“One.” She bit out the admission, hating him, hating herself. And yet still as determined to go through with this as she was filled with that terrible, gnawing ache that she worried might consume her alive. Do it for Lenz, she ordered herself. “There was only one and it—”
He waited, his eyes intent and demanding on hers, and she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t tell this sleek, sensual, unapologetically carnal creature about that fumble in the dark, the shock of searing pain and then the unpleasant fullness that followed. That vulnerable, exposed feeling. She’d been seventeen. It had taken all of three unremarkable minutes in a bedroom at a party she shouldn’t have gone to in the first place, and then he’d bragged to the whole school that the Righetti girl was as much of a whore as suspected.
“And?” Pato prompted her.
“It was mercifully brief.”
“I feel seduced already,” he said drily. “What a tempting picture you paint. How can I possibly resist the sacrificial near-virgin who wishes to prostrate herself in my bed for my brother’s benefit? I’ve never been so aroused.”
Each dry, sardonic word, delivered in that deliberately stinging way of his, made Adriana’s fists tighten where she held the wrap around her. She felt that flush of heat that told her she was getting redder, broadcasting the fact he was getting to her. She felt that twist in her gut and still, that ache below. This was a disaster.
But you have to do it. You’ll never be able to live with yourself if you don’t. This might be the only opportunity you ever have to do something good with all this notoriety...
“Then teach me,” she exclaimed, cutting him off before he could continue ripping her to shreds one sardonic word at a time.
For a moment, Pato only looked at her.
And then he closed the distance between them, reaching out to spear his hands into the wild tangle of her hair, making her go up slightly on her toes and brace her hands against the hot, hard planes of his chest or fall completely against him. Her wrap floated to the floor between them, and she forgot it as he held her face still, keeping her captive, a mere breath away from his beautiful mouth.
She heard a sharp, high sound, some kind of gasp, and realized only belatedly that she’d made it. The echo of it made her tremble, or perhaps that was the wildfire in his eyes.
“Teach me everything,” she whispered, spurred on by some dark thing inside her she hardly recognized. But she saw the way his eyes flared, and the ache inside her bloomed in immediate response.
His mouth was so close to hers, his face dark and dangerous, that lethal fire in his gaze. And yet he only held her there, taut and breathless, while sensation after sensation shook through her. Towering flames in her throat, her breasts, her belly. That shocking brightness between her legs.
Her lips parted slightly, and she recognized it as the invitation it was. His gaze dropped to her mouth, hungry and hard, and she felt her nipples pull tight. Nothing existed but that pulse of heat that drummed in her, louder and wilder—
And then he dragged his gaze back to hers and let her go.
She caught herself before she staggered backward, but she was shaky, unbalanced, and for some reason felt as if she might burst into tears. She couldn’t seem to form the words she needed, and his eyes darkened because, of course, he knew that, too. He’d done this to her deliberately.
“You can’t handle me, Adriana,” Pato growled. “Look at you. I’ve barely touched you and you’re coming apart.”
That dark thing inside of her roared through her, making her bold. Making her stark, raving mad. But she couldn’t hold it in check. She couldn’t stop.
She didn’t want to stop, and she didn’t want to think about why.
“It looks like you’re the one who’s coming apart, Your Royal Highness,” she hissed. Taunting him. Poking at him, and she knew it. She wanted it—she wanted him—and the obvious truth of that was like another explosion, bathing her in a white-hot heat. Adriana had no choice then but to keep talking despite the way he looked at her. “Maybe your reputation is all lies and misdirection. Maybe the truth is you can’t handle me.”
When he laughed then, it was darker than what was inside her, darker and far wilder, and it connected to that ache in her, hard. So hard she stopped breathing.
And then he moved.
His arms came around her and his hands slid over her bottom with an easy command, as if he’d touched her a thousand times before and just as carnally, slipping directly into her panties and pausing to test her curves, her flesh, against the heat of his palms. She made a wild sort of sound, but as she did he hauled her to him and lifted her against him, pulling her legs around his waist even as her back hit the wall behind her.
The room seemed to spin around, but that was only Pato, pressing her to the wall of his chest and the wall at her back, molding his hips to hers, the hardest part of him flush against her. Skin. Heat. Fires within fires, and she was afraid she was already burned to a crisp. Everything hurt—but was eased by the heat of him, only to hurt again. And again.
She expected an explosion. A detonation. Something to match that searing blaze in his gaze, the drum of anticipation beneath her skin, that hunger between her legs that he was only making worse. Her eyes were glazed and wide, and she could feel him everywhere. That perfect, lean body pressed against her, into her, so powerful and male, holding her steady so far from the ground.
His hands moved over her skin, leaving trails of fire in his wake. He traced the curve of her breasts, teased the hard tips with his thumbs until she moaned. He moved his hips, rocking against her, making her breath come in desperate pants even as her core ignited into a glorious, molten ache that she never wanted to end, that she wasn’t sure she’d survive.
Adriana couldn’t think. She could only hold on to his broad, hard shoulders and surrender to the dark exultation that roared in her, that made her try to get closer to him, that made her think she might die if she couldn’t taste him. That made her want things she’d only read about before. That made her want everything.
He leaned in close, so close that when his wicked mouth curved again, she felt it against her own lips, and it made her shake against him, the small moan escaping her before she could stop it.
“Let me see if I can handle this,” he mocked her.
“I don’t think you can,” she heard herself say. “Or you already would have.”
As if she was as wanton as he was, and as unashamed. As if she knew what she was demanding.
That smile of his deepened, torturing her. Delighting her.
And then, slowly and deliberately, with one hand on her bottom to move her against him in a sinuous rhythm that made her feel weak, the other at her jaw to hold her where he wanted her, Pato took his own sweet time and licked his way into her mouth.
Ruining her, Adriana thought while the world disappeared, forever.
* * *
He never should have tasted her.
That it was a terrible mistake was a certainty, but Adriana clung to him like honey, melting and hot, tasting like sugar and fire with her lithe body wrapped all around him. Pato couldn’t stop himself. For a heady moment—his mouth angled over hers, tasting her again and again and again—he even forgot why he should.
This was supposed to be a lesson to her. A way to decidedly call her bluff, nothing more.
And yet he wanted to take her where they stood, pressed up against the wall, thrusting into the heat of her he could feel scalding him through the thin layers that barely separated them. She was so soft. So responsive.
Perfect.
But