As always.

“Now ask for your spanking,” he said roughly. When she hesitated, he was ruthless. He plunged his forefinger into her slit. She gasped loudly. He finger-fucked for a moment, grinding his teeth together at the wet, sucking sound it made. “Ask for it, Emma.”

“Spank me. Please . . . give me the last one.”

Chapter 21

She sounded wild. He drew his finger out of her channel and popped her raised ass, this time a little more forcefully. She yelped. No sooner had he done it than he was gathering her in his arms, lifting her as he stood.

“Playtime is over,” he growled, turning and placing her hastily, but gently, on the bed. “On your hands and knees,” he directed, too strangled by lust to be polite. He waited while she steadied herself with her bound hands. He started to move away to find a condom, but she looked over her shoulder. He halted. It would have been easy to say she’d stopped him in his tracks because of the vision she made, naked on her hands and knees, the light pink blush on her ass a beautiful contrast to her flawless pale skin.

The hard thing to admit was that while all that was true, what had jerked him to a stop in the midst of frantic lust was the expression in her dark eyes.

He hardened his resolve and took a long stride to the bedside table, where he extricated a condom from a drawer. When he returned, she still was watching him over an elegant, sloping shoulder.

He began to unfasten his belt, holding her stare. “I was going to taste you first,” he bit out. “But then you had to go and look at me.” He saw one eyebrow go up at that. He realized why. He’d sounded almost angry at her . . . and he was, in a way. He was about to burst with uncontrollable, boiling lust, and he wasn’t so sure he liked this feeling of another human being controlling him. “Now I’m just going to have to wait to taste you, and I don’t like to be made to wait,” he said pointedly as he jerked down his pants and slid his hand along the underside of his cock, snarling at the resulting shiver. He was stretched so tight, even the slightest touch was almost unbearable. He rolled on the condom and looked up. Instead of being miffed or offended by his words, she was staring at his cock, her flushed lips parted.

“Jesus, face that wall,” he grated out, pointing at the wall opposite from him. He moved behind her and she turned her head slowly. He became uncomfortably aware that he was panting, and that she could probably hear him. Still, he couldn’t slow. Not with heaven within his reach. His hands on her ass, he pulled her to him, positioning her. He parted her buttocks wide, salivating at the view. She was a glossy, vivid pink that acted on his brain like the stimulant of the red flag to the bull.

“Lower your breasts to the bed,” he insisted, lifting his cock with his hand to her slit. He instinctively felt the ideal give in her flesh when she took the position and thrust. She gave a little yelp, and he tried to soothe her with his touch. He couldn’t stop, though. He thought he might be grinding a layer of enamel off his teeth as she enclosed him, squeezed him like an exquisitely tight, soft suck. Gripping her ass, he watched himself sink into paradise.

She was just a woman, like so many before. He knew this.

So why did it all feel so different?

His shaved balls bumped against her damp outer sex, and the frothing boil of lust overtook his brain. He lost all ability to think. Instinct took over. He firmed his hold on her and began rocking her ass back and forth, driving his hips in a counterrhythm. Her soft moans and surprised little gasps and whimpers when he thrust with more force intoxicated him. He’d like to fuck her forever.

He needn’t have controlled her hip movements so greatly, because he could feel her moving against him with a strength and mounting excitement. Even so, his arm muscles tightened as he crashed into her. Crashed her into him. He didn’t know which. His pelvis was smacking against her ass faster and faster, a little cry erupting out of her throat when he popped against her outer sex and drove deep.

“You feel so fucking good,” he ground out, sounding crazed to his own ears. She was driving him over the edge. He couldn’t get enough. He lifted her hips, holding her against him, taking her lower body weight. Her knees slipped off the edge of the bed. His arms flexed hard, serving her pussy to his cock, pounding into her high and hard. Her cries rained down on him, whetting his appetite even more. He was feasting, gorging himself . . . but he wanted more.

“Scream for me, Emma,” he grated out. He drove into her, a raging male animal intent on one thing. “Scream.”

He kept fucking her, hanging by a thread. Then it came, a high keen that grew louder like an oncoming train the more he pounded into her clasping body. He felt her muscular walls convulse around him. He let the savage loose. Placing her knees back on the bed, he fell down over her, bracing himself with his arms. He drove straight and hard into the hot, molten core of her, grunting. He lit up like a roman candle, popping and firing at first, aching and straining for full detonation. He heard Emma scream louder, her channel gripping him, and it happened.

He exploded into a million pieces.

She came back to herself, knowing she was still the practical, dependable Emma Shore she’d always been, and yet somehow knowing at the same time that she’d never be that girl again.

She absorbed the sound of their twining, panting breaths. It was a nice sensation. It lulled her. His weight was partially on her, pressing her down into the mattress, and it, too, was delicious: a heavy, solid comfort. She wished he’d press her down even more firmly. The idea of fusing with Vanni Montand even more securely and deeply created a sweet, swelling sensation of longing in her breast.

The feeling of him sliding out of her tender body was jarring and highly unwelcome. She must have made a sound of protest, because he kissed her ear and spoke in a sex-roughened, low tone that raised goose bumps along her damp nape.

“Here. Get under the covers. I’ll come and join you in a minute.”

She felt the edge of the sheet and duvet brushed against her naked hip and realized he’d pulled back the bedding. At the urging of his hands on her waist, she rolled over and swung her body so that her head sunk against a decadence of pillows and her feet slid between cool, exquisitely soft sheets. She blinked woozily, staring up at the striking image of him as he stood next to the bed and pulled the sheet and fluffy comforter over her. She curled onto her side, her cheek pressing against the silk of the pillow sham. Her gaze dropped over him and she swallowed thickly. He was still dressed in his crisp white dress shirt. He’d jerked up his pants as he stood, but his cock still protruded from the opening of his fly. The condom clung to his relaxed, but still-formidable sex. Her muzzy, sexually satiated state partially evaporated when she recalled how he hadn’t removed all of his clothing with that woman—Astrid—either.

He turned, and she saw him in profile, and the intrusive thought scattered. He was so beautiful. It didn’t matter what she knew about his lack of interest in intimacy with women or his challenging sexual practices. It didn’t matter that he would get his fill of her soon, she realized as she watched him walk to the adjoining bathroom and open the door.

Her hunger for him wasn’t something to be picked apart and tested rationally. It just was, and all she could do was pray she’d survive relatively unscarred after he’d gone.