His lips curved. “I can scent your arousal.”
It should’ve made her blush. But it only made her hotter. “I can see yours.” He was hard under the straining zipper of his jeans. And big. Very big. Her body clenched and unclenched, urging her to unzip him, let him fill her up. It would hurt so-damn-good.
“Drop your arms.”
Face hot with the erotic images dancing through her head, she raised it to discover he’d unbuttoned her shirt. “No.” Wrapping her arms around his neck, she leaned in. “Kiss me first.”
“Going to be a brat in bed, too?” His hands slipped under her open shirt to hold on to her waist as he took her mouth in hot, languorous kiss that made her feel so sexy she thought she might just be able to conquer the world.
“I get to give a few orders, too,” she murmured.
His hands slipped down, closed over her bottom. Squeezed. She was still gasping over that when one of those deliciously callused hands slid up over her back and around to her front. She held her breath.
CHAPTER 33
He didn’t just touch her breast. He held with bold possessiveness. Squeezed there, too. And she decided to obey his order. Dropping her arms, she tugged off her shirt. It stuck at her elbows. Clay took full advantage, wrapping the material in his free hand and using it as a binding to keep her hands behind her back.
“I don’t like being restrained,” she complained.
He squeezed her breast again, then cut through the straps and the middle section of her bra with a single sharp claw, retracted a second later. “Can’t I even pet you in peace?”
Then her bra was gone and Clay was looking at her, his hand spread big and confident below her breasts. Her heart galloped. With each indrawn breath, it was as if she was pushing up her breasts for his enjoyment. They weren’t huge. Not even close. But right now, they seemed to have taken over her body.
“Apples,” Clay said, his eyes cat-bright.
She had no idea what he was talking about. “Apples?”
“I love apples.” He bent that dark head and closed his teeth around one nipple.
She couldn’t breathe.
Then he flicked his tongue over the flesh and the air rushed out of her in a burst of hunger and need and pleasure. Releasing the nipple, he took her breast in a scorching hot kiss that reduced her to whimpers. Somewhere along the line, she got rid of the shirt and thrust her hands in his hair, wordlessly urging him to give her more.
God, she was being greedy. But he didn’t seem to mind. She promised her half-dazed mind that she’d make it up to him. Right now, she wanted to indulge herself, to let him indulge her.
He pressed a kiss to the heated valley between her breasts and nuzzled his way up her neck. “We should go up to bed.”
She kissed him, unable to resist the temptation of his sensual lips. “Later.”
“Later,” he agreed and pushed her backward.
When her back touched a soft surface, she realized he’d used his foot to drag the other cushion closer. She raised her arms and he came down on top of her, the cushions forming the perfect bed. His hand stroked her from neck down to waist as he claimed her mouth in another ravaging kiss. She had never felt more taken, more possessed. But for the first time, the possession held tenderness. And she knew that what was happening in this makeshift bed with Clay was something new, something indefinably precious.
Under her roaming palms, his muscles moved in a slow symphony that was as seductive as his kiss. Clay was all big shoulders, heavy muscle, and tremendous power. She dug her fingers into him and was fairly sure he barely noticed. “Clay,” she murmured against his mouth, “tell me what you like.”
“Harder,” he said, nibbling at her lower lip. “I’m not soft like you.”
She caressed him with firmer strokes and was gratified to hear his breath catch. But he didn’t give her long to enjoy that, dipping his head and suckling at her neck in a way that she knew was going to leave a mark. “So good.” She shuddered.
His response was to bring up one of his hands and stroke her breasts with heavy boldness. No flirtatious passes for Clay. He petted and teased with the confidence of a man who knew what he wanted, what his woman wanted.
“Mine,” he said, pressing a kiss to the skin he’d sucked.
And she knew she’d been marked. “Ditto. I don’t share.” She had always been unreasonably possessive of him. If he had so much as smiled at another girl, she’d sulked for days.
He raised his head. “Neither do I.” Their eyes met in a collision of pure fire.
This, she realized, was it. Either she kept protecting herself or she upheld her vow to love him without fear. Put that way, it wasn’t a choice at all. So she gathered up her courage and did something agonizingly, blindingly hard for a woman who had learned to distrust early and never quite forgotten the lesson. She ripped open her heart and took the final step across that glass bridge. “It was you. Always. Only ever you.” At that instant, she felt something wrench and re-form deep inside of her, almost as if her soul itself changed shape, then the odd feeling passed and she found herself face-to-face with the predator that lived inside Clay.
His intent expression hadn’t changed, but his eyes were those of the leopard who was as much a part of him as his human skin. “This, too?” He growled and she felt the roughness of it scrape over her skin in a caress that was at once frightening and mind-blowingly erotic.
Blood flowed to low, heated places. “I’m not afraid of you.” Never again would she fear him. “Sometimes, I’m afraid of what I feel for you”-and the cost the emotional connection would demand from him if this damn disease took her-“but I’m not afraid of you hurting me.”
He kissed her again, an unflinching male brand that left her gasping. “Took you long enough.”
She bit him for that remark, a sharp closing of teeth on one shoulder. It was over before she’d stopped to think about it. When he growled this time, she felt the rumble of it vibrate against her breasts. Then he bit her. The second his teeth closed over the peak of her breast, she felt her thighs attempt to clench. If he hadn’t been between them, she would’ve been squeezing them tight in an effort to quench the liquid fire threatening to burn her up.
Teasing her by rocking his erection against her, he bit her again. Mercy! When he did it to her other breast, she decided she’d have to provoke him more often. Pushing her hands into his hair, she tugged. “Too much.” Too much pleasure, too much exquisite sexual heat.
He said something against her breast and the sensation made her skin feel as if it was stretching ever tauter, as if her breasts were swelling to please this sexy changeling who seemed determined to enslave her. His hair was heavy silk under her hand, his jaw rough with stubble. She wanted to stroke every inch of him.
When he shifted his lower body, she locked her legs around him, holding his strength to her, luxuriating in the knowledge that while she might not control it, or him-nor would she want to-it was completely at her disposal.
Finally releasing her needy flesh, he kissed his way freckle by freckle down to the curved plane of her abdomen. When he looked up, the erotic beauty of him stole her breath. “You taste good. Pretty freckles.” He flicked out his tongue as if tasting one. “Mmm.”
“You’re making me crazy.” He was so honest in his blunt male appreciation of her body. “I thought you said you had no patience.”
“I don’t. You’re just hot for me.”
She grinned through the crimson veil of desire. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Smug, very male, very Clay. But only for her.
Pursing her lips, she blew him a kiss. “Yeah.”
Her agreement had him prowling up her body to give her a slow, sensual kiss that made her moan into his mouth. The feel of his chest hair against the damp tips of her breasts simply added to the overload. She rubbed against him as she’d imagined, inciting him, pleasing them both. His hands slipped under her bottom. “Off.”