Riptide (20 page)

Her emotions had nowhere to go, and his stiff-armed stance—his control when she couldn’t corral her own—infuriated her. No matter how she shifted to get out of his way, how she tried to get close enough to his body to maim him, she couldn’t budge that impersonal hand on her forehead. She sank her nails into his strong wrist. That didn’t move him. She tried kicking, but her toe just missed.

Already exhausted beyond her ability to get a grip on her emotions, Bria only kept trying to grab him, hit him, kick him. She needed, she needed …

His eyes measured her, his reach keeping her at arm’s length. She gave a hoarse cry of anger and frustration. “You make me furious!”

The idea didn’t seem to bother him any, as he said calmly, “I see that.”

Bria dropped her arms, then stood there panting, her forehead braced by Nick’s palm, tears stinging behind her lids. It was all he needed. In a lightning-fast move, he grabbed her around the waist, hauled her tightly back against his chest and carried her across the large gym.

Even more enraged at the assault, Bria fought him every step of the way. “Put me down! Damn it, Nick, I’m warning you—”

She dug her nails into the steel band of his forearm, which was cutting off her breathing and holding her immobile against the solid, implacable wall of his chest. She was helpless, and she
hated it
. Tears of fury ran down her cheeks and into her mouth.

Crying made her even madder.

He kicked open a door, and she shot out her foot, wedging it against the doorjamb to prevent him from hauling her inside. Logic, reason, just barely managed to find a place inside her head. “Whatever you have in min—”

He twisted his body, wrenching her sideways so her foot lost contact with the frame, and carried her, kicking and screaming, into the dark room. A wedge of light streamed through from the gym, but she wasn’t looking at the freaking
décor
as he hauled her inside.

“Whatever it is! I won’t do it!”
Whatever it is.
“Do you hear me? I. Will. Not. Do—”

He kicked the door closed with a loud thud, leaving them in complete, disorienting darkness.

No amount of writhing and bucking dislodged his firm grip around her waist. He carried her like a— Like a bag of
cat food!
“Let me g—”

The sudden sound of rushing water surrounding them cut her off as if it were a gunshot. He was going to force her under an ice-cold shower to calm her down?
As if
. Bria got a new surge of mad, and fought harder.

Without warning, she was dropped to her feet and swung around. “Stop manhandling m— Oomph!” Unsettled, her back met a cool, wet wall, and her teeth snapped together between one word and the next.

His mouth came down, finding hers unerringly in the pitch blackness.

Chapter 11

Despite the dark, a red mist swam before Nick’s eyes and his whole body seemed to expand as he blindly pressed Bria back against the wall of the steam shower. The enveloping heat released the hot, ripe peach scent of her; the same damn scent that had filled his brain all day, taunted his libido, and teased his own dormant temper.

This fiery Italian princess drove him bat-shit crazy, and Nick wanted her more than his cool, rational, Scorpio brain could handle. It was all too fucking much. The Moroccans, the Greeks, the diamonds, and the killers. Her. The wanting and not taking. The needing and not having.

The playing it safe and sticking to a game plan. Only he’d never planned on
her
.

“You have two seconds to tell me no,” he told her, barely recognizing the thickness of his own voice. “After that, all bets are off.” He’d thought sensory deprivation might calm her down. He’d had no idea how it would do the exact opposite to him.

Well, fuck—

Yeah. Well,
fuck
.

He wanted to rip off her shorts and have her right there, right then, standing against the wall of the steam room. Instead he kissed her as he’d been itching to do all day, while he waited for her answer. His tongue flicked against hers, and when he deepened the kiss because—Christ, how could he not?—her lips clung. Her nails not so gently scored his chest as she shifted against his imprisoned erection.

He used his teeth and his tongue on her mouth, and he skimmed his hand up under her skimpy tank top. Her skin was hot, damp and impossibly soft as he cupped the plump mound of her breast and rubbed his thumb over the hard peak through the thin wet lace of her bra. She moaned.

“One,” Nick rasped, his voice hoarse.

“That’s what you think,” Bria said fiercely. She combed her fingers through his hair. She kissed him back, fiery and ferocious, giving no quarter and expecting none in return. Her response detonated a bomb inside his chest, making his heart thud and his dick so hard it hurt to breathe. Fuck it, he didn’t need to breathe.

“No, Princess.” Nick curved his palm around her damp breast, shoving the lace cup of her bra aside so he could feel the soft weight, the satin skin in his palm. The hard pebble of her nipple pressed into the center of his hand. And when he pinched it between his fingers she flung her head back gasping for air. “That’s what I know.”

The sweet smell of steam didn’t mask the heady fragrance of her arousal. The muscles in her neck flexed as she swallowed. “You can count until you turn blue in the face, Cutter. I don’t like being told what to do. By anyone,” she snapped, even as she shuddered against him.

Nick kissed her sweaty throat, her jaw. He took his hand out from under her shirt to yank the clingy, damp fabric over her head, then unerringly found the front clasp of her bra and freed her breasts.

He wanted to see her naked, but Jesus—feeling her half naked in the darkness was almost more than he could bear. “I can’t stand hysterical women,” he shot back. Pressing her breasts together. He feasted on one taut nipple and then the other. She tasted of salted peach.

The soft, sexy sound she made low in her throat was breathlessly needy. She arched her back, pressing herself to his mouth. Everything male in him responded to her feminine cry.

His body radiated heat, perspiration ran off his skin and sheened hers, so that their bodies were all but glued together. Worked for him. His teeth found an interesting cord on her throat, which made her wriggle and arch against him as he bit down around it.

“You forgot to count,” she gasped triumphantly.

Nick hadn’t forgotten. “Two,” he said tightly, and she moaned as if he’d done more than just seal the next few minutes. Hours. Hell, it wouldn’t be nearly enough.

“You make me absolutely
furious
,” she whispered roughly, her nails scoring his back.

“I know what I make you. Hot and bothered.” His voice wasn’t as cool as he wanted. He rocked against her, skimmed his hand around to the waistband of her shorts. Found the button, slid down the zipper. He remembered what her thong had felt like earlier, bits of ribbon and sheer nothing—God.

“Oh, please!” She bit his lower lip. “Don’t.” Licked the sting, then bit harder. Then punctuated each word with a stinging bite wherever her mouth could reach. “Flatter. Yourself. I. Just Spent. An hour running flat-out! I am
not
attract—”

He slid his hand into the V of her open shorts, felt the delicate fabric of her thong, and the soft nest of curls hidden beneath the thin barrier. He pushed the thong aside and touched her humid heat. Soft, slick, responsive.

Bria pulled her sharp teeth away from his shoulder to hum deep in her throat. After several seconds of frozen anticipation, her hand slid down, and her questing fingers found his zipper. It took awhile to release him; he was painfully rigid, making liberation difficult for both of them.

She was as wet as he was hard.

“Liar,” he said, smiling against her mouth, then kissed her hard again. Like him, she didn’t wait to shove his shorts down and off. She pushed her hand into the available space. Her fingers closed around him, and Nick jerked with intense pleasure. Need, lust,
want
gnawed at his nerve endings like teasing licks of flame.

“I am not helpless.”

“Thought never crossed my mind.” He slid his fingers into her wet mound, and in response her slender hand wrapped around him, gripped even tighter as she gasped and arched.

It was as good an invite as he could’ve hoped. He teased his way inside the damp seam, slick with her juices. Nick’s thumb glided over her clit, finding the places that made her shudder and whimper.

“Two-second warning’s up,” he said from between clenched teeth, her busy fingers driving him to mindless distraction.

He felt the start of her climax ripple as her internal muscles clenched around his fingers. Her orgasm shuddered through her, around his fingers, filled the steamy air with her musky fragrance as she arched off the wall, pressing against his hand, her sharp white teeth clamped down on his chest.

Her fire fueled his ice-melt. Need clawed at him as steam swirled invisible ghostly fingers around them.

“You don’t play fair,” Bria panted, already half gone on a second orgasm. He slid another, then a third finger inside her tight sheath, and her body clamped on, holding him there where she needed him. He used his thumb and brought her to another hard and fast climax.

It pissed him off that he wanted her so much that he’d lost control somewhere along the way. Everything she did ratcheted that need and made his lack of control worse. “Who says I’m playing?”

This might take the gnawing edge off, but it would never be enough to satisfy the lust that intensified every time he touched her, hell, every time he looked at her.

He licked her salted-peach throat, then nibbled across her jaw as he shoved down his shorts and boxers one-handed, kicked them away. Then he tackled what was left of Bria’s clothing, yanking down her shorts with one hand and bringing her to another small climax with the other.

“More,” she demanded, sliding both hands around his waist, curving her palms over his flexing ass, and digging in her nails to pull him closer.

*   *   *

“More what?”

Water pounded tile, sending up droplets of warm spray against her ultrasensitive skin. Not that Bria could see where the water was coming from, surrounded as she was by steamy blackness. Nick’s large, hard, very naked body pinned her against the wall, his breath hot at her ear. “More what, Princess?”

She could barely manage a shuddering, “Mmm.”

“More of this?” He ran his teeth not so gently down the arch of her throat. “Or this?” He flexed his fingers inside her.

From the cleft of her body, where his fingers moved, to her very soul—the next climax rolled through her like a tidal wave.

“Yes,”
she panted, unable to catch her breath. Not letting go of the firm globes of his ass, she used a little pressure from her extended arm to hold his hand more firmly against her where she needed more than his damned fingers.

He was torturing her with his attention to detail, when she needed it hard and fast and
now,
damn it.

Closing her eyes was the trick to finding her balance in the onslaught of sensory overload. The forced darkness made everything more intense. And her heart was pounding so hard with anticipation she barely heard the driving pulse of the water.

His teeth raked across her lower lip, then bit. Before she could figure out if that’d hurt or not, his tongue swept inside her mouth, and for several minutes he kissed her with bruising force. Her heart skittered, not with fear, but with unbridled lust. She whimpered, a harsh sound of need, and her arms tightened around his waist. Her fingers flexed on the hard muscles of his ass.

His penis was a hard, urgent length against her thigh, and she tried to shift her hips and legs to accommodate him.

He didn’t comply. No matter how she shifted and twisted, he focused only on kissing her—drugging, incendiary kisses that chased every rational thought clear out of her brain and left it as dark as the room they were in.

Only when she was gasping for breath, a low moan caught in her throat, did he lift his head, leaving her lips wet and throbbing. Wanting more. “Did you think your temper would turn me off, Princess?” His words were cool. Ironic.

Infuriating
.

“Don’t—”
Call me princess
. She swallowed the words before they escaped, even knowing that from him, it was a derogatory term. And right then she needed something less combative. Less angry. All Nick. She tried for reason, even though rational thoughts seemed light-years out of her reach. “I lose my temper sometimes.” The taut muscles she was holding flexed enticingly. “It wasn’t personal.”

He pushed an inch away from her to run a string of burning kisses down the middle of her throat. “I think you’re wrong. I think it was
very
personal.” His voice vibrated against her skin as his open mouth moved down her arched throat. His cool silky hair tickled her collarbone as his lips skimmed the upper swell of her breast. “I think you had your little meltdown to hold me at arm’s length because I wouldn’t accept your charming offer.” She sucked in a breath to argue, only to lose it on a strangled sound as he added, “Which bruised your ego.”

“I didn’t—!”

His lips closed over her nipple, and she jerked in response. Bria’s hands fell away from his behind and skated up his sides—he shuddered—up his chest—he jerked—and slid over his shoulders. He sucked the hard point of her nipple into the hot cavern of his mouth and swept his tongue over the puckered peak.

Bria grabbed his hair, her fingers fisting in the strands. Her back arched away from the wall as he used his teeth to score a shuddering reaction from her that coursed through her body with liquid heat.

“Talk about ego,” she managed. She had to pause to drag in a shuddery draft of steamy air as his thumb found her clitoris and his fingers went impossibly deeper. She stood on her toes to lessen the impact.

It didn’t help. Not at all. “I d-didn’t make any offers.” It came out less sure as she tugged at his hair to relieve some of the unbearably exquisite sensation on her breast. He licked and kissed and brushed his evening beard against her hypersensitive breast, molding it, shaping it to his hand like a master sculptor.