She clamped her lips shut, but her eyes spoke volumes. And he saw everything. Saw and cursed some more before snatching her into his arms and marching into the cabin.
Taking the stairs two at a time he was in his bedroom in under ten seconds.
Only then did he set her down, one leg kicking the door shut. She planted herself in the middle of the room while he remained at the door, but his presence filled every corner of the space.
With anyone else, Lotte would probably have been frightened but not with Valenti. It stuck in her craw to admit he was probably the safest person for her to be around physically. That his iron control—and probably the way he could so easily dismiss her—meant he would never harm her.
But she wanted to test that control.
Wasn’t that truly what she’d been doing since she looked up and saw him in that nightclub?
‘You’ve found a hot little button you’re enjoying pushing.Brava,’ he growled. ‘But before this goes any further you need to be very sure it’s what you want,’ he added. Succinctly. His eyes never leaving her face.
More than anything.
She was glad her mouth remained clamped, sealing the fervent, exposing response inside. Because apparently he wasn’t done.
‘Be sure you’re not mistaking your little rebellion for something else.’
She raised her chin. ‘Something like what?’ she challenged, a small kernel of alarm inside her threatening to expand because he wasn’t far from the truth. She feared this chemical reaction would lead to a startling conclusion.
‘Like an inconvenient attachment that might not be altogether wise.’
That stung. Again because it strayed far too close to a truth she didn’t want to admit. ‘If that’s your clever way of hinting that I’m in some way infatuated with you, you can kill that thought. Iliked kissing you. And I want to…do more. Does it really need to be more than that?’
His eyes narrowed to molten slits. Then he prowled towards her with miles more swagger and finesse than she would ever manage. Three feet away he paused. She wanted to believe it was to safeguard against temptation to reach for her. But she knew otherwise. Valenti had more control in his little finger than she did in her entire existence.
He exhibited that by lazily resting his hands on his lean hips, watching her with the indolent regard of a predator completely confident in the vanquishing of its prey.
‘If you’re absolutely sure this is what you want, that this will remain here in this place strictly between us…then come here, Lotte. Let me deal with that insatiable need for rebellion.’ His voice was low, mesmeric. Thickening that narcotic in her blood, making her dizzy with it.
That dizziness swayed her towards him. One step. Another. Until a mere half foot separated them.
‘Undress me,’ he instructed next.
Oh God.She couldn’t help her swallow. The shudder that surged up her body lingered in the hands she raised hesitantly to his chest. A little terrified of the rage of emotions consuming her, she kept her gaze on the buttons of his outer jacket as she slid her hands beneath the lapels.
‘No. Look at me,’ he rasped huskily.
Raising lids that felt far too heavy, she met his mercurial gaze. Shadow and light. Fire and ice. A heavy, solemn watchfulness trained with singular focus on her, a specimen beneath his microscope.
Lotte discovered she didn’t mind it, at all.
She’d wanted to be seen. Accepted. Even now when she felt more naked than she’d ever felt in her life. But curiously, any urge to hide had fled.
Her gaze fully fastened on his, she slid her hands beneath his lapels, the warmth of his rich wool-covered skin making her breath emerge faster as she tugged the coat off him. The long-sleeved polo neck moulded to his skin was next.
Hunger lent power to her as she took the hem between her fingers and started to lift. She only reached halfway before he helped, reefing it over his head and discarding it. Baring her gaze to the honed gladiator’s torso, the mouth-watering ridges of packed muscle and hair-roughened chest that announced him as fully, completely masculine. A specimenshewanted to explore to her heart’s content.
That chest expanded with a rough inhale when the tips of her fingers whispered over his skin in awed exploration, pausing at the puckered skin on his shoulder, a clear mark of his dangerous profession, possibly a connection to the harrowing incident that connected their lives.
She couldn’t bring herself to ask then. So she moved on.
Her lips parted, the better to breathe him in. To fill every corner of her senses so there would be room for nothing else.
Like the whispered query as to how she would deal with what came next when they left this room. Like how that sizeable addendum he’d spelled out as to exactly what this was left a bubble of desolation within her.
Her fingers coasted lower, over the rough outline of his belt, and the even thicker outline of his cock, straining behind his fly. With that same hypnotic compulsion, her gaze dropped.
