He always knew exactly what to say to melt any resistance on her part. He was a seducer with words.
For some reason she expected his kiss to be gentle, sweet. Julian was neither.
He simply took her mouth with no hesitation—as if it was his, as if she was his, as if that devastating possession was his right. Like he didn't need to ask. Like all those times they'd spent together was enough to claim her as his own.
It was like a bomb detonated inside of her, exploding through her limbs, white-hot fire and spiraling need combusting again and again and again, leaving her weak. Wanting. Her breasts ached. Her nipples hardened. Her core melted. And still he kissed her, taking her mouth with an easy command that made her tremble against him.
He kissed her with a carnal demand, a sheer, arrogant certainty, that shook Nina almost as much as the feel of his mouth on hers.
Hot. Commanding. The incomparable feel of his lips against hers amazing, sending desire swimming through her veins like alcohol and rendering her incapable of doing anything more than kissing him back. As if she had never done anything else. As if she would die if she did not.
She raised a hand, and then forgot why she did as it found the rock-hard planes of his chest, the hint of stubble on his lean jaw, each new sensation igniting a flood of desire, each stronger and more thrilling than the last. She reached behind him, removing the band holding back his hair.
The strands loosened, and her heavy sigh differed from the ones she’d been emitting during their kiss.
This one? It matched the delight that softened her beautiful features as she drew his hair forward and up to her face. Tangling her fingers in the strands, she tugged on them, and the prickle across his scalp tripped down his spine, crackled at the base. He clutched her hips, digging his fingertips into the soft flesh.
“You are beautiful,” she whispered.
No woman had ever called him beautiful before. He growled and kissed her again.
She forgot where they were. She forgot her concerns about her relationship with him. Why she should not allow him to angle his mouth over hers with such skill and talent, nor rake a hand into her hair to anchor her head in place as he tasted her again and again and again. Everything that was not Julian was like smoke, drifting away, signifying nothing. As if only he existed.
Without lifting his mouth from hers, without giving her even a moment to breathe, to collect herself, Julian shifted to the small settee in the living room, his powerful arms sweeping Nina up and over him, settling her sideways across his lap. He murmured something she could not understand, could hardly hear over the pounding of her heart and the wild rush in her ears, and then he claimed her mouth once more.
It was too much. He was everywhere. Hard beneath her thighs, hard against her body, and that talented, wicked mouth of his that took and took, until she could not think at all. She could only feel the heat. The fire. The slick fit and exquisite taste of him, expensive liquor mixed with that part that was purely him. Pure Julian. Sinful and delicious and capable of making her head spin around and around while the very core of her pulsed with need.
One of his hands remained laced in her hair, and on some dim level she was aware that he was destroying her careful twist. The pins scattered at his impatient touch and the heavy, wild curtain of her waves cascaded down around them, shielding them, cocooning them.
She could not find it in her to care. His other hand stroked a lazy path from her cheek to her neck, down the stretch of her bare arm to settle at her hip, his big hand holding her fast on one side with his arousal stark and unmistakable on the other.
Nina's hands went to his strong, sculpted shoulders and were lost, unable to keep from testing the stark physical power he held leashed there—the fine, chiseled lines of his lean and muscular form. Once again, her hand crept to his cheek as if she could hold him, understand him, make sense of him that way. As if she could keep him there, kissing her as if he was starved for her, kissing him back as if she had never been kissed before, as if he had switched a light on inside of her and she could only glow. And glow.
Only him could make her feel this fine desperation, this coiling, insistent need.
This fire. She was lost in him. Undone by him. And still he made love to her mouth as if he could do so forever, as if he had all the time in the world, as if nothing existed but the two of them.
With a growl, he skated his palms up the sides of her torso, and the zipper of her dress abraded his skin. He impatiently tugged it down and wasted no time in pushing the material over her shoulders and down her arms. She obliged him, freeing his hair and joining him in getting rid of the clothing.
He got up, her legs wrapped around him and began to move. He had her clothes off completely before they got to her bedroom, where she helped him get rid of his.
She pushed him on the bed, and he let her, bemused by this sudden show of assertiveness. But who was he to argue? He lay back and watched appreciatively as she climbed up on the bed with him, straddling him.
He hissed in a breath as the core of her came up flush with his groin, making him harder than he could ever remember being before. More. He wanted more. He wanted to bury himself inside of her and lose himself entirely. He wanted to make her scream his name. He wanted to taste every inch of her body, every freckle, every moan. He wanted her in every possible way, all night long.
He wanted to get through to her, he told himself. He wanted to make these uncomfortable feelings of hers disappear as if they had never been. That was what he wanted. He didn’t know how to want anything else.