Defiance rose in her like a slow-moving tide. This time, when she leaned forward, she allowed her lips to brush fully against the pads of his fingers. The contact was electric, a jolt of pure sensation that sent a wave of liquid heat spiraling downward to pool in her belly.
The room was suddenly too warm. The air felt charged, thick with the scent of sugar and skin.
He picked up a third piece, his movements slow and hypnotic. As he held it out, his gaze burned onto hers with focus that made her knees tremble.
“Diana…” His voice dropped, roughened at the edges. “The way you look at me… It drives me wild. I want you to look at me like that all the time.”
Her breath caught, though she did not retreat. “How do I look at you now?”
“Like you want everything I do.”
Her pulse stuttered, but she leaned closer instead, drawn forward by something she neither trusted nor resisted.
“What do you want?” she whispered.
His jaw tightened, a clench as though he battled for restraint. For a moment, he said nothing, and yet everything in him answered.
Something thrummed low in her stomach, stealing the steadiness from her limbs. She ought to have stepped back. Ought to have remembered herself. But she could only stand there, held by his gaze.
“You,” he said at last, his voice rough, each word drawn from him with effort. “Every particle of you.”
She gasped, and her eyes flickered to his mouth.
His lips were slightly parted, his breath uneven. She knew, even the act of speaking had cost him control. The small piece of chocolate rested forgotten between his fingers.
A faint flush had risen along the sharp line of his cheekbones, and his gaze—dear God, his gaze—had darkened into something molten, burning with a hunger that made her pulse leap.
“Then… take me,” she said softly, her voice trembling despite the steadiness she forced into it.
Diana leaned in, her logic entirely eclipsed by the starving need he had awakened. Her tongue darted out as she took the chocolate, slowly licking the sweetness from the tip of his finger.
Alexander’s breath hitched—a sharp, ragged sound that tore through the silence of the room.
The sensation of his salty skin against her tongue made Diana’s entire body go taut. A fierce, demanding ache blossomed between her legs. The throb of desire was so intense she nearly cried out.
The sweetness of the chocolate was nothing compared to the salt and heat of him.
Diana’s lips closed around his finger, her tongue swirling around the pad of it in a slow, rhythmic suction that made her own headlight. She heard his breathing grow heavy, ragged—a jagged, ruined sound that vibrated in the small space between them.
“Diana…” His voice broke on her name, low and strained. “You have no notion what you are doing to me.”
Her lips did not release him. His hand flexed where it hovered near her, as though he fought the instinct to seize her, to stop her—or to pull her closer.
“Don’t I?” she murmured against his skin, her eyes lifting to his, burning with a new, terrifying power.
“Stop,” he said, though the word lacked command, unraveling even as he spoke it. “Or I swear?—”
The sentence fractured into a sharp inhale.
“God help me,” he muttered, more to himself than to her.
Alexander moved, sinking to the floor before her, the shift bringing him lower while somehow making him feel no less imposing. He reached up, his hand closing around her jaw, his thumb sliding beneath her chin to guide her gaze down to his.
His eyes were the dark, velvet color of a forest at midnight, swirling with a desire so potent it made her feel as though she were melting from the inside out.
Without breaking eye contact, he drew the finger she had just sucked into his own mouth, his tongue licking away the dampness she had left behind.
The sheer intimacy of the gesture sent a fresh wave of liquid heat crashing through her, pooling between her legs until she was slick and aching. A soft, desperate whimper escaped her.
