WILD MEN OF ALASKA

chapter TWELVE

Kate positioned herself near the fireplace, the fillet knife within handy reach.

Sergei entered and came to a fast stop at seeing her. He’d already taken off his winter gear but his skin was flushed with cold, his nose and cheeks red, and his hair wet from melting snow. She drank him in, and he stared at her in wonder.

“How did you get free?” His eyes narrowed and slid around the room as though looking for someone else.

She disregarded his question for one of hers. “Where the hell have you been?” It came out accusing as though she were a fish wife demanding to know where her man had been out carousing.

He tossed her backpack into the corner, and wrung his hair back from his face.

Oooh, he looked all European and sexy with his wet, black hair slicked back from the sharp bones of his face. Her heartbeat increased, and she shifted on the balls of her feet.

“Miss me, Katja?”

“Parts of you,” she muttered under her breath.

His eyebrows shot up, somehow having heard her from across the room. His gaze heated, and his chest expanded with a quick breath.

She went liquid inside.

“You’ve been vorried about me,” he stated.

“Have not.”

“How can you vorry for me vhen you vant me dead?”

“I have not been worried,” she lied. “I could care less what happened to you out there.” He advanced so quickly, she didn’t have time to respond before his chest was right up against hers. So not like her.

“How long vill you continue to lie to yourself?”

A sound of frustration escaped her at his nearness. He’d left her sexually sensitive, and the minute he’d entered the room all those unquenchable needs returned with teeth.

Hungrier.

She grabbed his head and yanked him down, capturing his lips, searing her mouth against his.

A dark and dangerous sound came from him and made her insides do funny things. Heat burned within her as she gave herself over to her desires. Her tongue dueled with his, her teeth scraping. He yanked her flush against him. Every part of him completely engaged with her. She wrapped her arms around him, wanting to embrace all there was about this man. His body, his strength, his heat.

There was no more waiting. She knew the truth. For two years this is where she’d wanted to be. Since the moment she’d woken alone in that hotel room clear across the world, she’d craved his arms around her again. His scent weaved and mixed with hers, creating something that was undeniable. She broke off the kiss and grabbed the front of his shirt, ripping it open. Buttons and flannel flew, revealing the most gloriously muscled chest. Dusted with just the right amount of hair, and defined in the way of a God, Sergei was chiseled, and strong, and touchable.

She tripped him.

He took her down to the floor with him as though expecting the move, their fall cushioned by the bear rug. His hands wrenched the shirt she’d stolen from his drawer over her head, dislodging the pencils anchoring her hair in place. He growled at seeing her bare breasts.

He flipped her over so that she was on the bottom. His eyes searching hers before his hands cupped her breasts. He sucked a hardened nipple into his mouth, and her back arched off the fur beneath her, a startled gasp escaping her.

Oh God. His rough hands were not gentle as he stripped her once again of the jeans. She struggled with the button and zipper of his, not being nearly as adept at the action as he seemed to be. He released her nipple and seemed torn between taking the other one into his mouth or stripping off his own jeans. The jeans won.

“I don’t have a condom on me,” he rasped out, his breathing choppy.

“I don’t care.”

“There is protection upstairs in bed table. Plus bed.”

Not one they could use in its present condition, and she didn’t need protection. “Why didn’t you take me up there?” The question was out before she could take it back. She didn’t want to talk. She wanted to lose herself in him. Silence these incessant needs.

“Katja.” He smoothed her hair away from her face. “I couldn’t take you tied to my bed like that.”

“Yes, you could have.” Seemed as if honesty was getting the best of her tonight.

“You vould have hated me.”

“Yes, I would have.” She flipped him over and straddled him, rising to view him beneath her, between her thighs.

He was glorious. Such a beautiful male specimen. It was her turn to finish stripping him bare. She didn’t waste any time. She wanted him. Wanted him hard and fast and thrusting inside her. Wanted the urgency back where troubling thoughts did not reside.

He reached up, his hands sliding up her back, splaying over her ribs. “How’d you get this bruise?”

“Not important.” At least, not now.

He burrowed his fingers in her hair and brought her lips to softly meet his. Her hair tumbled around them, as he reverently explored her mouth. He was getting gentle and tender, and she didn’t want that. Her hand snaked down between them and grasped his shaft and squeezed. The untamed sound that escaped him stirred tremors inside her.

He flipped her back over, tore off her underwear, grabbed her hips and positioned himself at her opening. The large tip of his penis just breaching the lips of her sex. “Tell me you vant me. That this means something to you.”

She curled her lips over her teeth, not wanting to answer him. Or hear the truth herself.

Her body wept for him. He knew it. He could feel it. Why did she need to say it too?

“Katja,” he warned, inserting himself partway.

Oh God. “This means something,” she snarled, clenching her inner muscles trying to draw him inside her. “It f*cking means something to me, okay?”

He impaled her with one hard, deep thrust.

She gasped at the forceful invasion, the sheer fullness and perfection as he lay heavy and hungry within her, undeniably part of her. He expressed a lengthy, painful groan. His eyes never left hers as he slowly retreated from her body and then advanced, taking her hips in his large hands and lifting them to receive his thrusts deeper. Again and again, and then faster and faster, until his name became a broken cry on her lips.

He pounded relentlessly into her, wringing everything from her body, until her very soul shattered with the pleasure he wrought from places she didn’t know existed.

His back arched, and his thrusts quickened, the veins in his shoulders and neck roping under his skin. His head fell back on a roar as he surged, clutched her against him, and pulsed deep within her. He stayed like that suspended for a minute as though he couldn’t take the pleasure. Tipping his head, he looked at her, his eyes dark, satisfied, and clearly not willing to give her up. Slowly he enfolded her in his arms, his body flush to hers as he tightened his grip around her.

“Katja.”

Her name was like a whispered vow on his lips that broke the chains she’d locked around her heart.