He meant to say yes, or rather hell, yes, but what came out was a deep rumble, a sound he’d never heard himself make before. A sudden, thick heat coursed along his nerves, more like being dipped in lava than shocked. He pushed into her hand, loved the way she pushed back, handling him damn near as roughly as he’d handle himself. He crowded right up against her, using his body to wall her in, pushing beyond the boundaries of male and into possessive, territorial, dominant, half expecting her to slip away, put space between them, reestablish some goddamn rules.
Instead she brought her open mouth to the pulse pounding at the base of his neck, and licked it. Then she nuzzled into the hollow of his throat, and for the life of him, he couldn’t get the image of a lioness out of his mind. Surrendering, but with just enough fang and claw to remind the lion to give respect where it was due.
“I really want to get my hand around your cock,” she said.
He was way too close for that. Someday he’d let her go to town with her hands and mouth, but not tonight. This was too raw, too hot, too unexpected to waste on anything less than full contact sex.
“Bed. Now,” he said, and stepped back, out of her reach.
“No, no,” she said.
“What?” he said, instantly alert. “No” meant all kinds of things. It meant Stop right this goddamn instant; it meant Don’t fucking stop; it meant Stop doing that and do this instead. She was staring at him, back to the wall, eyes wide and shocked and so vulnerable it made his heart stop. “No what, Rose?”
She lifted her hands in front of her chest, the fingers spread wide. “I need,” she started, then stopped. She patted her upper chest, the tendons in her hands standing out from the strain of reaching for something. “I need you … against me.”
Oh, fucking Christ. She was vibrating with tension, shaking with need, a multifaceted trembling that stopped when he used the strength in his legs and hips to trap her against the wall. Her eyes fluttered closed, and the sound that came out of her mouth went straight to his back brain.
He kissed her again, thrusting his tongue into her mouth with the same hard rhythm as his hips ground against hers. Her hands slapped at his shoulders once, twice, until he grabbed her wrists and pinned them behind her back with one hand, then clamped his other arm around her waist and lifted her right off her feet.
Keeping her immobilized, he knelt on the bed and bore her backward, a Hollywood move he couldn’t have performed if he’d stopped to think about it first. But then they were on the bed, his hips between her thighs, his hand loosely holding her wrists. But she was thoroughly pinned, her legs spread, her body arched into his.
He transferred the hand not occupied with restraining her to her hair, fingers sliding deep into the shining strands to hold her mouth for his kiss, rested the full weight of his torso on hers, and kissed her until she was gasping, pleading, grinding her sex against his erect cock. When he couldn’t take it any longer, he leaned over the edge of the bed to rummage in his duffle and come up with a condom package. Then he tugged down her elastic waist leggings, shoved her shirt and bra to her collarbones, and put his hands to his zipper.
He didn’t bother to take off his pants, just opened them enough for his cock to drop thick and heavy into his hand. He palmed it once, just to take the edge off, and then rolled the condom down his shaft. Rose lay on the bed, bared and spread for him, a hot, dazed look in her eyes as she stared at his hands. Then, as he gathered up her unresisting wrists and pinned them beside her head, he aligned his shaft with her entrance. She was so slick, so hot, that the head slipped in before he even thought to make that move. Muscles tightened to bone as she gasped and clenched in on herself, and hissed with pain.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said, but he didn’t pull out, didn’t lift his body from hers. In some distant, civilized part of his brain, he knew he should do exactly that, but her hot, tight nipples bored into his chest, and every nerve in his body rang like a fire alarm. “Jesus, Rose. Fuck. You’re tight.”
“You’re big,” she gasped back. “God. Just … hold on a second, okay?”
“Okay. Sure,” he said, ready to promise whatever he had to promise to stay right where he was. He closed his eyes and focused on the maddening heat, the delicious pressure enveloping just the head of his cock. Nothing more. He could feel the delicate muscles of her sheath quivering, then giving way, welcoming rather than resisting. He slid in another inch, and she tensed again, more, he guessed, in anticipation of pain than from pain itself. So he kept going, gliding deeper, until she’d taken everything he had.
Her eyes opened, staring up at him. “That’s it?” she asked shakily.
“That’s it,” he promised, and was startled to hear a rough tremor in his own voice. There were a million questions to ask her, none of them his business in any way, shape, or form. Like why she was near-feral in her desire, and as tight as a virgin. Or why she—