanding, lungs contracting in arrhythmic pants. Her chin fit perfectly into the hollow of his collarbone. She’d known that once. Now she knew it again.
“Mariana,” she heard as if from a great distance. Her eyes squeezed shut in protest.Too soon.
His hands reached up to gently cup her face. She resisted the urge to nuzzle into their warmth and, instead, followed their direction. She shifted her weight back and faced him square.
He pressed forward and touched his lips to hers.
It was an almost chaste kiss—the sort of kiss that shouldn’t follow such an animalistic coupling.
It was a perfect kiss.
It was just the sort of kiss that could weaken a woman’s resolve.
Without deepening the kiss, he broke away, a shy smile on his lips. “It occurred to me that we hadn’t yet done that.”
Mariana felt exposed. How did a simple kiss have the power to shatter her after what they had just done?
Yet it wasn’t simply the kiss. It was the coo of his voice, too. Soft and sweet, she didn’t recognize that voice . . . because she’d never heard it. Nick had never spoken to her thus. Or looked at her thus.
Actually, that wasn’t true. He had the same look earlier tonight. It was a look that could give a woman hope . . . If she didn’t know better.
Her spine stiffened, and her feet hit the floor. When she pushed off him to a stand, her traitorous body experienced a momentary pang for the loss of him. At least, she hoped it was momentary.
Hope. How recently she’d experienced that emotion. How soon it had crushed her.
She moved to the foot of the bed and perched against its edge. Eyebrows drawn together, a bewildered Nick stared out at her.
“What changed between this afternoon and tonight?” he asked.
She should’ve been glad he’d spoken the words first. But she wasn’t. A naïve part of her thought she could seduce Villefranche and leave Paris without an accounting with Nick.
“We must talk about why you are here in Villefranche’s rooms.”
She forced out a dry laugh. “I prefer to be dressed for that particular conversation.”
Drained of the fiery energy that had propelled her through this day and night, she stood heavily and trod to the dressing table where her clothes lay.
He reached for his discarded trousers and proceeded to jerk them up his legs. “Mariana”—
Notes of frustration infused his voice. Good. That was a start.
—“we must discuss your intentions tonight if we are to salvage—”
