“I never said I didn’t want you,” he growled down at her.
Pato felt unhinged and unpredictable, capable of anything. Especially a mistake of this magnitude—but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. Adriana still smelled of jasmine and her eyes were that rich, deep brown, and he didn’t have it in him to fight off this madness any longer.
“Not that I want to revisit the most humiliating morning of my life,” she said from between her teeth, “but you did. If not in words, then in actions. And don’t misunderstand me, I’m grateful. I wasn’t myself.”
“The question on the table that morning was not whether or not I wanted you.” He moved even closer, watching in satisfaction as her pretty eyes widened with a shock of awareness he felt like hands on his skin. “The question was whether or not I wanted to sleep with you knowing full well you planned to shut your eyes and imagine Lenz in my place. They’re not quite the same thing.”
She paled, then burst into that bright red blush that Pato found intoxicating. He liked her cheeks rosy, her cool exterior cracked and all her masks useless, the truth of her emotions laid bare before him.
“What does it matter?” Her voice was barely a whisper. “It didn’t happen. Crisis averted. There’s no need to talk about it now.”
“I told you I wouldn’t forget,” he said, intent and hungry, “and I haven’t. I remember the noises you made in the back of your throat when I kissed you, when you rubbed against me like silk, hot and—”
“Please!” Her voice was low. Uncertain. “Stop.”
“What do you want, Adriana? That’s tonight’s question.”
He leaned in closer, so he could hear the tiny hitch in her breath, and so he could find the pulse in her neck that was drumming madly, giving her away, and tease it with his tongue.
She whispered something that came out more a moan, and he smiled against the delicate column of her throat. Her skin smelled of his favorite flowers and her hair smelled of holidays in the sun, and he wanted to be deep inside her more than he wanted his next breath.
“And when I talk about want, I don’t mean something tame,” he said, a growl against the side of her neck, directly into her satiny skin, so he could feel her tremble against his lips. “I mean hunger. Undeniable, unquenchable hunger. Not because you’re drunk. Not because you want to martyr yourself to your great unrequited love. Hunger, Adriana. What do you want? What are you hungry for?”
“Please...” she whispered, desperation thick in her voice. She was right there on the edge, right where he wanted her. He could feel it. He felt it flood through him, dark and thrilling and scorchingly hot.
“I don’t think you love him, Adriana,” he told her then, and she let out a small sound of distress. “Not really. I know you’re not hungry for him. Not like this.”
She trembled. She shook. But she didn’t argue.
“I asked you a question,” he urged her, his mouth at her jaw. “If it helps, I already know the answer. All you have to do is admit it.”
ADRIANA’S BREATH CAME out like a sigh. A release.
Like surrender, Pato thought, satisfaction moving through him like another kind of need, dark and demanding, like all the ways he wanted her.
“I thought it would help your brother’s reputation,” she said almost too softly, her eyes bright with heat. “I really did.”
He nipped at her jaw, and she shivered.
“But I never would have suggested—” She broke off, bit her lip in agitation, then tried again. “I mean, I wouldn’t have thought of it if I didn’t—”
Pato waited, but she only pulled in a ragged breath, then another. She could hardly sit still. She was flushed hot, shining with the same need he felt pulling at him. Coming apart, right there in the chair, and he’d hardly touched her.
She was going to be the end of him. He knew it.
He couldn’t wait.
“Say it,” he ordered her. “If you didn’t...?”
He felt her give in to it before he saw it, a shift in that tension that tightened the air between them. And then her shoulders lowered, she let out a long breath, and what stormed in him then felt like much, much more than simple victory.
“If I didn’t want you,” she admitted hoarsely.
Pato kissed her, hard and long and deep, his fingers spearing into her sleek chignon and sending pins scattering to the floor.
And she met him, the feel of her mouth beneath his again—at last—like a revelation.
He couldn’t get enough of her taste. He angled his jaw for a better fit and it got hotter, wilder, and then he thought he might explode when he felt her hands running along his arms, trailing over his chest, making him wish he could remove all the layers of his formal clothes simply by wishing them away.
He wanted her mindless. Now. He wanted her falling apart in his arms, lost to this passion that might very well destroy them both. He wanted to claim her.
Pato broke away from the glory of her mouth and sank to his knees before her, making room for himself between her legs. She made a small, dazed sort of sound. He grinned at her, then simply pulled her hips toward him, pushing her skirt up toward her waist and out of his way as he positioned her at the edge of her seat.
He ran his palms up her smooth, satiny thighs, grinning wider as she bit back a moan. He sank his hands underneath her, grasping her perfect bottom and ducking lower, arranging her so that her legs fell over his shoulders and hung down his back. Then he tilted her hips toward him.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, slumped down in her chair with her skirt around her waist and that delectable flush heating her face, making her dark chocolate eyes melt and shine as they met his.
She was delicious and shivering and his. All his, at last.
God help them both.
“Hold on,” Pato advised her, hardly recognizing his own voice, so stark with desire was it. So focused. “You’ll need it.”
He lifted her to him, smiling at the pretty scrap of blue lace that covered the sweet heat of her, and then he leaned forward to suck her into his mouth.
* * *
The shock of his mouth against the very center of her need took Adriana’s breath, so that the scream she let out sounded only inside her, ricocheting like a bullet against glass and shattering whatever it touched.
The heat. The fire. The terrible, wonderful ache.
His wicked, talented mouth, so hot and demanding, pressed against the tiny layer of lace that separated them. His hard shoulders felt massive and the fabric of his jacket rough against the tender skin behind her knees. His clever hands gripped her and held her fast, and his impossibly beautiful face was between her thighs so that all she could see when she looked down was that thick, wild hair of his, sunshine and chocolate and that delicious bit too long, and her own hands fisted in the mass of it as if they’d gone there of their own accord.
She thought she’d died. She wanted to die. She didn’t know how anyone could take this much pleasure, this much scalding heat, and live through it—
And then he made a low noise of male pleasure, shoved her thong out of his way and licked deep into her molten core.