Dark Alpha (ALPHA 2) (13 page)

“And the rest?”

“Because…you’re just...you’re
too
much, Lucien.” She gave a sigh of resignation as she looked down at his chest. “I can’t think straight when I’m with you. And then when...when you touch me, I can’t think at all.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“A very bad thing,” she nodded exasperatedly as she looked up at him in the dimmed interior of the car. “What happened that evening at the restaurant, and again in your apartment last week,” heated color warmed her cheeks just talking about that, “that was all because of you, no one else. I really don’t do this.”

“This?”

“Whatever it is that happens between the two of us every time we’re alone together.”

“Desire? Want? Need?”

“All of those things, yes,” she nodded. “And I don’t like the feeling. I don’t...I just don’t like feeling so out of control.”

“And you think that I do?” he scorned.

“I don’t
know
what you think about anything, that’s another part of the problem.” She looked at him appealingly.

“Don’t you think spending more time with me might take care of some of that?”

“I would think that might depend on what we were doing during the time we spent together.” She sighed. “Look, I just want you to realize, to know, that I’m not
that
woman. I don’t have wild flings with men who are richer than God. And I certainly don’t like this feeling of losing control, all sense of myself, whenever I’m with you.”

“And I didn’t like losing control with you last week. Nor do I pursue women in the way that I’ve pursued you tonight,” he bit out harshly. “That isn’t my style at all, and I don’t like it any more than you do.”

Lucien
had
pursued her tonight, Nicky accepted. Maybe he had done it in his usual arrogant style, with demands rather than requests, but he had still come after her.

She gave a shake of her head. “Then maybe we should just stop this right now? Both just walk away—”
 

“That’s no longer an option, Nicky,” Lucien stated hardly as his arms tightened about her. “I let you walk away months ago, and again last week—”
 

“You
asked
me to leave last week,” she protested. “Actually, you threw me out,” she added accusingly.

His nostrils flared, his jaw tight. “What happened that night—it was—” He gave an impatient shake of his head. “I didn’t want you to go. I just—I lost control that night. I hurt you.”

“I told you that you didn’t...” The only thing that had hurt Nicky that night had been Lucien’s cold rejection of her afterwards. A rejection he now seemed to be implying, as Chrissie had suggested might be the case, that had been for her own good, as much as his...

“I lost control,” he insisted.

“So did I, Lucien.” She reached out tentatively to touch his rigidly clenched jaw. “So did I,” she assured him softly.

He turned his head with a groan as he placed a kiss in the palm of her hand. “It’s never happened to me before.”

“I won’t break if it happens again, Lucien.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t. I’m really not that fragile.”

He breathed raggedly. “Be sure, Nicky. Because once I take you, I don’t know when—or if—I’ll be able to stop.”

Was Nicky sure she wanted this? To be taken by Lucien, in that raw and primal way that drove her out of her mind?

Oh yes, she was sure. Very sure.

Lucien may be the most mercurial and difficult man she had ever known, but even so, being with him far outweighed the misery, the bleakness, of not seeing him at all.

She held his gaze as she slowly and invitingly leaned towards him.

Lucien’s mouth hesitated a hair’s breadth away from taking hers. “I was tested last month, and there’s been no one else since.”

Nicky laughed softly. “I haven’t been with anyone since I was twenty.”

“Twenty?” He looked stunned.

“Twenty,” Nicky confirmed ruefully.

“Do you use contraception?”

Her brows rose mockingly. “Don’t you even try telling me you didn’t come fully prepared this evening, because I won’t believe you!”

“Then I won’t try telling you that,” he murmured before he finally closed that minute gap between them and his mouth claimed hers.

Nicky gave a groan of need as she eagerly met the passion, the hunger, behind that kiss.

Knowing Lucien was right, and that staying away from each other was no longer an option.

For either of them.

The next few minutes were frenzied, mouths hungrily devouring, while their hands roamed restlessly, desperately in need of closer contact.

Lucien continued those devouring kisses as he quickly divested Nicky of her jacket before helping her out of her jeans, and then quickly pushing her sweater up and out of the way so that he could unfasten her bra, freeing her breasts so that he could cup and squeeze them.

Nicky was just as desperate for that touch of bared flesh, tugging Lucien forward so that she could help him out of his evening jacket, before removing his bowtie and impatiently unfastening his shirt, longing, aching to touch the heated flesh beneath.

Their kisses were wild now, biting, sucking, devouring, their desire for each other out of control as they had both known it would be.

Nicky heard Lucien draw in a hissing breath as she now scraped her fingernails across the muscled contours of his chest, lingering on the hard buds in the center of bronzed pennies.

She moved restlessly against the hardness of his erection as it pressed against her through the barrier of her panties and his trousers, wanting closer contact,
needing
it. Needing Lucien. Inside her, taking her, pleasuring her,
claiming
her.

“These need to come off,” she managed to gasp between kisses as she sat back slightly so that she could unfasten Lucien’s trousers.

She stilled as the streetlights outside allowed her to see that the tattoos she had seen the previous week did run the full length of his arms and across his chest. Black swirls of intricate and beautiful ink.
Sexy
black swirls of ink, that seemed to confirm that ‘bad boy’ past Lucien had admitted to.

“These are gorgeous,” she murmured as she traced the pattern of those swirls with her fingertips. “Why—”

“Not now, Nicky!” Lucien could hear his own harsh breathing in the otherwise silence of the car. “I don’t—I need you to touch me. Now!” He knew he was on the edge of exploding, knew he was going to release in his boxers, if he didn’t get inside Nicky very soon.

He heard her give a throaty and satisfied chuckle as her hands moved to unfasten and unzip his trousers, that chuckle turning to a groan of approval as she scooted back on his thighs so that she could look at his long and hard cock as it finally sprang free of its confinement.

“God, Lucien!” she gasped weakly even as her fingers reached out to touch him.

Lucien groaned, his head falling back against the leather seat, allowing him to watch between narrowed lids as the heat of Nicky’s hand encircled and then began to stroke the pulsing, aching length of his cock.

Her skin looked so pale against his, her touch delicate as the soft pad of her thumb now stroked and spread the escaping liquid from the slit at the bulbous tip. “Taste it,” Lucien encouraged hoarsely.

She glanced up at him quickly before looking down again as she slowly raised her hand to her mouth, lips parting as she sucked her thumb inside.

Lucien almost came right then and there as Nicky groaned her enjoyment, her lids half closing as she licked every last taste of him from her thumb.

“Not yet, Nicky.” Lucien grasped her elbows to prevent her from slipping down between his parted thighs, her intent obvious. If she wrapped those delicious lips about his cock, took him into the heat of her mouth, Lucien knew that would be the end of him; a couple of thrusts and he would be coming down her throat.

“Why not?” She tilted her head at him. “You know you want me to.”

Want
her to? Lucien could hear his own panting breaths at the mere thought of Nicky taking him into her mouth, sucking his cock, swirling the heat of her tongue over him as her hand stroked and pumped him.

He wanted that so badly his cock was jerking and leaking in anticipation.

There were so many other things he wanted to do with and to this woman too, so many ways in which he wanted to enjoy her, and have her enjoy him. But not now, not in the back of his car, and not when his control was balanced on a knife’s edge.

And not when he hadn’t had the chance to pleasure her first.

The barrier of her panties was still between them, but Lucien dealt with them in the same way he had in his apartment the previous week: a quick tug and he had ripped the delicate fabric from her body.

“I’ll buy you a dozen new pairs,” he promised roughly as Nicky’s eyes widened. “Right now I just need my cock pressed against your bare heat.”

Lucien held her firmly in place, with his hands on her hips to prevent her from taking him inside her, as he began to slide his cock along the length of those bared and plump wet folds. Groaning as he felt the way his cock was becoming wetter and wetter, her juices flowing copiously as he continued to rub the hardness of his cock against her swollen clit.

It was a form of self-torture when he had no intention of being inside her yet; his teeth were clenched together, jaw tight as he continued those measured slow and agonizingly sensitive thrusts against her, wanting the pleasure to last for as long as Nicky could take it.

He ignored the demands of his own body in favor of looking at the flushed beauty of Nicky’s face, enjoyed hearing the way her breathing hitched, and then quickened to low and panting gasps as she began to move more quickly and demandingly against him, the color of her eyes deepening almost to black as the pleasure increased from this harder friction against her swollen and pulsing clit.

Lucien growled his satisfaction as he watched her body arch, breasts thrusting forward, nipples pebble hard, as she rapidly approached her climax.

After this past agonizingly frustrating week, Lucien wanted that. He wanted to watch, to savor Nicky as she came, to look into her face as she fell apart in his arms—

“We’ve almost reached the Wynter Enterprises building, Lucien.”

The sound of that disembodied voice echoing around in the back of the limo had the same effect on Nicky as a glass of ice-cold water being thrown in her face, bringing her back to the stark reality of exactly where she was, whom she was with, and what she was doing.

Chapter 8

She had completely forgotten, in the frantic heat of their lovemaking, that both the driver and Dair Grayson were seated in the front of the limo. That, despite the closed privacy glass between the front and back of the vehicle, they may even both be able to see that she was naked in the back of the car, and that Lucien was almost so.

Seconds ago she had even been about to go down on her knees and—

“Stay exactly where you are,” Lucien growled, one of his arms tightening about Nicky’s back as he realized she was about to move off his thighs. He held her firmly as he used his other hand to press the intercom button on the door panel. “Keep driving—” He broke off with a scowl as Nicky gave a frantic shake of her head, her cheeks on fire with embarrassment as Lucien looked at her searchingly before pressing the intercom button a second time. “Garage entrance,” he instructed harshly. “Both of you stay in the car when we get there,” he added hardly. “And I won’t be needing you anymore tonight, Dair.”

“But—”

“Stay in the damned car, Dair!” he repeated firmly before wrapping both of his arms about Nicky as she still struggled to free herself with the obvious intention of moving to the seat next to him. “And you will stay exactly where you are too, damn it,” he rasped.

Reality had come back with a vengeance, as far as Nicky was concerned, causing her to tremble and shake as she realized how nearly she and Lucien had actually made love in the back of his car.

Except what had happened between the two of them just now had been too frantic, too heated, too
wild,
to be called anything as tame as lovemaking.

They had been hungry for each other, biting, scratching, throwing off their clothes, both of them seeming desperate to crawl into each other’s skin, both needing that deep physical connection.

Possibly because most of their verbal exchanges ended with one or both of them walking away.

That was surely still no excuse for allowing things to go so far between them in the back of Lucien’s car.

But she hadn’t
allowed
anything; Lucien was here, she was here, and after the past ten days of not seeing him, of worrying all day what his reaction was going to be to her not meeting him for dinner this evening, and the fact that he had come to her, that she had even managed to get him to say ‘please’, was it any wonder she had forgotten everything else but the pleasure of being with him again?

To the point that she was now completely naked with him in the back of his car.

Humiliation and embarrassment didn’t even begin to cover how Nicky felt right now.