An arm slid around her waist. He clutched her to him, his mouth descending. If she’d wanted to pull away, she wouldn’t have been able to.
She did not.
Like the night she shared her pregnancy with Ildefanso, he swept her into his arms. Automatically, her arms went around his neck, clasping on the opposite side. Where that night he’d taken her into their room in the Colonel hacienda, this time, he carried her to the room he’d slept in alone for the last seven years. Once inside, he slid her down his body, turning her so they melded chest to chest, hip to hip.
His brothers had often teased him about his small size. It had never seemed to bother him, and it certainly hadn’t bothered her. Being only an inch shorter, she fit into him seamlessly. She didn’t have to stretch up to kiss him, and when they made love, they were perfectly in line, as they were now. It made looking into his eyes when he slid inside her that much more powerful.
Twisting, he put her back against the bed. “If we do this, there is no going back. It cannot be undone.”
“We can never be undone, Fanso.”
His hand rose to her temple, tracing lightly down the side of her face. The next thing she knew, he gripped her throat, his fingers on either side. There was pressure, but he did not cut off her air or be rough enough to bruise. Then his mouth was on hers, his gaze boring into hers, the molten glow heating her from the inside out.
It was one of his idiosyncrasies that his eyes never closed when they kissed. What was such a natural behavior for probably ninety-nine percent of the population was one he did not share. At first, it had unsettled her. She thought it was a SEAL thing, then protection against his family… that he was afraid to leave himself vulnerable to attack.
Despite the uncomfortableness of it, she’d found she could never look away. His eyes had always held her captive.
When she finally questioned him about it, he smiled before explaining that while she wasn’t incorrect in her assessment, neither was she correct. The reason he did it was that he didn’t want to miss a moment with her. He wanted to witness every twitch, every arch, every blush. To watch her as she toppled into bliss.
It had been the most intimate experience she’d ever encountered in her life.
She found herself on her back, Steel straddling her waist. His hands reached for the neckline of her shirt, taking it in both fists. One quick pull, and the shirt was ripped from top to bottom, exposing the lacy bra she wore.
Her heart rate jumped instantly, her breath heaving in and out, and the space between her thighs flooded with her own fluids.
Ildefanso may have abhorred everything about his family, but in some ways, he harbored some of the same traits. A streak of cruelty. Extreme bouts of cold anger. The quick rise to emotion, especially passion.
A passion she had always been drawn to and returned with equal fervor.
His hand slipped around her throat again, and his head lowered at an agonizingly slow pace. When his lips were within a hairsbreadth of hers, he gave her one last out. “Are you sure,belleza?”
“Yes.”
The word was barely past her lips when he made the connection between them, nipping at her bottom lip and dragging it away from her teeth, a guttural sound emerging from the back of his throat.
Her teeth separated, admitting his tongue to plunge inside and remap every ridge, every dip.
It was like no time had passed.
As he invaded her mouth, she felt his hands scrabbling at the button of her jeans. When he began to yank the material down, she raised her hips to help. Together, they fought to remove the denim from her legs. He shifted his weight left, then right, finally maneuvering them to her ankles. He reached behind him, grabbed her shoes, and tossed them to the floor. Then he ripped the pants over her feet, throwing them across the room.
One hand behind his head, he grabbed his shirt and yanked it off, then tossed it away without care.
Her eyes hungrily roamed his chest. She noted each and every area of raised flesh in varying shades of pink, highlighting the scars he’d earned over the years. On his left shoulder, there was a massive circlet of scabbed-looking flesh she recognized. It was a bullet wound he’d received while in a firefight with the last cartel assimilated into the Colonel syndicate. The skin puckered so badly that it looked as if it had been pulled together too tightly because they needed to join it over too much missing flesh.
He pulled back from her to stand at the edge of the bed, her legs dangling over the sides. “Stay!” He barked the command at her when she tried to lean back on her elbows to watch him. “I’m too close to the edge, Daleyza.”
There was a vast coldness that surrounded him. The irises of hiseyes turned from their piercing silver to a gray, like clouds gathering before a great storm, the wispy tendrils gliding over pockets of blue and black that played hide-and-seek inside the dominant color.
Her body bucked in surprise when, without hesitation, he slid his hand between her panties and her skin, two fingers gliding inside her. Already, her body welcomed him home, into the nebulous relationship they now found themselves in. Her hips continued to pulse as shock waves coursed through her with each stroke, the heel of his hand colliding with her clit. The friction sent her consciousness spiraling outward, each wave increasing in size and speed, but packing itself tighter and tighter together, until she collapsed against the mattress in completion.
Toeing off his boots and unbuttoning his pants, he dropped to his knees and dragged her panties down her legs.
Through the haze of her ebbing pleasure, she felt something firm, yet gentle, tease the nub at the apex of her thighs. He wasn’t done. He was never done with just one implosion from her. He always demanded more, and with each demand came greater pleasure.
A shudder passed through her with each swirl of the tip of his tongue. As the muscle continued to orbit the sensitive nerve center, the heat built within her, sparked, flared, and caught hold, showering down upon her a warm rain of emotion. A soft wave of energy rippled through her. Not less pleasurable than the first, but more powerful because of its lack of intensity.
“Please,” she moaned.
