Road to Seduction (Kimani Romance)

by Christopher, Ann

  Nor was there any chance of their building a relationship, although it was nice of him to suggest it. Misguided, but nice. No doubt in the thrill of first lust he actually thought such a thing was possible, but it wasn’t; she knew him too well.

  How many women had come and quickly gone from his life over the years? She could probably name twenty or thirty without breaking a sweat, and those were just the ones she knew about. God knew how many more there were. None had made any impression on him, and he probably didn’t even remember all their names. He was a world-class commitment-phobe and that was fine because she knew it going in.

  And anyway, she was leaving soon for South Africa.

  And of course she was never getting married, not that that mattered.

  So, no, she wouldn’t get over him, but she could insulate herself a little by keeping her vision clear and her expectations low. They had right now, this moment, and that was all. There could never be anything more or anything else. If she gave him the expiration date for their relationship ahead of time, it would spare him the awkwardness and embarrassment of trying to get rid of her nicely, and that was the best thing for both of them. Keeping it short and sweet was the only way they could hope to preserve their friendship—and her feelings—when all was said and done. In the meantime, she had this one moment with him and she would not waste it.

  Eric cleared his throat and took a hesitant step closer. “Are you hungry? We can order room service.”

  “Yes.” The answer was automatic because she usually was hungry and was always in favor of room service, but then she realized she didn’t need food nearly as much as she needed him. “No.”

  Her knees trembling now, she took a step toward him. Eric let out a long, serrated sigh, took his hands out of the pockets of his strained shorts and eased closer.

  “Did you need a minute or two to relax or take a shower, or—”

  “No.” She managed a quick smile. “Unless you’re trying to tell me something?”

  “No.” He’d reached her now and was only a foot away, if that, close enough for her to smell the fresh, seductive scent of Oriental spices on his skin. His gaze dropped to her lips and his voice lowered to the merest hint of a whisper. “You smell good enough to eat.”

  Isabella shuddered. “I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

  One side of his mouth hitched up and he gave her a slow, heavy-lidded smile that was a seduction in itself. “We don’t have to do this, Isabella. You know that, right?”

  “Maybe you don’t, but I do.”

  Something happened to him. She could tell because his eyes rolled closed and a ripple vibrated through his big frame. Maybe it was passion or excitement, or maybe it was just that his grip on his self-control was slipping. It didn’t really matter. All she knew was that the sexiest thing she’d ever seen was Eric struggling against the power of his desire for her and losing the battle.

  “Isabella-aaa.” Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes and they were glittering, hot and unfathomable. “I’m trying to control myself, but…I’m not sure I can.”

  “I don’t want you to.” She tipped her face up, hoping he would kiss her. Touch her. Take her. The excitement and anticipation burning in her heaving chest threatened to knock her flat, and her breathing was just this side of a pant. “Do you feel like we’re stepping off a cliff?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded, looking suddenly anxious. “I feel exactly like that.”

  “Maybe we’ll crash and burn.”

  The clouds cleared from his expression, leaving only a tender half smile as he raised a hand to her face. “And maybe we’ll fly.”

  It was an easy, skimming caress that started at her temple, slid down to the throbbing pulse between her collarbones, and then around to her nape, the kind of touch that made a woman frantic to claw her clothes off and desperate to feel a man’s body atop hers. Her heavy head fell back and her last coherent thought was that she hoped she didn’t pass out and miss all the fun.

  His fingers tightened in her hair, tilting her head the way he wanted it. Stooping a little, he ran his nose up the column of her throat, soaking her in and torturing her with the hot whisper of his breath but never quite making contact, never touching his lips to her blistering skin.

  Shaken and shaking, she reached out, so desperate to feel all of him and to feel it now that she didn’t care if she whimpered or begged. “Eric, please.”

  “Shhh.” Pulling back enough to look down in her face, he linked their fingers and lowered their hands between them. “We’re going to take this nice and slow—”

  “No.” Nice and slow would kill her; she could barely manage him as it was. “No.”

  “—and I’m going to make this so good for you you’re not going to know whether you’re living or dying.”

  Isabella froze and stared with no idea what to make of this declaration, which contained none of the male arrogance or cockiness that made it the sort of empty promise every woman in America had heard at least once in her life. Looking at him, she saw only the absolute seriousness and sincerity with which he might have recited wedding vows, and losing herself in his sultry dark eyes, Isabella realized that he meant what he said. Maybe meant it more than anything else he’d ever told her.

  “Do you think we could get started on that?” Taking her time about it, she reached up to run her thumb across the plump curve of his bottom lip and was rewarded when his lids flickered and he swayed, as though he was having as much trouble staying upright as she was.

  “I think that can be arranged,” he said, and lowered his head.

  Chapter 8

  The first kiss was a taste, the barest stroke of his tongue across her mouth, a polite but insistent request for her to open and give him what he wanted. So she opened, needing him in her mouth and body, needing him hard and deep, but the second their tongues met, he slipped away and pulled back.

  She whimpered, protesting.

  He shushed her, waited until she’d calmed a little and then leaned in again for a slightly longer kiss that ended too soon when he tugged her bottom lip with his teeth.

  Trembling and mewling now, her belly fluttering, her skin burning, she surged again and tried to claim his mouth. She needed to bite, to suck, to gorge, but the more urgent she got, the more languid he became. He eased away for the third time and made a low growling sound of warning even though he looked vaguely amused.

  “Isabella.” His husky voice, chiding softly as though her writhing inability to control her body was a huge disappointment to him, had the perverse effect of driving her higher. And that was before the backs of his fingers inched down the insides of her bare arms, raising goose bumps over every inch of her skin and into her scalp. “You need to learn, don’t you?”

  This was no time for learning. Not when her body was this desperate and needy. This was a time for speed, for shimmying up his body like an islander climbing a coconut tree, and for slaking the explosive need he stoked deep in her belly.

  How could she get him to hurry? What would it take?

  Reaching down, she grabbed the bottom of his polo shirt and ripped it up and off. He let her, much to her surprise, and she laughed, feeling triumphant. Now she would feel that skin. Now she would experience the play of all those muscles under her eager fingers.

  Now, now, now.

  And she did. For ten of the most glorious seconds of her life, she ran her hands all over his quivering torso and back, and he wrapped himself around her.

  His name poured out of her mouth, unstoppable. “Eric…Eric…”

  She reveled in him. Got high on him. He was satin over living marble, heat and strength overwhelming and surrounding her until there was nothing but him, could never be anything but him and the sensations he gave her.

  “Isabella.” His mouth caught hers in the kind of deep, ruthless kiss she’d needed, and she groaned into him, tasting mints and Eric and home. Frantic now, completely outside herself, she scraped her nails over his sh
oulders, pulling him closer…closer…but then, suddenly, he jerked free and was gone.

  “No,” she said.

  Her protest had no discernable effect on Eric, to her eternal dismay. He stood there looking immensely satisfied for someone who hadn’t had an orgasm yet, so cool and aloof she wanted to smack him. A little breathless now but otherwise in perfect and complete control of his body, he watched her with gleaming eyes that held that same trace of amusement but no mercy.

  And Isabella realized that she could throw herself to the floor in a kicking, screaming tantrum and it wouldn’t matter one bit. He would not take pity on her and move at her pace. He was in charge and he wanted to make damn sure she knew it.

  She begged anyway. “Hurry, Eric. Please.”

  That faint hint of a smile gave way to his tightening jaw, and Isabella felt the power shift between them as she watched him shudder. Well. Things were suddenly looking up. Maybe he wasn’t entirely in control after all. Maybe she should try to push him beyond his limits the way he pushed her.

  Watching him from under her half-lowered lids, she reached between her heaving breasts—any second now she’d have to stop the proceedings in order to find a paper bag and hyperventilate into it—and unbuttoned the first tiny button to her blouse.

  Eric froze, his flashing gaze tracking the movement.

  “You like things slow?” Taking all the time in the world, she peeled the edges of the blouse apart to reveal the tops of her aching breasts in her lacy white bra.

  He licked his lips and took a long time to speak. “Yeah.”

  Standing on tiptoe, she brushed her bosom against his chest as she nuzzled his mouth, and this time he groaned. Cupping both sides of her face in an abrupt, jerky movement, he tried to deepen the kiss, but she was too quick for him. Pulling back, she tried to match his reproachful tone.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Eric grunted.

  In her best stripper impersonation, she undid the next couple of buttons and pulled the edges of the blouse farther apart, down to her belly. Eric stared, mesmerized, as she trailed her fingers against her collarbones to her dark aureoles, which, she very well knew, were clearly visible through the lace. She arched her back and traced slow circles around her nipples, and Eric’s eyes widened to the point of bulging. He reached for her.

  Feeling more feminine than she’d ever felt in her life, more powerful, she laughed. “Eric…I thought you wanted to go slow.”

  “Not this damn slow.”

  With no further warning, he grabbed the two halves of the blouse, ripped them apart, and popped all the remaining buttons off with one violent yank.

  Isabella gasped and stared at him in astonished silence.

  Eric didn’t notice. He looked wild as he tossed her blouse to the floor and concentrated on her breasts with the kind of intense focus with which futures traders watched the market reports.

  Isabella felt her nipples engorge to the point of pain and honey flowed for him, hot and thick, between her thighs. Her overwhelming arousal erupted as a long, earthy moan, and he glanced up at her face long enough to flash her a look that plainly said he was a starving man and she was the only thing on the menu, the only thing he needed.

  In that instant it occurred to Isabella—again—that she didn’t know him, not at all. Not one thing about this side of his personality was familiar to her, but it didn’t matter. Whoever he was, he could have anything he wanted—anything—from her.

  He was already taking it. “Enough with the slow.” Reaching behind her back, he undid the bra’s clasp with a quick flick, slid it down her arms and pitched it to the floor.

  His hands went to her wrap skirt, untied it, and sent it to the floor before going to work on his own clothes. His shorts seemed to give him a little more trouble, maybe because the zipper was so strained across his crotch he could barely budge it. Finally it gave way and he slid the shorts past his narrow hips before kicking them off.

  Straightening, he locked that gleaming gaze on her, and all of Isabella’s breath whooshed out of her lungs.

  She’d seen some sexy things in her life. Every movie with Denzel Washington in it, for instance, or the Bulls game for which she’d miraculously scored courtside seats and been close enough to see the beads of sweat trickle off Michael Jordan’s glorious chest. And of course none of her boyfriends had been that hard to look at. She appreciated men. Loved men. Desired men.

  But there were men and then there was Eric Warner. And the sight of him standing there, watching her with gleaming eyes and wearing a pair of black boxer briefs that barely contained his straining erection, was enough to send her into either immediate cardiac arrest or spontaneous combustion.

  She took an involuntary step back and held up a hand to hold him off.

  What a fool she’d been to think she was ready.

  She licked her dry lips. “Eric—”

  But Eric was talking, not listening. “I can’t go slow.” With the speed of a lion springing out of a crouch and onto an unsuspecting gazelle, he grabbed her under the arms and yanked her closer. His hands, rough and excruciatingly wonderful, ran over her breasts, palming her nipples, circling and kneading.

  “What are you trying to do, Izzy? Hiding a body like this from me for seventeen years? Did you think I’d let you get away with that?”

  Did he think she could think right now, much less answer?

  Panting and heading straight into hyperventilation territory—next stop: emergency room—she clung to his hard shoulders and back and tried to survive this onslaught. “Why didn’t you notice me? Why didn’t you ever look?”

  “I’m looking now. What’s this?” Isabella’s skimpy white panties seemed to be the new focal point of his attention. He stared down at the scrap of lace even as his fingers dug into her hips and his thumbs traced the indentation of her belly button. “Huh?”

  Isabella babbled something incoherent.

  “What’s this?”

  In another dizzying burst of movement, he slipped his fingers under the satin ribbons on each of her hips and pulled. The panties came free and rubbed her swollen sex as he pulled them out from between her thighs. The unbearable friction had her crying out again, but he didn’t seem to notice or care as he waved the wet underwear in her face.

  “Wearing panties like this right under my nose for all these years? What are you trying to do to me?”

  “I—I’m not—”

  But he was already onto her next transgression against him. His long fingers slid down her trembling stomach, scratched across the black thatch of hair, and then delved into the hot river that flowed and flowed, all for him. An approving croon rumbled in his throat.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were this wet?”

  Ripples began deep in her belly and Isabella cried out, swooning a little. When she swayed, he hooked his free arm around her and held tight.

  “I need to know, Izzy.” Resting his forehead against hers, he eased two fingers inside her body and made a purring sound deep in his chest. Isabella teetered at the crest of a cataclysm, waiting for it to crash over her and praying for survival when it did. “Do you always get this wet?”

  “I don’t…I don’t…I don’t know,” she lied.

  Eric swore. He withdrew his magical fingers and rested them just half an inch or so from the spot where she needed them to be, leaving her undulating, moaning and bereft.

  “Are you about to come?”

  She nodded frantically.

  “No, you’re not. You’re going to wait.”

  “I need you,” she whispered.

  Her begging seemed to be beneath his notice, or maybe it was that he was so focused on driving her wild that he was incapable of hearing her. Those fingers crept a little closer to her core and his voice lowered to a mesmerizing murmur that was as irresistible as it was seductive.

  “Do you always get this wet, Isabella? Tell me.”

  His would-be casual tone didn’t fool her f
or a minute, not when that primitive light still shone so brightly in his dark eyes, but the force of his will compelled her to answer. They’d be standing here until the cows came home and went back out again if she didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear—what he already knew—and she just didn’t have the strength to outwait him.

  “No.”

  “Don’t lie,” he warned.

  “I’m not lying,” she said, desperation making her voice shake.

  This reassurance seemed to have no effect because he continued with the relentless questions. “What about Joe, Izzy?” He gently scratched his nails over her clitoris and her weak knees buckled. “Are you thinking of him now?”

  “No!”

  “No? You don’t want him back?”

  “I only want you,” she gasped. “Only you, only you.”

  “Only me?” He smiled with immense satisfaction and rewarded her with an exquisite stroke of his wet fingers over her core. Delicious spasms rippled through her belly. “That’s good.”

  Good? Not from where she was standing, but now was not the time to worry about his mastery of her body. Sagging with relief—maybe now he would let her come—she raised her lips to his.

  He took immediate advantage and kissed her, long and deep, and then, while she was distracted with the taste of him, slid the hand that was holding her down the cleft between the two globes of her butt.

  Those fingers—oh, those amazing fingers—worked on her from behind now, sliding back and forth and finding hidden spots of pleasure she’d never dreamed existed.

  She cried out, bowing her tense body, as frustrated as she was aroused.

  “What’s wrong, Izzy?” Looking deceptively puzzled and innocent now, he licked her lips again. “Is there something you need?”

  Yeah, she needed to smack the smug smile right off his face. She needed to punish him for ruining her like this, for making her ridiculous with the strength of her lust for him.