She turned her head sideways, trying to get a look at him.
A strip of color darkened his cheeks. Silence enveloped them as he ran the pad of his thumb over the butterfly tattoo, up and down, sending little sparks of need shooting through to the aching, wet spot between her legs, making her weak-kneed.
She licked her lips. She hated herself for asking, for wanting his approval but did it, anyway. “Don’t you like tattoos?”
Alexander looked up as Olivia’s tentative voice penetrated the red haze clouding his mind. A surge of emotion washed through him and he took a deep breath, trying to fight it down, to clamp down. To no avail. He ran his thumb over the alluring tattoo again, despising himself for the possessiveness that settled in his gut, jealousy an acidic taste on his tongue. “It’s very sensuous,” he murmured, clearing his throat.
A smile tugged the corners of his mouth. Her chin tilted at a defiant angle, her eyes blazing. “Meaning what exactly?”
“Meaning it suits you perfectly, Olivia,” he repeated, uncaring that a harsh note entered his tone. But then, it was the first time he was experiencing something so irrational, so elemental that he had no idea how to react to it. His reaction was petty, beneath him. Yet the fact that another man would have seen the tattoo, another man would have kissed the alluring flesh let loose a beast inside him.
Things he had no right to ask, things he shouldn’t even want to know, gnawed at him. The women he’d dated had been intelligent, successful women who had no qualms about their sex life. Yet he had never felt this curious about their pasts, this irrational jealousy over men they had shared their bodies with. This was what she did to him, what she evoked in him, things no confident, decent man would think. She reduced him into nothing.
Olivia didn’t know what had changed but something had and not for the good. A hardness entered Alexander’s gaze, transforming the tenor of the very air around them into something dark. “If you don’t like—”
Her words were lost in her gasp as he plundered her mouth again. She moaned against his mouth and he swooped in, flicking her tongue with his, tasting and exploring every inch of her mouth until they were both moaning with ragged need, until she had no idea where he began and where she ended. Sliding between her parted lips, he stroked her to ecstasy with his tongue, darting in and out of her mouth, an erotic act in itself and she clenched her hands on his shoulders, her nails digging into his skin. He was using every skill at his disposal to drive her crazy.
He moved his free hand to the curls between her legs. But she wanted control this time, even if it lasted only a few minutes.
She pushed his hand away and in a quick movement, surprised him until he lay on his back. There was only so much she could endure in his wicked hands. With a laugh, he folded his arms beneath his head. A dark flush highlighted his cheekbones as she laid her hand on his erection.
She wrapped her hand around it and moved it slightly, loving the velvety feel of him. His shoulders and neck rigid with tension, he groaned. “Tell me what you were thinking just now,” she whispered, bending a little lower, her mouth an inch from the velvety tip of his erection.
When he didn’t answer, she flicked her tongue over the erect tip. His abdomen under her hand hardened into a steel wall under immense pressure. Tension radiated from his every pore, the corded veins in his neck pulsing with life. “Is it simply that you don’t care for body art?”
He shook his head.
She smiled, pleased with his answer. Her mouth wide-open, she took him into her mouth ever so slowly. A fierce rush of wetness gathered between her legs at his guttural moan. His hands crawled into hair. She pulled her mouth from him, licking every inch of the tight skin. “Do you not care for butterflies, then?”
He cursed as she blew at the soft head. “I have nothing against butterflies.”
His words sounded far away, hoarse, drugged. She wrapped her hand around his erection again and moved it from base to the tip. A drop of moisture appeared at the rigid tip and she licked her lips in anticipation.
Their gazes collided, raw need mirrored in his. “Damn it, Liv. Take me into your mouth again.”
His words were a command fueled by raw need, need that set something inside her on a fire. She licked the bead of moisture at the tip and moaned. He hardened a little more, if that was possible. “Give me something, Alexander, anything,” she said, uncaring that her words were fueled by something far deeper than raw lust. And he knew it, because his mouth tightened into a line.