“Have I really?” A trace of breathlessness infused her tone. “Maybe you’ve done the same to me, Creed, even if you are being rather arrogant about it.”
“It’s part of our genetics.” His gaze centered on her lips.
No kiss, he told himself. He couldn’t kiss her, he couldn’t lick her, he couldn’t bite her. His eyes closed as he leaned his forehead against hers. He couldn’t taste the silken, saturated folds of her pussy no matter how his mouth watered for it.
He had to keep his tongue in his mouth, his lips closed.
He had to protect her, at least until he could tell her the truth.
But that didn’t mean there weren’t other ways to play.
There were many ways to play. Ways that would leave them both gasping, their bodies perspiring in release.
He would make certain she didn’t miss the kiss. But he would. God help him, he would miss the taste of her wicked little tongue, the feel of her lips beneath his. And the taste of her soft pussy. That he was truly going to regret missing out on.
“Promise me something, Creed,” she said.
His lashes lifted to stare down at her as the hunger ate at him.
“If I can,” he answered.
“Promise me you aren’t doing this for some sort of Breed revenge. That you’re not sleeping with me in some attempt to make my father pay for whatever he and Uncle Phillip have done.”
Uncle Phillip. Phillip Brandenmore was her uncle through Horace’s marriage to Phillip’s younger sister.
“I can swear to you that I’m not going to sleep with you to make your father or your uncle pay for whatever crimes they committed against the Breeds.” That was easy enough. It was the truth.
Her hand lifted, the tips of her fingers smoothing over his cheek as he watched her soft brown eyes melt with emotion.
He’d encouraged emotion in her from that first day, from the first itch he’d felt beneath his tongue. He’d teased, flirted.
“Kiss me, Creed,” she whispered the one plea he couldn’t satisfy. “Like you did earlier.”
His head lowered. A little. God help him, let him be able to stop when he needed to.
As his closed lips smoothed across her forehead to her temple, he let his hands drift up her hips, pushing beneath her light sweater to find her breasts.
Smooth, firm globes fit his palms as her tight hard nipples met the pads of his fingers. He could survive without her kiss, he told himself. He could survive without releasing inside her. It wouldn’t kill him. Hell, other Breeds had gone without their mates for years before, and they had lived.
He would live as well.
But first, he would have to distract her. He would have to give her so much pleasure that she didn’t realize the kiss wasn’t there.
Bending, he put his arms behind her knees and her back, lifting her against his chest as he carried her quickly to the bedroom he had found earlier.
The bed was already turned down. She’d let someone know she was coming because the pantry as well as the refrigerator and bathroom were stocked with new items. Nothing had been used before.
Laying her on the bed, Creed moved to her feet and carefully pulled off her sneakers, then the soft cotton socks. Undressing her became one of the most sensual chores he had ever undertaken.
She arched to him as he pulled her jeans from her body. Free of those, she began to fumble with the buttons of her sweater.
He watched. Watched those graceful fingers release each button as he hurriedly tore his own clothes from his body, carefully laying a condom aside.
This would be agony. Agony and ecstasy. It would be the heights of rapture, and it would be the further depths of pain if what he’d heard was true.
And it would be worth it.
It would be worth every second of agony to feel her clenching and coming around his dick.
As she tossed her sweater aside, Creed tossed aside his own shirt.
Naked, so fucking hard each pulse of blood pounding through his cock was a pleasure so intense it was painful.
Sitting up in the bed, her hair falling around her face in sunlit and shadowed blonde waves, she looked like a damned temptress come to haunt his fantasies.
That was exactly what she was. His fantasy. That nameless woman he had dreamt of for years before Jonas had sent him to the Engalls estate.
She was his mate.
And she was reaching for him.
SIX
Arousal, that hunger, unsated desire, the desperate longings and pulse-pounding aches. It was the need for touch, the body so hypersensitive, each nerve ending rising in attention as pleasure became the focal point of reality.
It was also the need to touch, though.
Rising to her knees, she flattened her palms against the hard muscles of his abdomen, feeling them flex in response to her touch, heated, alive. At first glance, the hard, bronzed flesh seemed completely free of male hair. But beneath her sensitive hands, she felt the ultrasoft down, almost like a pelt, smooth, warm, invisible to the eye, but detectable to the skin.
Resting on her knees, the object of twelve months’ obsession right before her eyes, completely naked, completely aroused, the hard length of his cock jutting forward, she couldn’t help but compare it to her fantasies.
And the fantasies paled in comparison.
Nothing could have prepared her for the highly conditioned, fully aroused, steel-hard body of a male Breed in his prime.
Her fingers curled against the flexing abs, nails rasping against his flesh as she felt his muscles harden further beneath her touch. The head of his cock was sheened with moisture, engorged and flushed dark with extreme arousal.
Dragging her nails down his abs, she gloried in the hard male groan that met the caress as well as the visible throbbing in the heavy veins of the powerful, thick shaft.
As her hands moved down, caressing, stroking to his thighs, his fingers buried in her hair. Blunt male nails scraped across her scalp, sending trails of exquisite sensation tearing down her spine.
She needed to touch him, to taste him, to experience every sensual pleasure to be had in his arms. Every sensual, erotic touch, taste, and sound.
Her head lowered, her lips moving to his chest, her tongue licking over a hard, flat male nipple as she heard the smothered groan vibrate in his chest.
Part moan, part growl, the sound wrapped around her senses, stoked the sensations rising inside her as her teeth gripped the disk and she allowed her tongue to worry it with sharp little flicks.
The taste of male desire and a hint of cinnamon hit her senses hard and burned through her veins. Between her thighs, her clit throbbed and ached, the need for touch riding her like a fever as her hands moved to his heavy, muscled legs.
She felt as though she were growing drunk, intoxicated on the sheer wicked excitement. Fascination had followed her since the day she had met him, fantasy flowing through her mind as she fought to bring herself to relief when the need for his touch, his kiss, had grown out of control.
And now, he was here. So obviously aroused, his hands in her hair, the pads of his fingers rubbing against her scalp as she began to lick her way down his torso.
She had never touched a man as she was now touching Creed, with such freedom. There had always been hesitation, a sense of something just not quite right. The two men she had been with before had each been a disappointment, making her fear she would never realize the pleasure she sensed could be had in a man’s touch.
In this man’s touch.
In a Breed’s arms.
A moan tore from her throat.
Her Breed. The human species that had been a fascination for her since the day they had revealed themselves, and tonight, she would claim one for her own.