She shivers and writhes against me.
But then I lean up and look down at the bed, searching for it, pulling out of her and scanning the sheets.
Then I spot it, the spot of crimson, evidence of her virginity.
She looks at me over her shoulder, still on her hands and knees.
“I didn’t lie,” she moans.
“I know,” I tell her. “But goddamn, the way you worked my dick …”
She collapses onto the bed and rolls over, lying on her side, her shapeliness even more evident from this angle.
“I did okay?” she says.
I climb onto the bed and lie down next to her, something I wasn’t planning on doing.
But I hadn’t planned to do anything with this woman.
She just compels me.
“Okay?” I growl, grabbing her and pulling her into me, hugging her and not giving a damn if a man like me shouldn’t show any kind of affection.
I can’t stop.
Not after what we just did.
“Aida, you blew my fucking world,” I tell her.
I feel the shape of her smile against my chest.
“Maybe next time, you can get naked too, hmm?”
I smirk despite myself, chuckling sincerely.
“Don’t push your luck,” I say.
Chapter Eleven
Aida
I wake the next morning feeling sore and content at the same time, the events of last night – or early morning – returning to me like warm bathwater poured over cool skin.
I reach out for Arturo, expecting him not to be there, but I find that he’s still asleep on his back, half tangled in the sheets.
I blink open my eyes and find the room still hazy with early morning darkness. My heavy eyelids tell me it’s only been a few hours since we fell, accidentally, amazingly, to sleep in each other’s arms.
I watch Arturo in his sleep, his mouth twisted, twitching.
His whole body is twitching, in fact, and then he begins to moan in a low, growling voice.
“No, no,” he breathes. “Fuck—no, no.”
“Arturo,” I whisper, my heart cracking.
He’s human.
Oh, God, my man is so wonderfully human.
“It’s okay. It’s just a dream.”
“No—”
He snaps awake as I reach out to touch his face, his forehead dappled with sweat, his mouth tight as though he’s clenching his teeth together. His iron hair is pushed up from where he slept awkwardly on it, giving him an almost boyish look …
Or it would give him that look if he hadn’t grown a layer of iron fuzz on his jaw overnight. His eyes are narrowed, confused for a moment, and then turn back to their signature Arturo fierceness.
“I think you were having a nightmare,” I murmur, glad that the sheets are pulled up around my naked body.
Because he looks pissed.
“A nightmare,” he repeats.
“Yeah,” I say. “You were talking in your sleep.”
“I don’t remember it,” he says. “I never remember my dreams. What was I saying? Actually, don’t worry. I’ve got work to do.”
He stands up fluidly, moving with such casual confidence for a man of his hulking size. My body gives a flutter when I remember how he claimed me just a few hours ago, my pussy still aching and throbbing with the way he slammed into me.
I feel like singing when the sentence screams out in my mind.
I’m not a virgin anymore.
I want to run a lap around the estate and dance and throw a freaking party.
But now my man is striding away, heading for the door.
He’s so uncomfortable with intimacy – clearly – that he slept in his shoes.
“Wait,” I call, sitting up and pulling the sheets around my chin.
He pauses at the door with his back to me, fists clenched, his back moving up and down to show me the intensity of his breathing.
“What?” he growls.
“I know who you are,” I say, the only thing I can think to keep him here. “I know you’re at war. I know you and Dad were friends.”
He turns slowly, his volcanic eyes glaring at me.
“What else do you know?”
“Why don’t you come and sit down and we’ll talk about it?” I say.
He smirks. “Are you giving the orders now?”
“No,” I say, my voice suddenly biting. “I’m asking you a question. And I think it’s the least you can do after I gave you my virginity, don’t you?”
He laughs grimly, pacing back over to the bed, standing over me with the lamplight making his iron facial hair glimmer.
“You didn’t give me anything,” he says. “I took it. And I’ll take you again, any time and anyway I damn well please.”
Do it, a voice deep within cries. We need more of his seed. There can never be too much.
“You said you wouldn’t take me without consent.”
“I’d never need to do that,” he says, with a passing smirk. “You’re too much of a horny girl for that.”
“Well, if you don’t at least sit down and have a conservation with me, we’ll see about that,” I snap.
“Such sass,” he chuckles.
“I deserve to know what’s going on,” I say softly, and again the urge rises inside of me to tell him about my dreams of children, of us belonging together.
I fight them fiercely, battering them down with everything I have.
He sighs and drops onto the end of the bed. He glances at me with fierce light glinting in his eyes, making me see things for a long moment that surely aren’t there.
It’s like he’s having the same crazy feelings that I am, the same surreal notions dancing around his alpha’s mind.
No, I scream in my head, battering those thoughts down. Stop being stupid.
But then why is he still here?
He’s already gotten what he wanted, surely.
“What do you want to know?” he says sternly.
“Where were you last night?” I say the first question that pops into my head. “Why did you come to me so late? What were you doing—”
“Enough,” he sighs, but not with his usual fierceness.
It’s like the sex has changed things between us.
“I get it. Fine. Fuck it. It’s not like you can do anything with the information, anyway.”
He pauses, his jaw becoming tight, his gaze flitting over me. I make sure the sheet is pulled up around my breasts.
As insane as it seems, I know he might pounce on me if he saw my exposed breasts.
And despite how badly I want that – it’s a constant ache, my sex screaming for another round – I need to know what’s going on.
“I was questioning the men who were involved in your kidnapping,” he says.
“Wait … why would you be doing that? Didn’t you order it?”
He stares hard.
I let out a gasp, reading his expression, the meaning in his dark intense eyes.
“You didn’t order it,” I say.
He shakes his head slowly. “One of my men went rogue. Now that man is missing. I needed to find out what was going on. It took longer than I would’ve liked, but in the end, I got to the bottom of it.”