She nodded nervously, watching as he moved to the windows and slid the curtains back several inches to catch the rays of the setting sun.
“The windows are also specially made to diffuse images in any optical equipment. As long as you keep them closed you’ll be safe with the curtains open.”
“I didn’t close them,” she said, wincing at the slight nervous quiver she couldn’t halt. “They were closed when I came into my room.”
He nodded before turning back. “It was probably one of the maids. They’re unaware of the windows’ properties, and we like to keep knowledge of it limited. It helps during those times when we key the electronics built into the windows to show the images we want seen. If everyone knew about it, then it would be less effective.”
Then why tell her? She wasn’t exactly a member of the family.
“How did you know the problem was reporters?” he asked her then.
“It really wasn’t that hard,” she told him, her expression pulled tight with the fear that glittered in her eyes. “There was, after all, a camera mounted on top of the vehicle they drove. I glimpsed that much as I peeked from my curtains.”
Katie twisted her hands together to keep from reaching out to touch him again as he crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at her with a frown. “What I’d like to know is how they managed to find you here?” he growled. “I’ve sent one of my men out to learn as much as possible. Though, with those bastards, it’s hard telling.”
She had to agree with him on that one, of course. But that didn’t explain the question uppermost in her mind at the moment.
“Why are you here, in my room, Devil?” she asked instead. “You didn’t seem particularly upset that you were drawn away earlier.”
“Taking a virgin on my desk wouldn’t exactly be a testament to my maturity and experience either.” The rumble of a growl was accompanied by a flash of pure lust in his black and amber eyes.
“And you’ve decided I’m a virgin, how?”
She was, but it wasn’t exactly something she advertised.
“How the hell you made it to twenty-four years of age without taking a lover I haven’t figured out yet.” The low pitch of the rumbled words rasped over her senses as he began moving slowly toward her. “Tell me, Katie, were the men in Ireland completely stupid?”
“I was completely not interested,” she corrected him, though speaking past the harsh beat of her heart wasn’t exactly easy.
“You were engaged,” he reminded her, his expression shifting, tightening as though the knowledge displeased him in some way. “How could you be ‘uninterested’ in sex and be contemplating marriage?”
How could she be?
“He wasn’t exactly interested himself,” she sighed, regretting the friend she had lost when the news of her genetics had been revealed. “And I was tired of being alone and questioned regarding the fact that I had no lover or lovers. I was beginning to feel somehow inferior to others because that desire wasn’t there.”
Until him.
Now, she couldn’t seem to get rid of the need.
“And now you’re interested. Doesn’t that confuse you a bit? Perhaps cause you to question why it’s happened so suddenly?” Stopping in front of her, he reached out, his fingers circling her wrist and drawing her hand slowly from the material of her robe.
“Should I?” Her senses were in shambles as he smoothed the edges of the robe over the swell of her breasts, the calloused tips stroking against her skin and causing her to draw in a hard, sharp breath.
She didn’t want to question anything except why he wasn’t kissing her yet.
“You’re going to hate me later,” he told her, his head lowering, his lips brushing against hers sensually.
“Of course I will.” There was no denying that. He was too powerful, too dominant to ever understand the value of dealing with her in a straightforward manner. He was a man she could trust with her life, but not with her heart.
Unfortunately, her heart may have already made the choice.
“You know you’ll hate me?” He paused, his lips still within a breath of hers.
“I think it was destined,” she sighed. “But if you don’t kiss me, I’m going to hate you now rather than later. How’s that?”
His lips almost twitched.
Was lightning actually going to strike? Katie had sworn it would before Devil Black actually smiled.
Whether he intended to or not, before he could, his lips settled on hers, parted them, as he drew her close, showed her exactly how little she had known about kissing.
For instance, as his tongue pressed between her lips, Katie had never imagined the spicy taste of his kiss would have her lips closing around it, drawing around it as it pressed in, pulled back, thrusting against her as a sweet heat began to infuse her senses.
Katie was only barely aware of the belt of her robe loosening, falling from her shoulders to the floor a second before he pulled back just enough to jerk his shirt over his head and toss it to the floor as well.
Then his lips were on hers again, taking hard, forceful kisses as he swung her into his arms and turned to the bed.
Had she imagined she would feel like this?
That pleasure would rush through her body like wildfire, burning across her flesh and searing her senses with so many sensations that she could barely breathe for the heat and rapid fire bursts of hunger exploding inside her?
Had she ever suspected that a man’s touch could do what Devil’s was doing to her?
God, she hadn’t.
His hands stroked over her arms, moved to her waist, her breasts as he spread those insanely heated kisses from her lips, down her neck and shoulder, then on a blazing path to the peaked tips of her breasts.
Her nipples throbbed. They were so tightly swollen they ached with the need to be touched. Then his lips were covering them, drawing them into the heat of his mouth and wringing a cry from her lips.
Oh God, the rasp of his tongue was too much. Brutal, ecstatic as he licked against the agonized tip, his teeth rasping over it as her nails bit into the bare warmth of his shoulders. Each touch, each heated lick and caress was like a shard of sensation racing to her womb and exploding into fiery fingers of heat that surrounded her clit and exploded in the depths of her pussy.
And she had no idea how to control it.
Katie couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t fight the hunger raging through her for the taste, the touch of this Breed. She had no idea how to process each sensation or how to survive the destructive results.
“God! Katie.” His hand stroked over her hip, parted her thighs.
Calloused, excitingly roughened, his palm stroked up her inner thigh, the tips of his fingers finding the naturally bare flesh between her thighs.
A Breed female had no curls to shelter her there. Nothing to filter the heat and pleasure from her lover’s caress or to hide the slick response of her arousal. Her mother had told her it was simply a genetic trait she’d inherited from a distant grandparent.
God, she should have known better, but at the moment, all she could do was revel in the exquisite sensations it allowed her to experience as his touch stroked over the sensitized flesh.
Lifting her hips to him, her fingers clenching in the sheets beneath her, she fought to breathe as his kisses moved from her breasts to the skin beneath. Each lick, each press of his lips against her flesh stoking the excitement and pleasure higher.
She needed . . .
“Please, Dev.” Arching to him, feeling the stroke of his fingers against the slick flesh between her thighs, Katie fought back a scream of agonizing need. “Please touch me.”