Dancing With Danger

by Kerrigan Byrne

  “The home I share with Gabriel is not so far.” He gestured to the west. “But I would have dragged myself through Siberia in winter to be here tonight.”

  At this, she smiled, feeling uncharacteristically shy by his unabashed appreciation of her.

  “I’m glad,” she murmured. “That we desire each other with equal fervor.”

  Oh, now what had she said that was funny?

  “Darling,” he managed over his mirth. “If you wanted me like I wanted you, we’d be on our second time by now.”

  “Oh. Well...” Not to be outdone in the surprise seduction, she dropped her sheets and let them pool in a white cloud at her waist.

  The laughter died with a groan in his throat.

  He didn’t just look at her. He consumed the sight of her with an ardent fervor.

  “You are stunning, Mercy,” he marveled. “Exceptional. You never cease to astonish me.”

  “What do I do that is so surprising?” she wondered aloud.

  “Most women would at least make modest, maidenly protestations. Force me to coax them to reveal themselves to me.”

  “Most women are trained to act like simpering fools,” she scoffed. “Is that what you want from me?” She pressed the back of her hand to her forehead, enjoying that he watched how her breasts lifted with the gesture. “Oh, do allow me a moment to swoon here in virginal protestation so I might feel less guilty for succumbing to the seduction of this large and dangerous rogue who is intent upon ravishing my pure and virtuous person. I am an innocent, harmless girl caught in his dastardly web—”

  His unexpected touch at her throat seized her breath there.

  Her heart skipped a beat, then two, paralyzed as his strong fingers trailed to the back of her neck, pressing deeper against the tight, quivering muscles there.

  “In my experience, women are generally arousing or amusing, I’m delighted that you are both.”

  “I amuse you?”

  “You transfix me, Mercy. You captivate me.”

  With deft and clever circles, he found the tender knots in her back and undid them with steady, circling pressure.

  He did this to relax her, and it was working.

  And...not working.

  The strength in his hands was both potent and restrained. She found the dichotomy endlessly erotic.

  Hypnotic, even.

  Her blood thickened. Slowed to a heavy languor as if warm honey drenched her veins with sweet, treacle sensuality.

  Probably she should compliment him, as well. He certainly deserved it.

  “You also...intrigue...Oh, that feels so good,” she groaned and closed her eyes in bliss as he found a tender spot and curled his relentless fingers into it.

  “Just you wait, mon chaton,” he promised against her ear. “Do not be too easily satisfied. I like a challenge.”

  She couldn’t summon the words with which to reply. Not only because of what his diabolical fingers did to her, or the way his words made her heart quiver instead of beat.

  But because a wave of aching emotion tumbled over her, swamping her with unidentifiable yearning. Not just for the carnal sensations his touch evoked, but for this affection between them.

  This physical touch that was not demanding nor expectant.

  Unhurried. Deliberate. Both intimate and innocuous all at once.

  She sighed as he released her tresses from their pins, lock by spiraling lock, testing the weight and coil of the curl as if he’d never before threaded fingers through a woman’s hair.

  Or never would again.

  After a while, he said, “Though you jested before, there is truth in what you said. One you must consider carefully. I am a large and dangerous man... My web is one of deceit and blood.”

  “I knew that already. I’m not blind.”

  “No.” He leaned forward, brushing the ghost of a kiss against each of her eyelids. “You have excellent, beautiful eyes. You see what most do not.”

  “Your flattery will get you nowhere, you cad.” She reached out, shocked when her hand encountered the warm flesh of his chest.

  Shocked that she kept it there, searching for the beat of a heart she could never claim.

  “I’m already where I want to be.” The earnestness of his expression unstitched her as he reached his own palm out, and pressed it to where her own heart hurled itself against the cage of her chest.

  “What do you feel when I touch you?” His voice washed her in a pleasant glow, the question putting her at ease. “When you touch me?”

  “Butterflies,” she answered honestly, placing her other hand over where wings made a riot in her belly.

  He tilted his head, his hand moving lower, not to her breast quite yet, but almost. “Butterflies? Don’t they erupt when you are afraid?”

  “I’m not afraid,” she lied.

  “What are you?”

  “Excited.”

  “Excitement is often born of fear.”

  But was fear also this delicious? She wondered.

  Her silence seemed to consternate him. “Is that why you relented to my wicked proposition? Am I your one chance to dance with danger?” His hand stilled as he gazed at her. “Will you regret saying yes to me when this is over?”

  “Certainly not.” Her eyes flew open and she drew back, an offended frown tugging at the corners of her lips. “I said yes because you’re the one man who makes me feel more alive by just walking into a room. I said yes because I was categorically certain I’d regret it if I refused this opportunity for pleasure.”

  His eyes gleamed like those of a night-hunting predator beneath a moonless sky.

  She’d the sense she’d just disconcerted him.

  Oh dear, had she been too honest again?

  This time, when his fingers dug into the back of her neck, it was to drag her forward and slant his lips over hers.

  She melted into him like wax beneath a flame, surrendering and puddling in the fire he ignited.

  Dragging his tongue against hers, he licked and tasted, his breath coming in rasping pants. Feral, guttural noises vibrated across her lips, into her mouth, and down to the very core of her.

  His hands wandered, the skin rough and the movements gentle.

  He seemed to understand her impatience. To craft it, mirror it, and then ignore it, drawing out some delicious distraction with a swirl of his tongue or a barely-there nip of his teeth.

  She could kiss him forever, but it wasn’t enough. She desired him closer. Over her, beneath her. Beside her.

  Inside her.

  He wanted her, too, dammit, so why didn’t he just—?

  As if he’d heard her thoughts, he was suddenly above her. Settling his weight between her parted thighs, he kept the sheet and his trousers between them.

  His lean hips kicked forward, introducing her to the hard length of his arousal as he fed the fire of their kiss until it threatened to scorch her.

  Mercy couldn’t tell if he’d uttered the ragged moan or she had.

  Dangerous thoughts filtered through her consciousness as he caressed her in places she hadn’t expected. He drew knuckles across her jaw, and she imagined devotion in his touch. He feathered caresses across her clavicles and ghosted his palms down bare shoulders.

  She might have found a pledge whispered on the pants of his breath.

  Impossible.

  Even in the darkness, she could sense the pace of his heart, hammering with a tempo as furious and drastic as her own.

  He dragged his lips from hers after a moment, making a moist trail with his mouth up the line of her jaw.

  It wasn’t his lust that amazed her, it was his tenderness. His lips quested across her hairline, temple, and down the nape of her neck. He took in deep drags of breath, as if he could lock the scent of her inside of him.

  “Mine.” His head dipped low enough, the word caressed her throat, chased by lips that stopped to sample the tender skin and tease the sensitive nerves there.

  Her entire being trembled in exp
ectant anticipation of his touch, of the shivery whisper of his warm breath a moment before his lips followed.

  “You are an incomparable beauty.” He said this like an accusation, before his mouth found her breast and began an erotic assault upon it that left her utterly defenseless. He deprived her of air, of thought, of any sort of reason as he held her immobile beneath him. Some of his tenderness seemed to abandon him now, as he licked and nipped at her with intensifying aggression.

  Her body bloomed for it. She knew what making love entailed. The mechanics of the act, at least. But she’d been truly unprepared for this instinctive urgency.

  This assault of sensation.

  How did anyone bear it?

  She barely noticed his shift in weight until the slide of the sheet became a torturous shiver down her body as he drew it away from her.

  He stretched on his side next to her, freeing his hand to explore the skin he’d uncovered with carnal strokes.

  When he turned to look at what he’d exposed to the lamplight, Mercy seized each side of his jaw with both hands and imprisoned his mouth to hers.

  She’d thought she was ready to be naked.

  But not to be revealed.

  He didn’t protest as she plunged her tongue into his mouth, tasting his need, sweeping in the rhythm of her growing desire.

  A clever finger traced inside her thigh, petted through soft intimate hair, dashing erotic sparkles of sensation over her entire body.

  Her breath froze as he delved into bare, wet flesh. Her pulse didn’t just run, it fled, escaping her as he slid unhurried explorations through sensitized ruffles of feminine skin.

  He broke the seal of their lips, moaning something in French she was too mindless to translate.

  She melted—liquified—beneath his expert touch. She marveled at the slippery warmth of her own body’s response to him. Wondered if she should be ashamed. Or embarrassed.

  Too entranced to bother with either.

  She felt drugged with some throbbing intoxicant. It dragged her into a miasma of pleasure and threatened to drown her beneath turbulent, ocean-deep waves of sensation.

  Languid explorations tightened to circles around the place where a shimmer of heat threatened to become a firestorm. His increasingly urgent breaths crashed against her mouth as he lingered upon the threat of a kiss, but kept his mouth enticingly elusive.

  She clutched at him, with her fingers and with—Oh, God—the spasming intimate muscles of her sex as he drew a teasing circle around the entrance to her body.

  A gasp closed her throat as he nudged gently there, and she stilled, not realizing until this very moment just how desperately she desired him inside of her.

  “I want to taste you,” he growled. “Would you let me?”

  “Yes,” she said impatiently, tugging at his shoulders to bring their lips back together. “Yes, of course. Please.”

  His chuckle was demonic. “I like it when you beg.”

  “I was not beggi—where are you going?”

  He prowled down her body, wide shoulders rolling like a great cat as he did so. His nose and lips stopped to sample at her scent, and then nibble at soft and tender parts of her.

  Her clavicles.

  The undersides of her breasts.

  The gently rounded plane of her belly.

  “You’re clever, Inspector Goode, I’m sure you have some clue as to where I’m headed.”

  The very thought made her nearly apoplectic, but she dug her fingers into the sheets so as not to stop him out of sheer humiliation.

  “I thought you meant to kiss me,” she clarified.

  His laugh would have made the devil shudder. “Oh, but I do. I mean to kiss you thoroughly.”

  “But...but...” There? She squeezed her thighs shut as his lips trailed the short downy distance from her belly button to the triangle of dark gold hair below.

  “Everywhere.” His hands nudged her wobbly legs open, and she nearly gave in to the instinct to protest.

  She’d heard of the French being more wicked than the average lover, but this was beyond the pale. Wasn’t it? Or at least unhygienic...

  Did he really mean to—?

  Crisp air feathered across the wet heat between her parted legs. His fingers, firm and competent, pinned her thighs all the way open, utterly exposing her to him.

  “Look at you,” he whispered, his words landing there. Against her most intimate parts. “Magnificent. I should have expected...”

  Expected what? She wanted to ask.

  Would have asked.

  Had he not done exactly what he promised, and kissed her.

  The shock of his hot wet mouth against her warm wet sex... She never could have imagined the contrast of it. The pure illicit pleasure it evoked.

  She felt those lips everywhere.

  Or perhaps her entire world simply faded to only contain what his mouth currently did to her.

  All she knew was the heat of his breath.

  The slick velvet of his tongue.

  The gentle coaxing of his lips.

  Mercy looked down the topography of her body as if such an act needed a witness.

  Their eyes locked, and she thought of the serpent again—especially as his tongue flicked and slithered in gentle pulses over her most sensitive flesh.

  The light burnished him in stark relief, his shoulders so corded and wide against the thin white skin of her limbs. His arms, so densely muscled, held her a willing hostage as he consumed her like a condemned man might his final meal.

  The peaks of her breasts were drawn into tight, aching beads, and without thought, she cupped one. Hoping to warm it, to soothe some strange throbbing there.

  The groan he emitted vibrated through her loins and drew a surge of bliss into a threatening crest. His lips never left her sex, sealed to her with a rhythmic suction that created subtle, shadowed hollows in his cheeks.

  It was the bliss on his features that transfixed her. The rhythmic undulations of his hips against the counterpane where he sprawled. The deep sounds of pleasure she felt in her very bones.

  He enjoyed this.

  A storm built below his mouth. Swirling in the movements of his tongue.

  The thunder was no longer in the distance.

  No, it was inside of her. Rolling and pulsing and deeply erotic.

  Tears stung her lids. She was suddenly unprepared for something so profound. So powerful it threatened to tear her away from herself.

  So inevitable, she knew she could not fight it.

  That it would not stop.

  “Raphael?” She whimpered his name for the first time.

  His gaze found hers, his pupils so dilated his eyes looked demon black.

  “What is—? I don’t—I’m—I’m—” Though a sort of feverish delirium, she couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentences she desperately needed him to hear.

  What is going to happen?

  I don’t know what to do.

  I’m lost.

  He didn’t stop. He didn’t hesitate, slow, or even pause.

  But his eyes contained a sincere sort of understanding, and he released her thigh to slide his hand—palm up—across the sheet at her side.

  She grasped at his offer of salvation the very instant she was pitched over the cliff.

  And she’d never been more grateful for anything as she was for the curl of his strong fingers around hers.

  Mercy dangled between solid ground and air for an intense and breathless eternity before plummeting into a writhing, delirious, free-fall of ecstasy.

  The strokes of his tongue became lashes of lightning-hot pleasure bolting through her blood, suffusing her with electric charges that ebbed for a moment of answering thunder. She needn’t have worried about making noise, as she couldn’t produce a single sound as the storm tore the breath from her lungs.

  She writhed and thrashed with uninhibited euphoria. One moment grinding into it, and the next retreating from it.

  As if by magic, Raphae
l seemed to realize when it became too much, when the pleasure threatened to shatter her on the rocks below.

  The strokes gentled then, becoming cajoling and reverent, like a prayer or some such profane thing. He drew out the last spasms from her core with sinuous skill until she utterly collapsed.

  Even though he’d destroyed her with pleasure, Raphael still picked over the wreckage of her body with thorough, searching little nips and licks. Reanimating her boneless, corpse-like torpor with little twitches and trembles of aftershocks.

  When she made a helpless, plaintive noise, he finally relented, pulling away with a wet and depraved sound.

  Releasing her hand, he rolled away and stood, wiping the slick leavings of her from his lips with the back of his hand as he kicked off his shoes.

  She wanted to clutch at him, to call him back, and felt so pathetic for the impulse, she forced herself to quell it immediately.

  The pleasure had affected her, of course it had, but what she’d not expected was how emotionally penetrating the experience would be. How vulnerable and ridiculous it would leave her.

  She had to tread carefully here. This man took lovers, he did not commit to them. He was dangerous and deviant and dreadfully unpredictable.

  He’d leave her.

  He’d take her, then he’d leave her.

  Remember that, she told herself, even as she devoured the sight of him looming above her bed.

  Silent as a reaper, and no less lethal.

  His nostrils flared and his eyes gleamed. Breaths sawed in and out of him like the bellows of a furnace.

  She was about to learn what it was to lie with a man.

  Not to make love. He’d been very careful never to use those words.

  To fuck.

  That’s what they were doing here.

  He would teach her the delicate indignities of the carnal act. She would know why men used the words they did to describe the deed. Thrusting. Riding. Pounding. Claiming.

  She would know the softness and the violence of it.

  Wordlessly, his gaze seared down at her as his hands fell to the placket of his trousers, deftly undoing them and the garment beneath before letting it all fall from his lean hips.

  Mercy stared at his naked form in breathless awe.

  He was something more than gorgeous. A chiseled effigy of immaculate masculinity. Too perfect. Too large and vital for one woman.