Midnight Alpha (17 page)

“Then take me,” Gregori encouraged roughly.

She looked into his eyes, her gaze meeting and holding his as she lifted up to hold and guide his cock inside her. Her teeth bit down into her bottom lip as the swollen head of his cock first breached her slick heat, muscles contracting, squeezing as her channel adjusted to his wide girth.

Gregori groaned low in his throat as she continued to slowly take him until he was buried inside her to the hilt. “Take off your sweater and bra and let me suck your nipples!”

Her hair was a wild tangle, face flushed, and those nipples standing out like ripe, succulent berries by the time Gaia removed her clothes.

Gregori licked his lips just thinking about sucking and biting them. “Let me watch you play with them for a while first,” he rasped heatedly. “Make them even bigger for me, Gaia. Stroke them. Squeeze them— That’s it,” he encouraged hoarsely as she did as he asked. “Now pinch them. Yes, just like that. Now keep pinching them until they’re so sore you cry out. Pull on them. Make them longer, bigger, redder!” he instructed as he began to thrust slowly and shallowly into the heat of her sheath.

He couldn’t take his eyes off those slender fingers pulling and elongating her nipples until they were the color of raspberries, and just as fat and juicy.
 

“You like that,” he encouraged with satisfaction as she groaned and writhed with pleasure.

“Yes!” she choked. “Yes, damn you!” she sobbed.

“Pull them hard, Gaia. Harder!” he ordered through gritted teeth as the heat of her channel now clenched in the same rhythm as she pulled on her nipples. “Ask me to fuck you, Gaia.”

“No—”

“I’m not moving until you do!” He stilled, cock pulsing but no longer moving.

Her eyes glittered gold as she glared at him. “I can’t. I can’t, damn it!”

“Yes-you-can!” His jaw was clenched, every muscle and sinew of his body tense with the need to thrust, to claim.

“I can’t— Oh God, fuck me, Gregori! Please fuck me! Harder!” she cried out brokenly as fierce, undulating, undeniable waves of pleasure washed over and through her as she came.

His hands moved to grasp the bare cheeks of her bottom, fingers digging into that tender flesh as he finally began to thrust fiercely up inside her, at the same time as his chin nudged one of her hands aside and he drew one of those red and swollen nipples into the moist heat of his mouth and suckled hard.

Gaia cried out as she came again, the fierce contractions of her channel squeezing him tightly.

Gregori bit down on that nipple, prolonging her orgasm as his balls tightened and the hot rush of his cum boiled along the length of his cock to explode in an endless hot release.

He cursed himself for the bastard he undoubtedly was as Gaia lay sobbing against his shoulder.

He was out of control.

It was no excuse that his desire for this woman was ripping him apart, stripping him of every vestige of civilized behavior, until he became that barbarian she had accused him of being. Causing him to feel things, do things, demand things of her he had never asked of any other woman.

It was no fucking excuse
for what he had just done. For what he had made Gaia do.

He wasn’t a man ruled by his emotions, and yet with Gaia he became nothing but emotion. Want. Desire. Need.
Burning
need.
Reckless
desire.

“I think you may have just ruined me for anyone else,” she sighed with satisfaction as she settled more comfortably against his shoulder.

Gregori pulled back slightly to look down at her. Her face was flushed and her eyes a bright gold as she looked back at him, her lips full and swollen. She looked exhausted, her hair damp on her forehead. But more than that she looked satiated and happy.

“I hurt you.” He frowned. “I made you hurt yourself.”

“You wrecked me,” she corrected huskily. “Not the same thing at all. That was really hot. Gregori?” She sat up to look at him as he made no reply, and whatever she saw on his face made her frown. “Gregori, a little rough, consensual lovemaking between two adults isn’t wrong.” She smiled slightly. “Remember how I tormented and teased you this morning?”

Oh yes, Gregori remembered the torment of this morning all too clearly.

“Although I should point out it’s going to cause me some discomfort to wear the dress you had delivered,” she added self-derisively.

Gregori couldn’t think of what she meant for a moment, but then he remembered that the figure-hugging gown dipped at the front as well as the back, which meant she would have to dispense with wearing a bra. Which also meant the front of the gown was going to rub continuously against the soreness of her bare and abused nipples.

“Ah.” He nodded. “Would you like me to kiss them better?”

“No,” she chuckled huskily. “What I would really like you to do is tell me how we’re going to…disengage, without making a colossal mess over your very expensive suit!”

Was it any wonder Gregori admired this woman as well as liked her? She was intriguing. A combination of a generous and adventurous lover, but with an underlying contradiction of self-consciousness.

Anyone looking at the two of them would have said they were totally different. Too different, perhaps.

And yet underneath, where it mattered, they were the same. Two people who’d grown up too soon, with too many responsibilities, with no choice but to carry on as best they could.

There was also this burning, explosive desire between them that raged out of control every time the two of them were alone together.

Gregori may have thought he was claiming her a few minutes ago, but he now realized that Gaia had also claimed him.

His semi-hard cock was still inside her, and it gave an answering twitch of interest, telling him that he could all too quickly become rock hard again. Except he was sure, no matter how much she might have enjoyed their lovemaking, that Gaia must be sore, inside as well as out.

He really had turned into some Neanderthal caveman, Gregori realized self-disgustedly.

“I have no idea what you’re thinking about so intensely that it’s making you scowl, Gregori,” she now drawled teasingly, “but whatever it is, it isn’t giving us an answer to our present problem.”

Perhaps that was because Gregori was trying to deal with the issue of his need to possess this woman. With the desire between them that was so deep and so strong it went off like an incendiary device at the least provocation, chipping away and melting the ice about his emotions.

Much more of this and Gaia really would only have to crook her little finger at him to lead him about by his constantly aroused cock!

Talking of which…

“Gregori…?” Gaia looked up at him doubtfully as she felt him once again hardening and lengthening inside her, stretching her already sensitized channel.

“I’ll be gentle this time, Gaia,” he promised hoarsely, eyes dark and glittering as his hands squeezed the globes of her bottom. “I just… I need… Please.”

It was that please that undid her.

She had no idea what Gregori’s favorite color was. What foods he preferred. What he cared about apart from his business and his sister. What side of the bed he liked to sleep on.

These were all things the glossy magazines said a woman ought to know about a man before allowing her emotions to become engaged.

And it was all nonsense.

Gregori really had wrecked her just now—had ruined her for any other man as he gave her everything she had never known she wanted—and by doing so he had totally ripped away the barriers she had built about her own heart.

He got to her, touched her, connected to her in a place she had allowed no other man to go. And it was as if by doing so he
knew
her. That he actually saw the soft and vulnerable Gaia behind the smart mouth. No man had ever seen that Gaia before. No man had ever
wanted
to see that Gaia before.

This man, Gregori Markovic, who on the surface appeared so cold and distant, saw into her very soul, to her deepest, darkest fantasies, and rather than being shocked or repelled by them, he
fulfilled
them. What happened between the two of them tonight had been wild and rough, and she would probably be sore for days—and she had loved every wild, rough,
erotic
moment of it.

She met his questioning gaze without flinching. “Yes.”

There was none of that frantic need, that desire to claim and be claimed, to their lovemaking this time. Instead Gregori rested his forehead against hers, their gazes locked, as he rocked gently inside her, the pleasure building slowly, exquisitely, and once again touching places inside Gaia no one else had ever reached.

Their release, when it came, happened at exactly the same moment, and it was the most intensely intimate moment of Gaia’s entire life. A meeting of souls rather than just bodies.

And in that moment Gaia completely saw the man behind the cool and controlled mask. She
knew
him. Not just Gregori, but his aloneness. An intense loneliness that was always with him. A painful loneliness that set him apart, always apart from those around him.

She saw because Gregori allowed her to.

In the same way that Gaia allowed him to see her.

The moment passed, of course.

It had to.

It was too raw, too intimate, too intense to continue.

The shutters came down in Gregori’s eyes first as he looked away and at something behind her. “Napkin,” he bit out abruptly.

Gaia closed her eyes briefly, willing herself to take her cue from him and let the moment go. To return, if necessary, to their conversation from before they made love a second time.

She knew, with startling clarity that was the way she would always think of this evening—as before and after the most intense and physically intimate moment of her life.

Before, when she had only guessed about the passionate and sensitive man Gregori was behind the cool mask. After, when she knew he existed. That deep inside him was a man whose soul cried out in the darkness.

Just as Gaia’s did.

Their raw and primal passion followed by that achingly emotional lovemaking had forever changed her.

Because of this complex and self-contained man who had let her inside, if only for that short, illuminating time.

Gaia knew she would forever keep that gift, cherish it close to her heart, no matter what became of them in future…

Chapter 12

“I thought the idea was to keep Gaia Miller hidden away until we know if she has any involvement in what’s going on here?” Nikolai scowled darkly as the two men waited in the sitting room for Gaia to come downstairs. She’d gone to her bedroom a few minutes ago to change so that she could accompany Gregori to Utopia
.

“It was.” He nodded, knowing that when it came to Gaia he was no longer able to think logically or objectively.

Especially when he was still inwardly shaken by that…that… What the hell had that been between them the second time they made love?

Nothing like that had ever happened to him before, Gregori was certain of that.

It had been as if a door had briefly opened inside him, showing him the things he wanted, craved,
hungered for,
before he’d had to forcibly close it again. Physical hunger and emotional connection weren’t for men like him. They couldn’t be. That sort of vulnerability could be exploited. By men like Ivan Orlov.

Which meant this had to stop now.

Whatever this was.

“You said you haven’t found any connection between Gaia and Ivan?”

“I haven’t found any proof there isn’t one either,” the other man pointed out impatiently.

Gregori shrugged. “So for the moment we’ll go with believing there isn’t.”

Nikolai scowled. “I’m not sure—”

“I have decided, Nikolai,” he interrupted evenly and softly, using a tone of voice, The Markovic voice, he had never used towards the other man before tonight.

Nikolai drew in a deep breath. “Okay.” He nodded abruptly.

Gregori felt himself relax as he arched a mocking brow. “Surely you trust your own security measures, Nikolai?”

The other man gave him a censorious glance. “I trust my own men implicitly.”

He eyed the other man curiously. “But not Dair’s?”

“I don’t know any of them well enough to trust or distrust them, and this guy Lijah—”

“You’ve met him before, in Venice five months ago.”

Nikolai nodded. “And I can’t access any personal details on him at all.”

Gregori gave a rueful smile. “Which means you tried.”

“Hell, yes, of course I tried! Just because he works for and is a friend of your brother-in-law doesn’t mean I have the same trust in him.” Nikolai moved restlessly. “There’s no information on Lijah Smith. He doesn’t exist.”

“Not as Lijah Smith, no,” Gregori conceded quietly.

The other man frowned. “But as someone else?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“Who he is isn’t important, Nikolai,” Gregori dismissed briskly. “As long as he does his job, which he will, that is all either of us needs to know about him.”