“Dimitri, make love to me,” she cried.
“Oh, God.”
He kissed her to shut her up, bruisingly, exquisitely, but he didn’t make love to her. He frustrated her efforts each time to draw him closer. The only parts he would allow to touch her were his lips and his hands, his magical hands. Her climax was swift and intense, but without the sharing, there was no true satisfaction.
When her pulse quieted and her breathing returned to normal, Katherine made up her mind that she wasn’t going to have any more half measures. To go through hours of this kind of sensual torture when it wasn’t necessary was crazy. Even worse was Dimitri’s resolve to deny himself when his need was so obvious. True, she had been furious with him. She didn’t like being manipulated. But she understood his motivation. Thinking about it, she was even pleased that he could be so desperate to have her that he would do something like this.
“Dimitri?”
He groaned. His body was half twisted, his forehead pressed on his arm, his eyes tightly closed. For all the world he seemed like a man in the grip of mortal pain. Katherine smiled, mentally shaking her head.
“Dimitri, look at me.”
“No—at least, give me a moment to—”
He couldn’t finish. Katherine watched the muscles straining in his neck, his hands close into fists. His body was sheened with moisture, flushed with exertion. All that power working to resist a most natural inclination. And she might have been in the same state if the drug hadn’t made it impossible for her to resist.
She turned on her side toward him and said with calm deliberation, “If you don’t make love to me, Dimitri Alexandrov, I swear I will rape you.”
His head shot up. “You willwhat?”
“You heard me.”
“Don’t be absurd, Katya. It isn’t possible.”
“Is that so?”
She touched his shoulder, letting her fingers trail down his arm. He caught her wrist instantly, tightly, and held it away from him.
“Don’t!”
His sharpness didn’t sway her. “You can capture my hands, Dimitri, but what about my body?”
Katherine threw a leg over his hip. Dimitri’s reaction was to leap off the bed. Katherine was momentarily distracted by this full, unhampered view of him. God, he was glorious in his nudity, the firm musculature so in evidence, powerful, beautiful in symmetry.
“Stop it.” He scowled as she looked over every inch of his body.
She glanced up, amusement entering her eyes now. “Will you blindfold me too? And perhaps tie me down? After all, you did promise to help me, but you can’t if you won’t come near me, and I won’t promise not to touch you.”
“Damn it, woman, I don’t want you to hate me!”
“But I don’t,” she said with some surprise. “I couldn’t.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying right now,” he insisted. “Tomorrow—”
“Blast tomorrow! Good Lord, I can’t believe I’m arguing with you about this. Scruples don’t become you, Dimitri, not in the least. Or are you punishing me, because I took so long—”
“Sweet Christ, no!”
“Then don’t make me beg… Oh, God, it’s starting again. Dimitri, no more foolishness. You have to make love to me. You have to!”
He joined her on the bed and gathered her tightly into his arms. “Oh, God, Katya, forgive me. I thought—”
“You think too much,” she whispered as she wrapped her arms about his neck, reveling in the total contact with his flesh.
His lips ravaged her face, and then he was kissing her, his tongue plunging in deeply, mercilessly, the full force of his passion released in an explosion of longing. When he entered her seconds later, it was bliss, purest bliss as he quenched the fire; it was what she needed—to be completely possessed. And the sweet throbbing that followed was all the sweeter because he came with her.
Dimitri had only just begun. This was his fantasy come true, what he had dreamed about for so long: to have her needing him, wanting him with the same intensity that controlled him. And he took full advantage of it, now that the madness of his restraint was defeated. While she lay dazed from the power of her release, he worshipped her with his mouth and hands, unable to stop loving her even for a second.
