“We can’t do this,” she said against his mouth. “We shouldn’t!”
“I know.” His hands clenched her waist and he suddenly lifted her up. Jodie clung to his shoulders as he wrapped her bare legs around his lean waist. She saw the raw passion in his dark eyes as he carried her to his room.
The overhead lights blazed in the master bedroom. She only caught a glimpse of the stark and modern decor before he tossed her onto his bed. The mattress was wide and low to the ground. She barely noticed the cool white sheets against her back before he tumbled on top of her. He reached for her hands, lacing his fingers with hers, and stretched her arms above her head.
She twisted underneath him. “You’re going to regret this,” she warned.
“You are to blame,” he decided as he burrowed his face against her neck.
She stiffened. “Me?”
He let go of her hands and palmed her breasts. His touch was urgent and demanding. “You can’t tolerate the idea of being invisible,” he muttered as if he were in a trance.
She arched her spine as his hands rubbed her sensitive nipples. “Shut up.” She shouldn’t have made that confession to him.
“You used to wear the most provocative clothes at home.” His voice thickened and his words began to slur as he slid his hands against her rib cage. “The boldest colors. Anything that would capture my attention. My imagination.”
Her face burned hot. It was true. Had she been that obvious years ago? And she had fallen in the same pattern tonight without recognizing it. Jodie shouldn’t have taunted him but she wanted him to notice her. Claim her. She had always needed to be the center of his attention. To be the most important person in his life.
But she couldn’t be. She was everything he didn’t want in a woman. In a wife.
“You had me in agony for years,” he confessed as he shoved the hem of her slip above her hips. “When you walked into a room, I had to leave.”
Her hands clenched the pillow beneath her head. What was he saying? She couldn’t concentrate when he stared at her with such intensity.
He bunched the silk in his hands and revealed her abdomen. He bent down and pressed his mouth against her clenching stomach. His warm breath wafted over her skin and she shivered. “If we were at the dinner table, I had to sit where I couldn’t see you.”
Her chest rose and fell as he tore the slip off her body. She was splayed out before him. His for the taking. She writhed under his touch, the anticipation overwhelming.
“I found no reprieve,” he continued as he took her breast into his mouth.
Jodie tossed her head from side to side as he teased her unmercifully with his tongue. Just when she didn’t think she could take it anymore, Stergios bit down on her tight nipple. She cried out as the fiery sensations scorched through her veins.
“You were everywhere,” he whispered before he laved his tongue against her tender flesh. “In my home, in my dreams.”
He reached for her other breast and pinched her nipple. Jodie arched her spine, her feet digging into the mattress, as he took her to the edge of pleasure and pain.
“But I couldn’t have you. I wouldn’t allow it. I knew I wouldn’t be gentle or careful if I touched you.” He paused. “I was right.”
“I don’t want you to be gentle,” she insisted in a gasp. She wanted him to be reckless. She didn’t want Stergios to hide any part of himself.
Savage need stretched his golden skin against his sharp cheekbones. “Good,” he said in a growl. “Because I can’t. Not with you.”
Stergios rose from the bed and yanked off his shirt. She sat up and reached for him. She wasn’t going to be gentle, either. Jodie pressed her mouth against his V-cut abs and licked his heated skin. She smiled, the sense of power hurtling through her, as his muscles bunched under her touch.
She grasped the zipper of his jeans and dragged the rest of his clothes down his powerful thighs. He looked like a pagan god, his jaw clenched, eyes glittering with lust, as he speared his hands in her hair.
Staring at the glorious male body in front of her, she reverently encircled her fingers against his throbbing erection. He was hot and powerful under her touch. Jodie licked the tip and hummed with appreciation before she covered him with her lips.
She tasted him with a building hunger and he encouraged her in a husky, strained voice. Jodie heard him mumble something about her red lips as she pleasured him. When she drew him deep inside her mouth, Stergios’s ragged breath echoed in the bedroom. She gripped him hard when he swelled against her tongue.
Stergios grasped her jaw and stopped her before carefully pulling away. Panic filled her chest. Why was he stopping? Why did he have to come to his senses when she was aching for him? “Wait,” she pleaded.