She couldn’t tear her gaze from his lips, watching in fascination as he shaped the suggestive words.
“They’d believe that even less.” She sounded breathless, and, indeed, her lungs struggled to take in air as the wall came up to meet her. Trapped. “I’m too…strong willed…to be anyone’s mate.”
He stopped his pursuit, yet left only a few inches between their bodies. Heat surged from both of them. His face was all hard angles and shadows, his eyes dark and burning. He planted his hands on the wall, one on each side of her head. Caging her. Yet she knew with absolute certainty that if she pushed him away, or ducked under his arms to break free, he would let her go. Giving her the choice.
“Not smart. Buying a pleasure slave without sampling the merchandise.”
“What do you suggest?”
“A test flight.” Then he lowered his head, his mouth met hers, and she went up in flames.
The kiss they’d shared in the cockpit had been the barest hint at the desire that blazed between them now. Kell took her mouth, as she took his, and they consumed each other. An incendiary, shared devouring. He had firm but supple lips, audaciously confident in the way he tasted her, shaped her, as if her mouth, and everything else she had, belonged to him and him alone.
But the kiss didn’t belong to just him. Mara stroked the inside of his mouth with her tongue, and his flavors of whiskey and potent male intoxicated. Gods, she wanted to crawl inside him, claim his strength completely.
Even though his hands remained splayed on the wall behind her, she felt the kiss everywhere, as if he caressed her body with hot demand. Against the silky fabric of her blouse, her nipples tightened, and a sweet ache sounded in her pussy. She pressed her thighs together, determined to take this as far as it could go.
Finally, she broke the kiss long enough to gasp, “So far, I’m pleased with my purchase.”
“We haven’t even started.” He peeled one of his hands from the wall, and she held herself still,
waiting for his to either go straight for her breasts or between her legs. Instead, he stroked down her hair and rumbled with approval. “So goddamn soft. Hair like moonlight. Like dreams.”
Her heart fluttered. In his aching, beautiful words, she almost believed that there was more between them than desire. Yet that could not be true. They had this, a visceral need and attraction—
and that’s all they could ever have. 8th Wing and scavengers didn’t mix unless blackmail was involved.
She didn’t want to think any of that. All she wanted was him, and the pleasure he offered. She tilted her head back so he could touch her hair even more and to give him better access to her mouth.
He took advantage of both. She purred as he threaded his fingers through her hair, pressing his broad-tipped fingers into her scalp with exquisite pressure, and kissed her deeply.
A little pang of loss trilled some time later when he took his hand from her hair. Pleasure replaced loss as he trailed his fingers along her neck, feeling the speeding of her pulse, then caressed the bared, sensitive flesh of her chest before— oh, yes—cupping her breast.
She had small breasts, and his large palm covered her completely. The thin fabric of her blouse offered hardly any barrier between her flesh and his. His heat seared her, the rough skin of his hand rubbing against her beaded nipple. Silk gently abraded, and she arched into the sensation. He swallowed her gasp as he tugged the fabric down, baring her, and he gently but firmly took her nipple between his calloused fingers.
The energy and concentration she had grown to admire over the past few days was now solely directed at her—and it would have been frightening, if she hadn’t reveled in it.
He pulled back from the kiss just enough to stare down at her with smoldering eyes. With her breasts bared, pressed above the fabric of her corset, her mouth swollen from kissing, she probably resembled an Auroran courtesan. And she didn’t care. Delighted in it, to see the answering hunger in his face and his barely leashed body.
“You devastate me.” He sounded like a beast straining at its leash.
“Good,” she answered, because he did the same to her.
He stared at her, only just holding himself back. “Tell me what you want, Mara.”
“If I said I wanted you to stop, would you?”
“Yes.” The word was a guttural scrape, and he looked tortured by the thought. Yet she understood that he would honor her wishes. “Don’t tell me to stop.”
She not only trusted him, she trusted herself. She had the strength to yield control. It was hers to bestow or take away.
“Don’t stop.”
His mouth twisted, almost savage, then he bent and took her breast into his mouth. She barely held back a cry as she clutched his head to her. His tongue swirled over her nipple, teasing it into even greater sensitivity. The bristle on his cheeks rubbed against her flesh. The same ritual was repeated for her other breast, and soon she writhed against the wall.
“More.” She pushed him back just enough to peel the shirt from him, and he stood, gleaming and taut, a celestial map of male glory etched in muscle and bone. She couldn’t stop herself. She ran her hands over his gorgeous body, feeling his power at the same time that he shuddered beneath her touch.
She finally understood the scars that marked his flesh. A pilot wouldn’t have sustained wounds like these, but a street brawler, determined to fight his way to a better life, would. So she stroked and caressed him everywhere, silken muscle and knotted scars, and everything that he was felt beautiful.
She ran her hand down the corrugations of his abdomen, and his hand captured hers before she could go lower, to the straining length of his cock pressing against the front of his pants.
“You deserve to get all the mileage you can.” He held her tightly, almost brutally. “Don’t want this test flight over too soon.”
He moved her hand so that she clutched at the ridges of his back, then he laughed darkly when she moved her hand down to seized the tight muscles of his ass.
“I like what I feel,” she murmured. “Up to now.”
He took that as the challenge it was, and, with a growl, he kissed her once again. No choice but to fall into it, a reckless, headlong plunge into desire.
A moan escaped her as she felt the rough pads of his fingers on her bare thighs. He’d teased her with gentle strokes in the club. Now his touch was bold, seeking. Both assertive and sensitive, he stroked her shaking muscles, until she felt on the verge of going mad from need.
His fingers delved under the hem of her skirt, then higher. When he brushed the outside of her panties and found them damp, he growled at the same time that she whimpered. He stroked the fabric before dipping beneath to touch her flushed, wet sex. She surged at the contact, and when he rubbed against her clit, she bit him.
But even with her skirt bunching around her waist, he fought to get the best angle to touch her.
Finally, with a frustrated growl, he tore her panties. The ripped fabric drifted to the floor. Then his hand covered her fully, his fingers stroking between her lips, his thumb on her clit. His other hand gripped her waist, holding her to the wall, otherwise she would have collapsed in a heap of ecstasy.
He held her that way, pinning her as he worked her relentlessly. Sensation overwhelmed as she felt herself gleam with pleasure, crazy with desire. She clawed at his back.
“Gods, Kell.” She panted into his mouth. “Yes. Just like that. Yes.”
The orgasm tore through her like a supernova, heat and light and release. She would have fallen to the ground if he hadn’t held her in place against the wall. Her cry could have been heard from one end of the solar system to the other, but she didn’t care. It was so good.