“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.