Page 9 of Wanted 2

A glint of amusement lit his eyes. “Pray tell, what should I have done?”

Take me on the kitchen table would have been nice. Or against the refrigerator. Or—

He stepped toward me then and backed me against the wall.

My breath hitched.

“Perhaps…” he rumbled, dragging the word out so long I could feel his chest vibrate. “Perhaps, I should have touched you more?”

Hell, yes. It was cruel to leave a girl on the edge like that. Especially with the gifts he obviously possessed. Yet still, under the spell of his gaze, I found myself rendered mute.

It didn’t matter. His hands slid over me once again, outlining the contour of my hips as I lifted my mouth to meet his.

His kiss was different this time. Wilder. Darker. A kiss that shared not only pleasure but volumes of unspoken pain. I felt his neediness, his desire to belong, his wants, his despair, his loneliness. I’d seen glimpses of the darkness in him before, but this time, his kiss left no doubt. In him lived a void that matched mine.

I kissed him back, letting his lips pull from me, for the first time in my life, my own brand of pleasured pain. My naked true self.

Heat sparked, heralding the pleasure to come, but this time, we’d connected on a different level. This time, I needed more than his kiss. His lips tormented me. I had to have him inside me.

As if he’d read my thoughts, his hand skimmed over my hip and up. Magically, my jeans unbuttoned—or had I done that myself?—and then, who cared how, his hands were under the waistband and hot against my flesh.

As his fingers slipped slowly down, he dropped his mouth against my neck to suck the tender flesh.

I shivered. I was so very wet. So ready. Wanting him to forgo the teasing and really touch me, I pushed up against him. Again, he read my thoughts, but then, with the way my body writhed in need, it wasn’t a particularly hard thought to read. Still, I got what I wanted. At last. His fingers teased me, circling, pinching me into a frenzy until finally, Oh Blessed Heaven, he drove them inside me at last.

I climaxed at once, and as the intense storm of waves rippled through me, I collapsed against him. And just when I thought it was over, he nipped my neck and pushed his fingers deeper inside me and I came again.

I could hardly stand as waves of pleasures crashed into me. It felt as if every bone in my body had turned to liquid.

I looked up to see him watching me intensely.

“Like an instrument,” he whispered, his fingers still teasing me.

I swallowed. If he kept playing with me like that, I’d come again. I wasn’t sure I could so quickly, without kicking off a migraine, anyway.

As before, he seemed unusually attuned to my inner thoughts, and with a last teasing movement of his fingers, he pulled out, but left me feeling branded by his touch, nonetheless.

He shifted. I could feel his hardness pressed against me, but when I reached for him, he drew back.

The next instant, he was gone, and at the same moment, his bedroom door clicked shut.

What the—

How could anyone move so fast? But then, maybe it was all a trick of the darkness. I braced myself against the wall, breathing heavily and unable to believe I’d just let the Count finger me.

What was I doing? He was my boss, not some guy I met at a bar and could forget about later. We'd definitely blurred the lines. And I still didn't even know his actual name. I winced. I’d thought looking him in the eye after a kiss was bad. Tomorrow would be much worse.

I returned to my room, a little puzzled as to why he hadn’t let me touch him. He’d wanted me. I’d felt the evidence, hard and real. With someone else, I might have even felt a little rejected at the speed with which he’d run off, but he was different.

I didn't feel stung by the rejection so much as perplexed by his resistance to what was growing between us. Was it my status as his employee that kept him at arm's length… most of the time at least? Or was there something else going on?

My body buzzed with the energy of our encounter, but I didn't feel satisfied from it. Not the way I expected. I’d thought this would offer me relief, but now, I wanted the real thing. Small wonder the parade of women had rolled with him in bed all night.

Just what would that feel like?

I padded to my mirror and stared at my reflection as I ran my fingers over the trail he’d created with his mouth.

I saw it then. A small mark. A hickey? I peered closer. It wasn’t the classical hickey, but just two little marks, tiny ones that barely broke the skin and positioned far apart, like a snake bite.

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