A store appeared in front of them, deserted now, long after business hours. “My friend owns this store. She’s given me a key and the code for the alarm. I just leave the inventory slip for her and she charges it to my account.” Her voice was husky, sexy, a blatant invitation. “We can go in and find a few necessary things for Skyler.” Her hand was shaking as she turned the key in the lock.
Gabriel watched her intently with his black velvet eyes as she punched in the code for the alarm system. The store was dark, deserted. The silence was broken only by their ragged breathing. She turned to him, her hand brushing his face. Her hand found his hair unerringly, fingers tunneling in the thick strands.
A soft sound escaped his throat. “Francesca, you have to stop before there is no going back for us. I am no angel as you often persist in thinking me. I can read every thought in your mind and what you are doing to my body is nothing less than a sin.” His thumbs stroked caresses over her jaw, traced the outline of her lips.
“Really?” Her hands tugged at his shirt until it was free from his trousers. Immediately her palms slid over his bare chest, her fingers splayed wide to take in as much of his skin as she could. She traced every defined muscle, aching for him. “I’ve always thought sinning might be an interesting experience.” There was invitation in her voice. Blatant seduction.
His hands bunched in her hair, drew her head back so that his glittering eyes raked her face. “I
hunger
for you, Francesca,
hunger.
You cannot touch me with your mind and your body and not expect me to react. It is like a raw craving in my bloodstream and I know it is there for all time. Do you know how many times I dreamed of you? How many times I woke in the night alone without you?”
“I did the same,” she said softly, her eyes meeting his steadily. She did not flinch away from the concentration of sheer passion gathered in his gaze. “Gabriel—” She whispered his name, leaning forward to press her lips against his chest. Her mouth swirled heat over his pulse. “You talk too much when I need action.” She lifted her head so that her dark eyes laughed at him. “You do action, don’t you? My clothes are heavy and troublesome,” she added as she leaned forward to flick his flat nipple with her tongue. She stood on her toes to press her swelling breasts tightly against his chest.
Gabriel couldn’t bear even the thinnest of materials separating their bodies. He pushed her blouse from her shoulders, tossing it aside in the heat of the moment. His palms slid gently over her bare flesh, tracing the delicate line of her bones, the curve of her breasts. His breath escaped his lungs in a long rush as he cupped the soft weight in his hands, his thumbs stroking her nipples.
The store was silent, mannequins staring blankly through the racks of clothes. Gabriel drew her deeper into the interior of the room, away from the windows, into the shadows where they would have privacy from anyone walking along the street. The heat and hunger of the Carpathian mating ritual was upon him, brought on by his lifemate’s erotic thoughts. She was beautiful, inside and out. It was exciting and arousing to know that she wanted him so badly, that she knew exactly what she wanted and would demand it of him.
Her lifemate. Francesca reveled in her right to touch his body, to be able to bring him to a firestorm of need so that he burned for her in the same way she burned for him. His touch on her bare skin was torment and pleasure. When he slowly bent his dark head to find her breast with the heat of his moist mouth, she trembled with an urgency she had never known before. Her fingers crushed his hair, holding him to her. “It’s almost too much feeling, Gabriel. I don’t know if I can take it.”
His hands were shaping her body, pushing aside her clothes while his palms and fingers lingered and savored, stroked and caressed. “Yes you can, you were made for this,” he whispered softly. He bent his head lower to lick her flat stomach. “You were made for me.” Easily he lifted her to the top of the counter, seating her on the edge. “You were made for long nights, Francesca, long lazy nights of making love.” His hands caressed her thighs, and he pressed his palm to her hot wet core, smiled when her body clenched and she shuddered with pleasure. His head dipped lower so that his silken hair brushed her sensitive thighs and a soft moan escaped her throat.
Francesca cried out at the first touch of his warm breath, the first lap of his tongue.
“Do you know what you taste like?”
He asked the question softly, intimately, in her mind. His voice scorched the inside of her mind as his tongue was scorching the core of her body. She could feel her body winding tighter and tighter, pleasure building in force and intensity so that the release rushed over her with such power she could only clutch his hair as wave after wave swamped her.
“Gabriel.” She said his name, breathed his name, drew the masculine scent of him into her lungs.
“Gabriel.”
“We are just getting started, beautiful one,” he answered softly, raising his head to smile at her.
He was so handsome, so perfect for her, Francesca could feel tears burning in her throat. There in the night, the night that called to something wild in them, he looked at her with eyes burning with desire. Hot. Urgent. Demanding. She had waited so long for his eyes to look at her like that.
And then he was driving sanity from her mind, replacing it with frenzied passion. Francesca could think of nothing but having his body buried deep within hers. Once more his palm pushed against her sensitive core, and then he slowly inserted his finger, all the time watching her face, watching the pleasure wash over her as her tight sheath clenched around him.
“It is not enough.” There was a smile in his voice; he bent his head to taste her again even as his finger slowly eased out of her. Two fingers stretched her, pushed deep so that she gasped with pleasure. “And that is not enough.” There was pure masculine satisfaction in his voice, on his face.
She could feel it again, the hot pressure, molten lava building and building until her entire body was in danger of imploding. He pushed into her, caressed, stroked, his tongue teased and danced. “This is what I want, honey, more, come for me. I want to see it on your face, I want to know you feel it, too.” His voice softened, went husky. “Come for me, my love, just let go.”
With a choking cry she let herself be taken over the edge, her body clenching and spiraling out of her control. His mouth heightened the effect, bringing her an endless orgasm that seemed to go on forever and yet was not enough. She closed her eyes and just gave herself up to pure feeling, to the beauty of his hands and tongue in her body doing slow, merciless things that only made the fire hotter. She was writhing now, her hips unable to stay still beneath the assault on her senses. Then he added his mind, thrusting deeply into hers, picturing things he wanted to do before he did them, so that she could feel her body through his mind, the silken heat, the clenching, tight muscles.
Francesca could feel Gabriel’s mounting desire, the way his body burned and ached, hardening to the point of pain. His hands were becoming rougher, more demanding, and she reveled in the thought of his own loss of control. “I want you inside me, Gabriel,” she murmured softly, a demand. “I want your body in mine. I don’t want you to treat me as if I might break either.” She said it deliberately, knowing what it would do to his body, knowing he was caught up in the same storm of fire as she was.
She looked beyond him to the bank of mirrors, saw his perfectly formed masculine body, the defined muscles, the long shiny hair, and her body fragmented again, an explosion of such force it rocked her, shook her, so that she cried out with the fury of it. “Gabriel, now, right now.”