“Good. That’s all I ask. Tell me the last time you had sex.”
She recoiled. “Why?”
“You look pretty damn nervous.”
“It’s been a few months,” she admitted. “And it’s always nerve-racking getting naked for a new lover.”
Her answer made sense, but Axel still wanted to press her for details. She insisted she had sexual experience, but her jumpiness seemed like more than typical nerves. All these incongruities just kept mounting in his head . . .
He tried being brutally honest with her. “I seriously don’t think I’ve ever met a woman who intrigued me as much as you. And you’ve got the most beautiful body I’ve ever touched.”
She wrinkled her nose in disagreement.
“You do,” he insisted. “And the most kissable mouth. Give it to me.”
Without hesitation, she tilted her face up to him, her expression wide open in offering. Her desire to give to him was absolute, so pure it reached inside his chest and tugged.
He’d spent so long helping Sweet Pea, Club Dominion’s submissive receptionist, scaling the walls of her defenses so he could tear them down. No matter how much she wanted to submit her all so she’d be ready for the day she met her One, he always hit her hard emotional limit well before her physical one. It frustrated him. It frustrated her. He often wondered if he couldn’t reach her because they were friends—lovers on those rare occasions she needed to be held—but they weren’t in love.
Never had Sweet Pea offered him the sort of complete, unvarnished sincerity this woman presented right now. She might be lying to him about her name and why she’d come to his favorite beer dive. But her expression gave him a glimpse inside the gates to her soul.
Why?
Her thumb flicked across his nipple as she explored every bulge and ridge of his torso. She caressed his shoulders, skated her fingertips down his ribs, bisected his abs with one nail, and flirted dangerously close with the screaming head of his cock, trying to make its way out of his jeans.
His every muscle went taut as she continued with her casual touches. The innocent way she attempted to learn his body, as if being with him was a wonder and the moment they shared felt reverent to her. He’d agreed to a one-night stand . . . but she wasn’t treating it as a throwaway at all. On some level being with this woman whose name he didn’t actually know felt important, which made no sense at all.
He grabbed her wrist before desire overwhelmed his better sense and he threw her onto the bed and fucked her senseless. They’d get there soon; he’d make sure of it.
Axel lifted her hand to his neck. As if she’d read his mind, she curled her slender fingers around him, caressed her way over his shoulder and eased closer, that lush mouth falling just under his. She parted her rosy lips, and her lids slid shut. At once, she managed to look both eager and beautiful. When she rose up on her tiptoes, his patience ended.
Gripping her shoulders, Axel swooped down and claimed her mouth. He took more than a brush of lips, wouldn’t be satisfied with a simple caress. No, he lifted one hand to cup her jaw and apply just enough pressure to force her mouth open for him. He delved deep, fascinated by her taste—complex and addicting. Just being this near her made his head swim, his blood tingle. Some instinct kicked him in the gut, telling him this moment was significant and he’d better drink it in.
He could analyze that to death and probably would—later. Right now, the most fascinating, willing woman stood naked in his bedroom, melting against him. Jesus, she had the softest skin, too. Her proposition had been one hell of a turn-on, but the minute he’d touched her, she’d downshifted and put herself in his hands.
As he slanted his mouth the other way for deeper penetration, her flavor assailed him again. She groaned into their kiss as his tongue tangled with hers. At the sound, his knees went the way of his head—suddenly unstable, floating, not quite functioning.
He groped for the nearby bed, then toppled her onto it. He didn’t bother lying beside her. Fuck that. He settled her against him, then rolled her directly under him, spreading her legs with a shove of his thighs. She didn’t give him a single iota of fight.
The few seconds his lips had been away from hers seemed like a torturous decade, and he sent his mouth crashing onto hers again. She yielded in welcome, which both soothed and baited the hungry beast inside him. What was it about this woman that lit his body on fire? That had his libido doing a happy dance?
As if he could only find the answer inside her, Axel thrust his way into her mouth again and gripped her hips, arching the length of his weeping cock against her bare pussy, cursing the denim keeping them apart. Some distant part of his brain calculated how long it would take him to rip open his fly and find a condom. Before he could compute the answer, his beauty arched into him, pressing her hard nipples to his chest, rubbing her sex against his own as if desperate for relief. And the freaking little whimpers she made in her throat short-circuited his brain. His restraint died a quick death.
“If you don’t want me inside you in the next sixty seconds, say so now.”
She panted, her eyes wide and clinging. “Can you make it less than thirty?”
Oh, fuck. “I’ll go for ten.”
He stumbled to his feet, shoving his jeans and underwear off, then kicking them aside. In his nightstand, he fumbled for a condom and wondered why the hell he was as excited as a teenager with his first girlfriend. The urgency ripped fire through him like an aphrodisiac, sizzling his skin.
Axel had no doubt this woman was about to rock his world—and he wasn’t even sure why.
He tore open the foil and rolled the condom down his length. His gorgeous supplicant wasn’t helping when she sat up and ran her fingers down his abdomen, his thighs, then his buttocks as she leaned in, kissing and nipping at his hips, his thighs. When she laved his balls with a low little moan, he fucking lost his mind.
Axel pushed her to her back and spread her legs. “You want to play dirty?”
“I want you inside me.”
His urge to dominate warred with his need to be buried balls deep. He gritted his teeth, then pushed her farther across the bed and fell to the mattress between her spread legs, his mouth hovering just over her cunt.
Her breath caught. “What happened to ten seconds? Those are up.”
“I can’t let the opportunity to tease this pretty pussy pass me by.” He dragged his fingers across the smooth skin. Like a baby’s butt. Not a bump or a hair to flaw the perfectly silken pad.
At his touch, her entire body tensed. When she tried to lift her hips to him, he held her down.
“You can’t throw it at me. I’ll take it when I’m ready.” He gave her an evil smile. “When I know you’re beyond ready . . .”
She tossed her head back, melting into his mattress. “Please, Axel. Don’t make me wait. It already feels as if I’ve waited forever.”
Perversely, that only made him want to torture her more. “Poor baby. Patience a problem for you?”
She cupped her breasts, pinching her nipples. “I ache. Everywhere.”
Her high, thready voice slammed his libido. But the visual of her fondling her own flesh in a desperate search for relief rocketed his desire to soaring, new heights. Holy hell, if he’d ever wanted a woman so badly he was damn near ready to climb out of his skin and crawl over jagged glass to have her, he didn’t remember it.
Still, she didn’t get to control the tempo and timing of their sex. She especially didn’t get to control him. He grabbed her hands and forced them to her sides, holding each beside her corresponding hip.
She protested with a wail and spread her legs wider. “Please. Don’t make me wait. I’ve never felt this way. I don’t know how to . . .”
“Yeah,” he grunted. “Join the party.”
Surprise widened her eyes. She hadn’t thought he’d want her the same way in return? Had some douchebag belittled her in the past? Refused her harshly? That dude’s loss was his precious gain.