Dreaming Of... Bali: The Man to Be Reckoned With / Nine Month Countdown / Harry St Clair: Rogue or Doctor?

“No, it’s not simple.” There was a roughness to his voice, an edge, a desperate sense of being tightly leashed. As if he was forcing himself to laugh instead of...something else.

Her hand clasped in his. Long fingers with blunt nails and hers, slender and pink tipped, coiled around his.

“It takes years to defeat that kind of conditioning, years to conquer that fear. Doesn’t take much to trigger it back either.” He sounded strained, almost resigned. He squeezed her arm and Riya caught the sigh that rose to her lips.

How did he understand her so well?

“How about you start with small steps, butterfly?”

She smiled and nodded, the scent of his cologne drifting over her. And the huge chasm that she couldn’t cross toward living her life suddenly didn’t feel so daunting.

In the shifting confusion of her own emotions and thoughts, he was constant, her awareness of him sharp and unwavering.

Nathan, who had brought so much upheaval into her life, felt like an anchor. All he lived for was the thrill, the fun, the moment. Who better to show her what she’d been missing? Who better to show her what it meant to be daring, to be wild, to grab life by the horns and shake it? Who better to start on her path to living than a man who would never affect her in any other way?

With Nathan, there would be no expectations, no disappointments. When it was time to leave, he would, and this fact had nothing to do with her. Therein lay her safety net.

A sharp hunger bursting inside her, Riya slid her fingers toward the nape of his neck. Pressed her mouth to the pulse flickering on his throat. “Is a kiss a small enough step, Nate?”

Instantly he stiffened beneath her. His fingers landed on her jaw, pushed her face away from his neck in a gentle but firm grip. Desire was a relentless peal in her, as if her pulse had moved just from some points to all over her body.

Fear and safety were taboo. Daring and living were her words of the moment.

She clasped his wrist with her hand and laid kisses against the inside of it. His palm was rough and warm, and as she pressed her lips again to the center of it, she felt the rightness of it.

“Tonight’s going to be your lucky night,” she said, her throat working to get the words out. She had to brazen it out, didn’t want him to know how huge this was for her.

A sharp grip at the nape of her neck caused her to look at him. “My lucky night?” he said.

He looked as if his face were carved from pure stone, his blue eyes molten with desire. There was no frost, no ice tonight.

Nathan was all fire and passion, and she wanted that fire; she wanted to lose herself in him. “Don’t make promises you might not be able to keep, butterfly.”

Straightening in his lap, she pushed into his touch, determined to have this. “It’s okay if you’re not up to it, Nate. No one wants to be a pity f—”

His fingers tightened their grip in her hair. His breath landed on her mouth, until there was nothing to do but breathe the same air as him. “You’re doing this for the wrong reasons, Riya.”

Feeling gloriously alive, she bent and kissed a spot just beside his mouth. The bristle on his jaw rubbed against her mouth. Heat spread everywhere, incinerating a need she had never known. So she did it again. And again. Like a cat rubbing herself against her favorite surface. Until her lips, her cheeks, her chin stung in the most delicious way, scraping against the roughness of his jaw. Until he made a feral sound that in turn scraped against her very senses.

And her desire went from a risk, a dare, to need for him. Only for Nathan.

Finally her mouth landed at the corner of his luscious mouth. And she spoke the words against his lips, felt a shudder vibrate in his lean frame. Reveled that she could do this to him.

He was like a fortress of leashed desire around her.

“I’m doing this for the only reason that it should be done for.”

“And that is?” he whispered back against her mouth, and Riya ached. Ached to feel that mouth everywhere, ached to lose herself.

“That it feels so good, Nate.” She moved, to get closer to him, and felt the hard evidence of his arousal against her thigh. “From the minute you stepped into my life, this...it’s like a fever.” She pulled his hand and pressed it to her chest. “And in all the lies and confusion, this is the one thing that’s unwavering. Make love to me, Nate. I want to do all the things that I told myself I didn’t feel.”

She didn’t wait for him to deny her. She just jumped off the ledge, hoping he would catch her. Kissed him with everything she had in her.

* * *

When her lush mouth touched his, it was all Nathan could do to pull in a breath. There was no hesitation, no doubt in the way she pressed little kisses over the edge of his lips, over his chin, over his lips, her breath coming in little pants all around him, her scent filling his nose, her fingers scraping against his scalp, holding him in place for her pleasure.

No one had ever quite so thoroughly seduced him. No one had even come close.

She was an explosion. She was a revelation. And under her honest, raw hunger he came undone. No amount of honor could compete with the liquid longing coursing through him, could puncture the desire to return her kiss, to give her what she wanted. And to allow himself what he had been craving.

When she stroked his lower lip with her tongue, tentative but still powerfully maddening, he was done being a passive participant.

Clasping her jaw, he sucked her lower lip with his teeth and she shuddered. Gasped into his mouth.

And they were sucking, nipping, their teeth scraping, their tongues licking with a searing hunger that brought the world down to only them. Pasts and futures were forgotten, only the present mattered.

Panting, he moved away from the temptation of her mouth. Sank his hands into her hair and tugged at the lustrous locks until she was looking at him.

Golden skin flushed, pink mouth swollen, beautiful brown eyes dazed with desire and daring, she looked at him without blinking, without hiding. Pushed into his touch. She was inexperienced; her kisses told him as much. But the sensuality of the woman, the way she responded, so hot and fiery. This was a battle he’d already lost.

But this was a defeat he welcomed.

When she thought of him, he wanted her to do so with a smile and a sigh of pleasure.

He leaned forward and dug his teeth into her lower lip. A gasp fell from her mouth and he blew softly over the trembling lip. “This means nothing to me except that I want you with a madness that knows no reason.” He could leave no doubt in her mind. And if she wanted to stop, he was going to head straight for a cold shower. But he couldn’t take a chance on risking her emotions. “I’ll leave when it’s time, butterfly. And if you want to stop this, do it now. We’ll forget about it. You can take the bed and I’ll take the couch.”

Her gaze flickered to him, a shadow in it. And then she smiled. Her gorgeous, perfect, dazzling smile. “Falling in love, risking my emotions, it’s never going to be easy for me. And with you...I could never fall for you. We’re really the worst kind of person for each other, aren’t we? But that’s what makes this easy, that makes one night with you everything I want it to be.”

Her honesty stung him, but he slashed the feeling away.

One night to satisfy this craving, desperate need for each other. That was all they could afford of each other.

Pulling her arm to his mouth, he kissed her wrist, licked the vein flickering there. Kissed a path upward, all the glorious skin warm to his touch.

Her soft tremble, her gasp as he reached the crook of her neck swept him away hard. “Shall I shock you and tell you all the different ways I’ve imagined having you?”

He licked the pulse there, sucked on her skin. She shivered, sank her hands into his hair. Shuddered, writhed, but he didn’t let go. He continued until she was panting, moving restlessly in his arms, rubbing her breasts against his chest. He was rock hard, her volatile response tightening his own need, fraying his control.

He fisted his hands, fighting the urge to push her dress up, to drag her on top of him and thrust up into her wet heat.

Sweat beaded on his brow. And that couldn’t be borne. He would enjoy this; he would drown himself in the scent of her, but his control couldn’t falter.

It was all about release, all about his body. As long as he kept it to that, as long as he didn’t think about what this might have meant to her, to him in a different world, beyond tonight, it was good.

Laughing, she tugged her hair away from her shoulder and looked down at herself. A blush spread upward from her neck as she ran a pink-tipped finger over the blemish. A soft pant fell from her mouth, and it was the most erotic sound he’d ever heard.

There was innocence in it and there was a raw hunger in it. For more. He had been right. She had repressed so many things, and that flicker of undisguised hunger now, of playful curiosity, turned him inside out.