by Linzi Basset
Steele’s kiss softened and his mouth brushed over hers with tenderness. She could do no less than sigh into the caress. After the blistering passionate one of moments before, this one shook her equilibrium haywire. His lips were searching, testing and she gave him everything he asked for. It was a kiss of new discovery.
He gently brushed his thumb against the softness of her cheek as he ended the kiss. His eyes glistened as he studied her beauty, the gray a swirling of silver and charcoal, like the coat of a wolf that kept Kayla’s gaze locked onto him, ensnared by the intensity she saw there.
“Life is unpredictable, Kayla, like you’ve just learned with Jade. Time is fleeting, something I’ve learned over time. I wasted time with you, believing you needed it … no more. You and me, we're going to make this marriage work.”
“What do you mean by … mmm,” she moaned. He stole every thought from her mind as he trailed a line of fiery kisses over her throat and jaw. Her breath hitched as he palmed her breasts and brushed his thumb over the tip.
“Oh … my,” Kayla sighed as she felt her nipple tighten and pressed eagerly against his feathery touch. She’d forgotten how alluring his hands were and how absolutely mesmerizing every slide of his fingertips over her skin was. She started as suddenly she felt the warmth of the fire on her naked breasts, courtesy of his stealth in unzipping her dress and pushing it to her waist. All in a matter of seconds and without her noticing.
“Beautiful—so absolutely perfect,” he murmured against the slope of her breast, kissing and licking as he moved from one to the other.
Kayla bit her lip, beyond protesting. She couldn’t, not when his wicked lips found every erogenous spot she didn’t even know existed. She had no defense against the ripples of heat rushing through her veins to pool around the nerves inside her pussy.
“Steele, maybe we should take it slow,” she finally managed to croak.
“Slow is exactly what I’m doing, baby,” he rasped. His eyes darkened as he traced her perfectly molded breasts and then brushed a finger across a taut nipple, unable to resist their allure any longer.
“I love these,” he murmured as he leaned closer to nibble on the fullness of her bottom lip while fondling the taut roundness of her perky orbs. He whispered his palms over her nipples, delighted by the sensual moans that filled his ears. He lingered, teased and pinched, unable to pull away from their sensual taste, their beauty and utter seductiveness that were as enticing and succulent as he remembered.
“Steele … oh lord,” she moaned as he tugged and pinched her nipples with a single-mindedness that was thrilling and daunting at the same time.
Kayla couldn’t understand her resistance. This was what she’d craved and yearned for over the past two years. The only explanation her frayed mind conjured up was that she didn’t want this time to be as a result of what he perceived as a challenge. The first time had been in the dark, two faceless people in a mindless coupling of satiating lusts and desires that she’d secretly harbored for years for the elusive hotel tycoon. Well, elusive to her, as she didn’t roam in the same circles as he did. Least of all would she stand in a queue for his attention.
Her nails cut into his biceps as she clung to him as the only stable thing keeping her afloat. The effect his hands and lips had on her frightened the living daylights out of her.
“No! Steele, stop,” she gulped as his hand caressed her knee and inched higher between her thighs. “I …” She looked at him with pleading eyes, unable to articulate her reasons for stopping him. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she was a prude or worse, a tease.
His hands stilled as his gaze searched her flushed face. He smiled wryly and heaved a deep, calming breath. Kayla shivered as he gently pulled up her dress and zipped it closed.
“Maybe you’re right.” He kissed her briefly before he pushed her off his lap and got up. “But, if I’m to keep my hands off you, then I better take you home.”
“I’m sorry, it’s not that I don’t … it’s just … dammit!” she ended in a huff as once again, she couldn’t find the words. He pulled her to her feet and hugged her against his chest.
“Relax, Kayla, I’m not upset. I understand, perhaps better than you realize.”
He didn’t elaborate or linger with the embrace but ushered her to the entrance hall and assisted her with her coat. Too soon, they were on their way to her house.
She expected him to be quiet on the way but he surprised her by asking questions about her family and her life. By the time they arrived at her house, she was completely relaxed and laughed gaily with him at some of the tales he told her of his young days as a rebel teenager.
“I was skeptical about how the evening was going to turn out at first but I rather enjoyed it,” Kayla admitted as she took off her coat and hung it on the hook in the entrance hall of her house. She glanced at the shining diamond ring on her finger. A melancholy smile curved her lips as she glanced at him. “Thank you for the lovely ring. In all honesty, I didn’t expect anything more than a plain gold band on our wedding day. The thought you put into this ring … I’m amazed and touched.”
He cupped her chin and forced her to hold his gaze. “The sooner you see our marriage as the real thing and not as a result of circumstances, the better. I intend to put everything into it to make a success of our relationship and ensure we have a happy and fulfilling life together, Kayla. Nothing less would do for me. Can you, or rather, are you prepared to offer me the same?”
She studied him for long moments, his words circling her mind until they embraced her soul with an unspoken promise of happiness and joy. Her smile was beatific and pure.
“Yes, Steele, I can’t think of anything I’d want more in life.”
“Well, baby, to me that was a mutual pledge and deserving of a kiss to seal it.” His gaze lifted to the mistletoe hanging from the arch where they stood. His eyebrows crawled upward suggestively. “If nothing else, the fact that we’re under mistletoe for a second time should tell us something … and it's tradition … don’t you agree?”
Kayla inhaled several deep breaths. His gaze never wavered from hers, which she found disconcerting … but not all that much. It was a tradition in her family to put up Christmas decorations directly after Thanksgiving. She had never been happier about it than now.
This time, Kayla took the initiative and stepped against him. Her arms moved up and she locked her hands around his neck.
“I agree fully, Mr. Blake.”
She tugged and he lowered his head with a smile as he caught her lips with his; his hands rested lightly on her hips. He allowed her to lead the kiss and she exulted in the power that washed over her at the gesture. Finally, she could give in to the temptation to kiss him, really kiss him … without any coercion from him. To nibble on his lips, lusting for his flavor on her tongue like it was a gourmet meal about to be served.
Kayla’s lips glided across his. She quickly became lost in the softness and heat his mouth imparted. She clenched her hands together behind his neck, the need to touch his body overwhelmed her. The memory of how the hard planes and the ripples of his muscles felt beneath her hands played inside her mind, urging her to act.
But first, she wanted his kiss—his whole sensual and demanding kiss. The kind he gave her earlier and so many on that night two years ago. Where his tongue invaded her mouth, plundered and possessed. Where he consumed her, first aggressively and then sweetly. She didn’t care which. She’d give in to his every desire.
“Steele,” she pleaded against his lips.
“Shh, baby,” he graveled as he swept his fingers across the pulsing vein at the base of her jaw. She gulped at the realization that it was a lazy counterpoint to how fast her heart was beating. Suddenly, the power shifted. He teased, stealing her breath with every leisurely slide of his lower lip over hers.
“I want you, so fucking badly, Kayla. I need to taste you again but if you open and let me in, you better be prepared for what’s coming because I
’m not going to stop again, Kayla.”
“I don’t want you to stop,” she lilted as her lips parted under his.
He swooped in and sealed his mouth to hers. His tongue slipped past her teeth to stroke and lick. Enticing, lustful and so arduous, Kayla felt the floor tilt beneath her feet.
Good lord, this man can kiss!
Steele cranked up the power of the kiss until his body became tense and left Kayla helpless in the face of his passion. His hunger rolled over her in a storm of eroticism.
Kayla pressed against his body, returning the kiss with a greed of her own. She was lost in his taste, enchanted as he took complete charge, but at the same time, her fevered participation signified her eagerness to follow wherever he opted to take them next.
“God, you make my blood boil,” he growled as the kiss reached a combustible level.
“I want … Steele,” she panted, flexing her fingers with the need to claw at his clothes to feel his bare skin. More than that, to reach down and undo his pants to feel his pulsing heat in her hand that seared a hard, scorching weight against her stomach.
Steele broke the kiss. His eyes glimmered warningly as he looked at her. His voice darkened as he said in a gruff demand, “I want your hands at your sides, Kayla.”
Kayla didn’t think; she just acted and her hands fell from his shoulders. He pressed his cheek against hers; his ragged breathing rustled her hair.
“Easy, little one,” he cooed in her ear as he felt the tremors wreak through her body. He didn’t move until she relaxed and leaned into him. “You are so passionate, so completely adorable,” he rasped as he gently caressed her neck. He brushed a kiss across the shell of her ear. “It’s humbling how eagerly you hand yourself into my care, without hesitation or question. Such an act of trust is a drug to someone like me.”
“What do you mean?” Kayla floundered in her mind to come back to earth. “Someone like you?” she repeated.
He pulled his head back and regarded her earnestly. “I wonder if you are truly ready for me. For the power I need to have over you,” he mused as if to himself.
Kayla frowned as his words sank into her frayed mind.
He traced her eyebrows with a barely there touch.
“Yes, sweetheart, a man who not only wants a gorgeous wife on his arm and in his bed, but one who can truly surrender herself to a man who will give her what she wants, or rather, demands to give her what she needs.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” she said in confusion. “What exactly would that need be?”
His smile was one of such commanding presence that Kayla could only stare at him in awe. “To be pleasured without apology.”
“I’m … you … I’m not sure exactly what you’re alluding to … ohh,” she gasped as he walked her backwards and herded her against the wall.
“Hold still,” he said with a steely command.
Kayla found her back against the wall. Steele didn’t cage her in with his arms or block her escape in any way. There was even a respectable distance between them. In fact, he wasn’t touching her at all. She was breathless by the fact that she didn’t try and bolt away but stayed rooted to the spot, held there by an invincible power he exuded from every inch of his body. The scent of him so close was intoxicating and mesmerizing.
Her gulp was audible as he moved his warm lips down the side of her neck. With a ragged sigh, she angled her head, offering as much access to do whatever he intended.
“Steele!” she quaked as he wrapped her hair in his fist. He yanked her head back as he kissed the sweep of her shoulder.
“Sexual domination, Kayla. Full and complete power over you.” His lips slid over the muscle at the top of her shoulder before he lightly sank his teeth into it. “That, my sweet, is what I want from you.”
“Oh, my god,” Kayla moaned as he pinned her arms above her head, settling his hips between her legs and ground his groin hard against hers.
His mouth crashed onto hers. His tongue plunged inside her mouth to plunder and possess as he turned her inside out with a kiss that wasn’t gentle but packed with pure hunger. He locked her wrists in one hand as he canted his hips into hers, driving his hard arousal against her softness. His free hand trailed the curve of her body from her forearm down to her hip. Kayla was on fire as she arched into him, completely lost to reality; in that moment, only he existed.
She moaned in protest as Steele slowed the kiss and released her wrists. Her back arched as his hands caressed every curve from her hips to her shoulders. His eyes were locked onto her flushed face.
Kayla blinked, doing her best to calm her raging libido and not appear completely shattered, even though there was no denying that her body had gone haywire. Her chest heaved as she attempted to regulate her breathing. She shifted; uncomfortably aware of how damp her panties were. Her nipples had gone as hard as rocks and ached for his touch—his mouth, his hand, his chest, she didn’t care which, as long as he paid attention to their needs.
“Well, Kayla? Was I wrong about you or are you the woman who I believe can offer me what I seek?”
He didn’t wait for her response but once again returned to exploring the sensitive skin of her throat and shoulders. If his aim was to completely set her on fire and steal all ability to think, he succeeded. He electrified her skin with his open-mouthed kisses. He sent her senses reeling with each nuzzle that he breathed below her ear, that teased the pulse point of her throat, and stole her breath as he moved to the arc of her shoulder, and the underside of her jaw.
. “I … Steele …”
“You’re like a drug, baby. Your skin is sustenance to my starved desires.”
His lips traced the sides of her mouth. He released her hair that he’d gripped in his fist again to run his hands down the sides of her face and neck. He gently circled her wrists as he brushed his mouth across her ear.
“Well?”
Kayla breathed in deeply. It wasn’t new to her, not after that night with him but it still shook her to realize it was a way of life to him. She opened her lips, intending to ask for time to consider this new side of him … of where he intended their relationship to go but was shocked by the words that escaped her mouth.
“Yes, Steele, I am. I want this … what you just did. I … need it.”
Good lord! Am I really? Is that why I can’t forget him?
Kayla’s mind jolted back in time to the debauchery of that one night with him, remembering how rough and demanding he had been. How he had controlled every aspect of her arousal, of her need and her lust. More than anything, how she had basked under his domination, how she had skyrocketed time and again when she gave in to his every demand. She’d just never realized what it meant. Now that she did … it filled her with excitement and flushed her body with such heat that she felt on the verge of combusting.
“Then that’s exactly what you’re going to get, baby.”
Chapter Eight
Steele stared at Kayla, aware of the turmoil and uncertainty at war with the excitement and lust inside her. He felt his own ardor build to a point of no return as he remembered feeling the sensation of her gorgeous body responding to the demands of his.
She was the only woman who managed to spark his testosterone with a sexual charge that scorched through every fiber of his being. Steele was a man of action and his little firecracker was about to meet her future. He didn’t hesitate. He ignored her gasp as he picked her up and took the stairs two at a time.
“I’m too heavy,” Kayla managed to squeak as she clung to his neck, not in fear he’d drop her but because her body flared hotly to his proximity as he set her down in the shower stall.
“W-hat are you doing?” she stammered as he removed her clothes with a few suave and economic movements. Her mouth gaped open as he yanked off his clothes, exposing her hungry eyes to his gorgeous musculature, first his broad chest, rippling muscles, and biceps until she finally got awarded by the view of his chiseled abs. She didn’t believe it possible to e
ver get tired of looking at his body.
His answer was to push her against the tiled wall, flattening her breasts and drawing an aroused gasp from her lips as his hard, naked body molded against hers from behind. He turned on the water. It’s cascading droplets sizzled against her heated skin.
Holy smokes, she gulped to herself as she felt the hardness of his aroused cock settling between her ass cheeks, the spongy tip boldly kissing the small of her back. Good lord, I forgot he’s this huge!
“I’m about to combust. This way, I’ll last long enough to watch you fall apart a couple of times first.” The promise in his deep voice caused the pressure to tighten in her loins.
“Somehow, I don’t think I’m getting the better end of the deal,” she grumbled but her voice rose at the end as he squeezed her buttocks seductively.
“You should know how this works, love,” he rumbled in her ear as he soaped his hands and glided the suds all over her upper body, paying special attention to her breasts.
“I’ve got a feeling you play by different rules than what I’m used to,” she gritted out as his hot breath paved the way for his tongue licking the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck.
“In the game of passion and desire, there are no rules, baby. Best you remember that.”
Kayla shifted against him. She was already past the need for seduction. Her body was a mass of throbbing lust. Her every thought was centered on the hard length that he rubbed up and down between her ass cheeks.
His hands were magical, ruthless, and wicked as with every brush of his fingers, he turned her body into a scorching vessel of need. She was consumed by him, by the fire he unleashed inside her. He cocooned her within his hard, rippling body and scorched her with the heat that infiltrated her wherever his skin touched hers.
“Steele, enough. I don’t need foreplay. You ... sweet holy hell!” she exclaimed as he brushed his fingers over her clitoris. He rubbed hard and drew quick circles over the already swollen nub, all the while tugging and pinching her nipples with a single mindedness that was thrilling and daunting at the same time. His aim was to bring her off quickly and she chased the climax with her chest heaving.
