His thumbs moved against her cheekbones, so slow and soft she wondered if he was even aware he was doing it. She wasn’t certain what was driving her, why she was so sure—but he was so hot and so hard beneath her hand and she thought she might die if she didn’t get this, at least. One taste. One night. One chance to be like everybody else in the whole world instead of the little freak on her odd little pedestal, untouched and alone.
One chance to be with Izar.
“I will remind you that you said that,” Izar growled, and then he took her mouth again.
And Liliana threw herself headfirst into the fire.
* * *
If he was going to blow up his life, Izar thought with a certain recklessness he’d never allowed himself in all his days on this earth, why not make it spectacular?
He devoured her. The image of her, his grown-up Liliana, standing before him in nothing but that scrap of blue-green silk between her legs and those unreasonable sexy boots, would stay with him to his grave. All that tousled golden hair falling around her to flirt with her dark pink, upturned nipples. Her small, perfect breasts.
If a man was going to fall, why not make sure it was a swan dive?
He gathered her to him, reaching down to pull her hand from the place he was the hardest before he embarrassed himself. And he tasted her. Again and again. He plundered that mouth of hers as if he’d spent his whole life dreaming of nothing but this moment. He hardly knew himself any longer.
But Izar found that with her taste in his mouth and her firm, lean body beneath his hands, he simply didn’t care about that the way he should have.
The only thing he could manage to care about just now was making this worse. As bad as possible.
If he was going to do this, he wanted to do it right. He wanted to take her, body and soul. And he didn’t particularly want to analyze that notion.
He sat her down on the edge of her neatly made bed and stood looking down at her for a moment, drinking in every moment of this thing that shouldn’t have happened and all her shocking, unexpected beauty along with it. God help him, but she was perfect. If he had cobbled together a list of the things he liked most in a woman, he would have come up with Liliana. From her high breasts to the sweet flare of her hips. The long, long legs and that silly little smile on her full mouth, as if she found what was happening between them, this terrible mistake, nothing short of delightful.
It was as if he’d never wanted another woman in his life. As if no one existed or ever had but Liliana.
That notion should have alarmed him. Izar ignored it.
He shrugged out of his coat and tossed it in the vague direction of her desk. It took him mere moments to strip out of the rest of the dark suit he wore and yet it felt like years, as her blue eyes grew darker and got wider with every item he discarded.
“Should...should I take off my boots?” she asked, and the way her voice cracked made him so hard it was almost like an agony. Almost.
“Did I tell you to take off your boots, gatita?”
She swallowed hard, then flushed. Bright. Hot.
God help him. This was worse than he’d thought. She was sweet and innocent. He knew this as well as he knew his own name.
But, tonight, she was his.
There were reasons he should have balked at that, but he couldn’t think of them just now. There were the consequences he’d mentioned, but he couldn’t imagine what those might be any longer. Not while she waited there before him, exquisitely beautiful, her eyes full of him.
Maybe there were men on this earth who could resist her, but Izar was not one of them.
When he was fully naked, he stood there before her and let her look, feeling the way her wide, hungry eyes caressed him like her hands all over his body. And he was arrogant enough to laugh at the way her eyes flew wide when she followed the flat line of his belly down farther. The way her cheeks grew redder still and that stain traveled down her chest to flirt with her lovely breasts.
He no longer cared that this building offended him. That this room reminded him of a prison cell. That he was Izar Agustin and she was Liliana Girard Brooks and if he was truly going to do this thing he shouldn’t, there were any number of five-star hotels in Manhattan that would happily fall all over themselves to accommodate him and let him handle this moment in a setting far more appropriate for them both.
But she was near enough to naked, with her heart in her eyes. And he found that after all the thousands of ways he’d been ruined almost before he’d started and had imagined himself untouchable because of it, he was more susceptible to that—to her—than he ever would have dreamed possible.
Izar stopped thinking, assuming he’d done any of that since she’d walked into this room and stolen his sanity. He stopped questioning.
There was no point thinking about it any longer.
There was only now. There was only this.
Izar crossed back to her bed. He took his ward in his arms, and he proceeded to lose himself entirely.
He didn’t care.
There was only Liliana, and no matter if it burned them both.
* * *
Izar was like a fury, hard and hot and relentless.
Liliana loved it.
He spread her out before him on the bed and then he crawled over her, and Liliana thought it was too much. That it alone might kill her. That her heart couldn’t possibly stay where it belonged, inside her chest, when it catapulted against her ribs in such a tumult.
He was so big. He braced himself over her and gazed down at her, and Liliana thought she’d never felt so trapped in her life. Except this trap, she liked. More than liked. He was smooth and muscled, and while photographs had always celebrated the man’s physicality, this was a whole new way of appreciating it. Him. The wall of his chest was ridged and mouthwatering, and she wanted to rub her face against his skin and lose herself in that hollow between his flat, hard pectoral muscles.
She wanted a thousand things she was afraid to name, that she’d only dared imagine when she was buried under the covers with pictures of him dancing in her head, alone.
But then he began to kiss her. He took her mouth again, with a certain ruthless laziness that left her boneless beneath him, clutching his big biceps to anchor her to the earth. Izar left her mouth, laughing when she made a soft noise of protest, and he lavished that same attention on her jaw, her neck. He traced his way down one side of her collarbone and up the other. He seemed to have all the time in the world, and who cared if she writhed or moaned or called out his name?
If anything, he went slower.
He found one breast and he learned it. His lips, his tongue, his hard and clever hands. The faint, teasing edge of his teeth. He made her shake. He lit her on fire. And only when she was gripping his hair as if she might want to pull it out did he relent.
And then move to the other one, making it perfectly clear he would do with her body exactly as he wished.
Liliana lost all sense of time, of place. There was nothing left in the whole of the universe save the dark, beautiful man who sprawled there above her and made her body into his playground. He laid a trail of fire down the center of her body, his wicked hands following along with that endlessly inventive mouth of his, tying her into knots and then pulling them tight. Then tighter. Then tighter still.
She couldn’t breathe, and he was only toying with her navel. She was dying—but he paid her gasps and her deep, long shudder no mind at all as he moved between her legs. He propped them open with his wide shoulders, the suede of her boots rubbing against his bare skin, and it was all somehow almost hotter than she could bear.
Liliana didn’t live in a cave. She knew what he was about to do. She’d dreamed of it.
But nothing could have prepared her for Izar. The shockingly male reality of him. That blaze of fire burning in his dark eyes as he looked up at her. That faint curve to his stern, uncompromising mouth. That relentless, rampant masculinity of his that made her feel deliciously
He toyed with her. He reached down and traced her swollen core with a lazy finger, through the lacy fabric of her panties.
And Liliana toppled off the edge of everything she knew, into pure sensation. He played with her, drawing lazy patterns as he liked and then slipping beneath the bright scrap of lace to test the core of her. She couldn’t handle it and yet she wanted—needed—more. Fire charged through her, setting her alight and making her shiver uncontrollably. She bucked against his hand and moaned out loud when he held her in place.
“Please.” She barely recognized her own voice, choked with hunger. “Please.”
“Gatita.” His voice was stern. “I cannot imagine I have ever given you the impression that I take direction well.”
He took his time. He played with her soft, wet heat until she was near enough to mindless, thrashing beneath him. And when he was ready, and only then, he sank one long, hard finger deep inside her where no one had ever gone. No one. Ever.
Izar muttered something in harsh, rich Spanish, and when he pulled his hand away, Liliana cried out. She couldn’t help herself.
“I know,” he told her, his voice low and sure, and she believed him. “I know.”
And then he leaned down, held her panties to one side and licked his way into her core.
Liliana fractured. She splintered into a thousand shards of herself, and still he kept on. He tasted her. He tormented her. He slid that finger back inside her as he toyed with her, thrusting in and out of her body as he used that marvelous mouth of his against her. Everything inside her pulled into a taut, hard, red knot as she arched into him, utterly lost to his touch.
And then she really did shatter. Again and again and again.
Maybe she even screamed.
When she came back to herself she was hoarse and he was sitting up, tugging her boots from her legs and tossing them to the bedroom floor. Then he reached up and pulled her panties down her legs.
And she could do nothing but lie there and watch him do as he liked with her, mesmerized by his stark male beauty and all that wild shattering still swirling around and around inside of her.
He crawled back over her, gathering her beneath him again, and the fact he was still so blazingly hot made her sigh in renewed pleasure. He settled himself against her, cradling her face in his hands as, below, the hard heat of him nudged against her. She was so soft, so wet, it made her flush with embarrassment, but he only smiled.
“Courage, gatita,” he told her. “It will only hurt a moment.”
“Why do you keep calling me that?” she asked, in that same half-strangled voice, making her wonder if she really had screamed. And why she couldn’t seem to care about that the way she might have only hours earlier. “Little cat?”
“I had no idea you had claws,” he told her, and there was a curve to his hard mouth that made her think he meant to be gentle. Yet the look in his dark eyes was intent. It was like a whole new shattering. “I find I like it.”
“Izar...” she whispered.
But that was when he thrust inside her.
She expected it to hurt, and not only because he’d said it would. But because that was always the story. It was supposed to be traumatic. Agonizing, searing, ripping her open—
“Are you scowling at me because you’re in pain?” he asked mildly, as if he wasn’t lodged deep inside of her. Naked and inside her.
That made her frown deepen. “No,” she said. “Because I’m not.”
“If it doesn’t hurt, Liliana, then perhaps you might consider not scowling at all.”
“It’s supposed to hurt. It’s supposed to be terrible.” She blew out a frustrated breath and experimented with the oddness of it, that a part of his body was deep inside her. That he was so close. That this was happening and it wasn’t at all the way she’d imagined it would be. “It’s how you know you’re a woman.”
“That is not how you know you are a woman, I fervently hope.”
“Forgive me if I don’t take your word on that,” she retorted drily. “Given you lack the proper equipment to make that—”
But that was when he moved.
It was a lazy slide out, then back. Hardly more than a little shift of his hips.
Heat bloomed...everywhere. Nerve endings she didn’t know she had burst to life, and she rocked against him, wanting...more. Less. Again. Everything.
Izar leaned down and pressed his lips to that furrowed space between her eyes.
“Stop frowning,” he ordered her, but his voice was softer than she’d imagined it could ever be and that, too, shuddered through her. “It will not hurt you to let yourself enjoy the things for which I do, in fact, possess the proper equipment.”
It made her feel new. Vulnerable and safe at once, and that was before he pulled back and she could see the look on his forbidding face. Not soft. But still, not the ferocious, big bad wolf Izar of her imagination. There was a light in his black eyes that made her feel as if this might be his version of tender.
“It’s okay,” she said quietly. “I forgive you for not hurting me.” She waited a moment. Deliberately. “Sir.”
A strange expression moved over him then, as if he couldn’t quite puzzle her out, but then it was gone. And then he smiled.
And Liliana didn’t have the words to describe how that felt. What it did. How it poured over her and through her and became part of what was happening, somehow. That impossible hardness inside of her and a smile on the face of this man who had ruled over her whole life, beaming into her as if he was his own source of light.
“I appreciate that,” he said solemnly, but there was a faint curve to his hard mouth and that gleam in his dark black eyes. “Now hold on.”
And he didn’t wait for her to obey. He started to move.
This time, he didn’t stop. He rocked into her, setting an easy pace and watching her as she learned how to meet him. How to move with him to make those wild, incandescent sensations better. Wilder. Hotter.
God, it was so hot it should have killed them both. Maybe it did.
He moved faster then. He dropped his head to hers and he took her mouth again, taking her everywhere. Making her his as surely as if he’d branded her, and Liliana thrilled to the thought.
She’d asked for this once and he was giving it to her, this man who had gone out of his way to give her so little before. And so here, on this bed, in this stark little room she hadn’t realized she’d made into a cell, she didn’t hide a thing. She poured herself into this dance of bodies, this mad tango that stunned her and inspired her with every deep, thrilling stroke.
All the complicated feelings he’d stirred in her from afar all these years, which she’d cobbled together and called hate because it was easier. All the need and longing inside of her she’d never understood she was saving for him.
For this.
Liliana had waited her whole life for this, for him, for Izar.
And it was even better than she’d dared imagine.
He slid his hands beneath her, lifting her hips to his, and then he increased his pace. He murmured words she didn’t understand, wrapping them in a cloak of fervent Spanish and his masterful touch.
And when that huge fist of sensation centered in the core of her, it terrified her. She didn’t think she’d survive it.
“I can’t,” she whispered—or maybe she screamed it. She couldn’t tell the difference any longer.
“I insist,” he murmured against the tender skin of her neck.
And he gave her no choice but to obey.
On his next deep thrust she broke into a thousand pieces, bright red and made of fire, falling all around them and soaring straight over the side of the world. At last.
And the last thing she remembered before she lost herself in all that sensation was the way he called out her name as he followed.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN LILIANA CAME back to herself, Izar was already up and dressed and back to standing forbiddingly in front of her windows. He’d even retrieved his mobile from beneath the bed and was typing into it, frowning faintly as he stared down at the device in his hands.
He looked...exactly the same as he looked in all those pictures she’d studied so closely. Deeply forbidding and faintly inconvenienced. Completely remote. A dark-haired, black-eyed devil with the most arrogant mouth she’d ever seen in her life. Only the fact that Liliana was naked convinced her that she hadn’t simply fallen, hit her head and imagined everything that had gone on between them over the course of this unexpected evening.
She told herself she didn’t mind that, despite the fact it had clearly happened, that she obviously hadn’t had a delusional episode, Izar had reverted to his usual chilly type. If he could have disappeared entirely and left a brutally short and brisk letter in his place, she was sure he would have.
In truth, she was surprised he hadn’t.
But getting straight back to reality was a good thing, surely. It was only a few inconvenient expectations that were gnawing at her and making this seem more fraught than it should. That was on her, she told herself sternly. She should never have allowed any sort of silly expectations to enter into...whatever this was...in the first place. Nothing on this earth mattered less than the fact she knew, now, what it was like to stand in a room with him. How he held himself, all finely honed grace and ruthless power, leashed in the finest clothes possible. How his mouth felt all over her skin. And what it was like when he thrust inside of her.
Still, there was a hollow space in her chest even as she thought these things, and rubbing it with her hand did nothing to make it feel any better.
It took her a moment to sit up, but she did. Gingerly. She could feel parts of herself she wasn’t used to feeling quite so vividly, but nothing hurt. She was wrecked and altered forever, inside and out, but no matter. At least nothing hurt. And she was like everybody else now, just as she’d always wanted. No longer the odd one out, in this at least.
Liliana told herself she was lucky. For once in her life she’d gotten exactly what she’d wanted from Izar. She should have been happy.
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