eyes and—” His fingers crooked, stroking inside her, and her words splintered with a cry.
He chuckled again, his thumb resuming those taunting circles over her clit. “Somehow I doubt you bat your eyelashes. I bet you just take what you want.”
She’d never been able to resist a challenge. She grabbed his wrists and flipped him over again, pinning his hands beside his head as she straddled his stomach. “Like this?”
He pushed up, testing her. She held firm, drinking in the sight of his flexing muscles as he strained against her grip. A slow, reckless smile curved his lips, one of hunger and discovery. “You can take all of me, can’t you?”
“Everything.” Nina indulged herself as she released him, drawing her fingers slowly down his arms, across his shoulders. She molded her hands to his chest, smiling when his pectorals clenched at her touch. “What about you?”
“Can I take all of you?” With his hands free, he moved her back until her hips were over his, and the hard line of his erection ground up against her exposed pussy. “Let’s find out.”
“Let’s.” She slipped free of his grasping hands and knelt over his thighs instead. The coarse fabric of his pants abraded her skin, but that was part of the appeal. Soft and rough, dominance and submission.
Power and pleasure.
She lingered over the buttons on his fly before loosening each one, watching his expression tighten with every passing heartbeat. “Problem?” she asked innocently.
He growled in response. “You have about five seconds before I get you back under me.”
“Come on, Captain. It’s my turn—your rules, not mine.” She leaned over him as she eased his pants and underwear down, so close that his cock sprang free to nestle between her breasts as she licked a path over his ribs.
He groaned and thrust up against her. “Fuck the rules.”
Sure, he said that now. Nina swallowed a laugh and nipped at his abs as she wrapped her hand around his shaft. “Give me three minutes.”
His muscles trembled with tension, and his gaze … She didn’t have words for what she saw there. Danger, lust—and barely a hint of his beautiful self-control. “Three minutes,” he agreed.
She started with a slow, light stroke. Knox had had to relearn his body after his TechCorps experimentation; Nina had lived in hers for thirty-four years. She knew exactly how to exert precise control over the strength and speed granted by her genetic modifications.
It was all she knew, and she put it to good use. She pumped her hand over him, squeezing and releasing, varying the pressure and the rhythm until the head of his cock was slick with arousal and Knox was gripping the blanket so hard it tore. “Fuck.”
A single minute could have passed, or a whole hour. Touching him created some kind of vortex where nothing else existed, not even the basic concepts of time and fucking space. She leaned over him again. “You have a contraceptive implant, right?”
He stared at her, panting, for so long that she wondered if the words had penetrated. Then he jerked his head in an unsteady nod. “Yes. Yes, I do.”
Of course. Even if it hadn’t been standard issue for Protectorate recruits, Knox was too conscientious not to get one anyway—and realizing that she knew that about him, knew it the way she knew her own name and lab designation …
It felt strange, an intimacy deeper than his naked skin pressed to hers. His eyes locked with hers in a single moment of connection, and she knew he felt it, too.
The thought dissipated like smoke when he reached for her, his big hands grasping her hips just a little too hard. Her back hit the bed, and he kicked free of his pants and slid over her, hot and hard, rocking his hips against her in taunting promise. “Your three minutes is up.”
“Fair’s fair,” she gasped.
“I won’t even make you beg.” His hips forced her thighs wide. He braced his weight on one hand next to her head and watched her face as he pushed into her—slow, relentless.
It wasn’t enough. Nina gripped his sides, digging her nails into his flesh as she arched to meet him. His control wavered, his hips jerked forward—
Then he froze, released a shuddering breath, and stared down at her. “Do you know how easy it would be to fall into you?”
Giddy satisfaction cut through the searing pleasure. He’d spoken of holding back, locking down, keeping control. A hundred different ways to say self-denial—and one way to encourage