The Dare Collection April 2019. Nicola Marsh
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eased me down his body until I was standing on the floor.
His gentleness made the emotions crashing around inside me somehow even worse. I felt like a hurt child in need of comfort.
How humiliating.
I tried to muster up some anger but, before I could get good and worked up, he picked me up in his arms and carried me over to the huge bed that faced the ocean, putting me down on the edge of the mattress before crouching in front of me.
‘It’s okay,’ I muttered. ‘You can leave now.’
‘Leave?’ He frowned. ‘Why would I do that?’
‘Uh, because I’m being pathetic and emotional?’
He shrugged one powerful shoulder as if that didn’t matter at all to him. ‘You’re not being pathetic. Emotional yes, but what you’re feeling is normal. Sometimes it happens when sex is particularly intense.’
Well, it had been intense, that was for sure.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. ‘Has it happened to you? Wanting to cry after sex, I mean?’ The question sounded stupid as soon as it came out of my mouth. Ajax King wanting to cry after an orgasm? The idea was as ludicrous as Dad suddenly becoming Prime Minister.
Ajax didn’t laugh, thank God. ‘No, but I know it happens to some people.’
‘Well, I don’t want it to happen to me.’ And I didn’t. Not crying was about the only thing I’d managed to succeed at, the only thing that Dad didn’t criticise me for.
Crying now would be one failure too many.
I blinked hard and looked down at my hands. ‘I don’t blame you if you don’t want to do this any more. I didn’t mean to ruin the mood.’
Strong fingers caught my jaw, tipping my face up.
He’d risen to his feet and was bending over me, his intense blue gaze blazing into mine. ‘You’re not ruining anything. Cry if you want to. Scream if you want to. Emotion doesn’t scare me, Imogen. I’m going to fuck you either way.’
The words shot down my spine like shocks. His expression was uncompromising and it came to me all of a sudden that of course my emotions didn’t scare him. They didn’t matter to him at all.
Because he didn’t care.
Something tight in my chest, something I hadn’t realised was there, suddenly eased. Like a heavy stone being lifted away.
I could cry. I could scream. I could ask too many questions. Be too restless. Talk too much. Do whatever I wanted.
I could be myself and it wouldn’t matter.
Because Ajax didn’t care and that meant I didn’t need to either.
There is no way you can fail, not here, not with him.
A tear slid down my cheek without my conscious control. Then another and another and, for the first time in years, I didn’t try to repress them or swallow them back, or talk to distract myself from the ache in my heart.
I let them fall.
There was no judgement in Ajax’s face, that I’d seen so often in Dad’s. None of the distaste or the active contempt. He simply...watched, expressionless, giving me some time and a quiet space to cry.
Then, after a while, his grip on my chin tightened and he bent down over me and kissed me.
I tasted the salt of my tears and that rich, dark flavour that was all him, and I was suddenly hungry. Hungrier than I’d ever been in my entire life.
Opening my mouth, I let him in, reaching out to pull him to me. But he was already pushing me back onto the bed and following me down onto it. His body was heavy, solid with muscle and so hot it felt like I was lying directly under a furnace.
He felt so good.
I arched up, pressing myself against him, spreading my thighs so he could lie between them and curling my arms around his neck. I kissed him harder, deeper; kissed him like there was no tomorrow and no yesterday, only now. Salt and Ajax in my mouth, the taste of him imprinting on me so I’d never get it out of my head and never want to.
He kissed me back, demanding, pushing his tongue deep into my mouth. Nipping my lower lip, sucking on it. Licking and taking, conquering. And I let myself be conquered.
Our kisses became more desperate, the sound of our breathing ragged.
Abruptly, he pushed himself off me, going up on his knees, straddling my hips, and he reached for the hem of his T-shirt, dragging it up and over his head. The movement was sexy and when his T-shirt came off I nearly gasped.
He was a work of art. Not only was every muscle from his pecs to his abs cut and sharply defined, they were highlighted by the most incredible tattoos I’d ever seen. Thick black abstract lines running all over his torso, trailing down over the broad plane of his chest and curling around his lean hips, outlining every dip and hollow, every flex and contraction.
I pushed myself up, my breath already short and getting shorter, reaching for him, my palms landing on his stomach. He was smooth and hot, the muscle beneath rock-hard. And I could feel the tightening of his abs beneath my fingertips, the merest hint of the power contained in his magnificent body.
Desperate to touch as much of him as I could, I ran my palms up from his stomach to his pecs, the prickle of hair an added excitement. God, he felt incredible. I leaned in, nuzzling against his abdomen, loving his heat and the woody, spicy scent of him. Then I licked him, tasting salt.
He shuddered, his reaction firing my desire even higher. I tried licking him again, but he caught me underneath my arms and pushed me back down onto the mattress. And then I couldn’t do anything but lie there as he virtually ripped my clothes off.
In the hundreds of romance novels I’d read, I’d always thought that the ripping of the clothes was figurative. Apparently not with Ajax King.
He tore my T-shirt clean down the middle and got rid of the fabric, pulling apart my lacy white bra with the same ease. Then he jerked away my yoga pants and knickers along with them, so I lay naked in the middle of the bed.
He paused a moment, his gaze electric, scorching me every place it touched. And it touched everywhere.
If I’d thought about it I might have been embarrassed. No one had seen my naked body since I was a child. But it didn’t even occur to me. All I wanted was him, naked as I was, his skin against mine.
‘Ajax,’ I said hoarsely. ‘Please.’
He said nothing, watching me with those intense, unfathomable eyes. Then his hands slowly moved to the buttons of his jeans.
Too slowly.
I sat up and reached for them myself, but he knocked my hands away.
‘Lie down.’ His voice was full of authority and darkness. ‘Lie down and wait patiently, and you’ll get what you want.’
A frustrated sound escaped me, but I did what I was told.
I didn’t like to stay still for long and lying there, my breathing fast and hard, the need inside me like an animal tearing at me in its hunger, felt like the most difficult thing I’d ever done.
Slowly, achingly slowly, Ajax undid the buttons of his jeans and pulled down the zip, spreading the fabric. I could see the long, hard length that pressed against the material of his black boxers...
My pulse began to accelerate, my mouth was watering, my breath catching hard in my chest.
Holy crap. He was huge.
I began to push myself up again, wanting to touch him and unable to keep still for much longer, but he got off the bed suddenly, jerking down his jeans and getting rid of the rest of his clothes.
I blinked, staring at him, utterly mesmerised