"The same reason I'd love to see you pleasuring yourself." Oh, hell, he hadn't just said that and put the image in his mind! "Fuck." Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to think of baseball, trees, anything but the vision of Ashaya with her hand buried between her legs, head thrown back in sweet release.
It didn't work.
His eyes snapped open just as Ashaya leaned closer and ran a single wondering finger down his aching cock. He came.
Ashaya had never considered pleasure before meeting Dorian. Even then, she'd considered it as something predictable in a general sense. When he touched her, she felt pleasure. That was the equation. Contact = pleasure. She'd never once thought that watching him lose control would birth a pleasure so deep and rich, it would eclipse everything that had come before.
His eyes opened after several long seconds. "That wasn't exactly what I had in mind."
She was startled to see a hint of embarrassment in the vibrant blue. "Dorian," she said, not bothering to hide the depth of want clawing at her, "that was the most erotic experience of my entire life."
Sensual charm curved his lips, wicked and teasing. "Give me a few minutes and I'll give you something to compare it to. You're so damn pretty, Shaya."
"A few minutes?" Feeling suddenly shy, she crossed her arms over her chest. The smile on his face widened, becoming touched with the feral wildness of the cat. It made thinking difficult. "I believed males needed a longer recovery time to mate."
"Not this kitty cat." Rising to his feet, he said, "Get ready to play."
She found her body straining after him as he disappeared down the corridor she assumed led to the bathroom. When he returned, he was completely naked. She heard a sound of incredible yearning fill the air, and was shocked to find it had come from her. Dorian's body went utterly motionless. A second later, he moved with such speed that she gasped to find him in front of her, pulling her arms apart.
"Let me see," he said, exerting gentle pressure.
She didn't fight him. "There's a hunger," she whispered, scared at the depth of that need, at what it demanded from her. "It's almost painful."
He didn't tell her to stop analyzing their interaction, didn't accuse her of not acting like a normal woman, both fears she'd harbored. Instead, he smiled and said, "Show me where."
When he let go of her arms, she spread the palm of her right hand over her navel, partly touching skin, partly the material of her cargos.
"There?" Brushing aside her hand, he replaced it with his own. She looked down, mesmerized at the erotic contrast. His hand was thickly masculine in comparison to her own, the hairs on the backs of his arms shimmering with light, his fingers marked with faded scars. He was beautiful to her. But when he looked at her, she saw a startling truth - she was beautiful to him, too.
"Yes," she whispered, and it was a permission not an answer.
He took her at her word, this man with a wounded soul and the heart of a leopard, a man so complex that she knew he'd be a puzzle she could explore the rest of her life, if she only had the chance. She sucked in a breath as he changed the direction of his hand, arrowing his fingers down under her waistband and inside her panties in a firm move.
Sensation exploded behind her eyelids. She felt her knees collapse, her body begin to quake with pleasure so extreme, it caused blackness to slide over her eyes. She should've been terrified. Except it felt too good to fight. So she surrendered.
There was no time for worry. Or fear. Only pleasure.
When the darkness receded, she found herself lying on the bed, still half-dressed... and being watched by human eyes that held a very feline satisfaction. "I said slow."
He smiled. "Oops."
Charm.
This leopard lying next to her had a whole arsenal of it. According to what she'd been taught during her passage through the Silence Protocol, charm had both negative and positive aspects. Some used it as a weapon, others as a tool. But, she realized as she lay there limp from pleasure, all that changed if trust was involved. Then, it became a caress, a stroke, a kiss. "When we first met, I would've never predicted you could be this way."
He circled her belly button with a finger. "When we first met, I was a mean bastard."
"I don't think that's changed."
He paused his playful touching. "Oh?"
"I've just earned a free pass through the meanness."
That made him relax, a husky chuckle her answer as he shifted position to brace himself over her. His kiss was deceptively lazy this time, a slow tasting that made her sigh. When he kissed his way down her neck and to the valley between her breasts, she thrust her hands into his hair and held on.
The scrape of his shadowed jaw was rough against the tender skin of her breast. She sucked in a breath. He murmured an apology, licking his tongue over the sensual hurt until she could barely bear it. There was so much more to this sexual dance than she'd ever imagined. So much more to the man she'd called the sniper.
"Thinking again?" he murmured, pressing his lips to her navel.