He skimmed his fingers down her arms. “Hold on to me,” he murmured against her lips, bringing her hands up around his shoulders.
His mouth consumed her all over again, his hands on the move, leaving trails of heat. His thumbs grazed the sides of her breasts, setting fire to all her nerve endings. Nathalie couldn’t breathe. She could only want. Could only need as his mouth owned her and his hands promised pleasures beyond her wildest dreams.
Teetering on the edge, she knew she was going to fall. Not into the water, but into something far deeper. Right into Darius. Into anything he wanted, right here, right now, with the water raging below them and the midnight sky burning above.
And then nothing would ever be the same again.
She suddenly pushed at him, slamming the brakes on with a squeal of her heart. “Wait, wait, wait.”
She needed to stop, needed to breathe, needed to try and think straight. This was going too fast. Way too fast.
All she’d wanted was a test drive. All she’d wanted was to see if he kissed the way he drove.
But it turned out that kissing Darius Spencer was a million times better than any fast ride could ever be.
She never, ever took her eye off the ball. Never for one second forgot that her focus needed to be on taking care of her brother, with everything else coming a distant second. But tonight, for a few heady moments in Darius arms, she’d forgotten.
Forgotten so easily that it terrified her.
“You okay?” he asked. His breathing wasn’t so steady, either, but that was no consolation.
“I need a minute, just a minute.”
But the truth was that she needed way more than that, needed to find a way to clear her head, her body, of everything Darius had just done to her with only one hot kiss.
“I got carried away.” There was a raw huskiness in his voice, and the moonlight was bright enough that she could see the pulse beating hard and fast at his throat. “Forgive me, Nathalie.”
But Darius didn’t need to be forgiven for anything. She was the one who had just lost her mind over his kiss, while making the extremely troubling discovery that nothing had ever given her as much pleasure as going fast with him just had.
Which was especially crazy given that caution was her watchword where men were concerned. Sure, she knew it was a world where people jumped into bed on first dates, but that wasn’t what she did. And not with someone like Darius Spencer. Not with a fast man who owned a whole bunch of fast cars. If she were stupid enough to jump into his bed, she couldn’t also be stupid enough not to expect him to drive right on past her as soon as they were through.
“I’m the one who should be apologizing,” she told him. “I shouldn’t have kissed—”
He put a palm to her cheek and his thumb on her lips to halt the rest of her words. “Yes, you definitely should have.” Then he added, his mouth only a kiss away, “Your kiss was better than the richest roe I’ve ever tasted. You taste better than anything I’ve ever tasted, Nathalie.”
She was stunned at how he simply seemed to accept that they’d gone too fast and pushed past her comfort zone, rather than being angry with her for slamming the brakes on a super hot kiss. A kiss that she had been the one to initiate.
Nathalie needed to make it clear to him that there wasn’t going to be another kiss between them, but the words wouldn’t come. “I should go,” was all she could manage. Although the truth was that it was probably all she needed to say, since she couldn’t imagine he’d want to see her again. Why would a gorgeous billionaire who could have anyone want a woman with whom he always had to try so hard? Even just to set up a date? “I don’t want to keep Tanya out late.”
Darius slowly backed off, his hands trailing down her arms, leaving thrill bumps in their wake. Holding her at the waist, he helped her down from the parapet, then took her hand in his and led her back across the grass to the hole in the fence. She walked on the balls of her feet so her heels wouldn’t sink into the grass.
Back in the car, she asked him to put the top up. “It’s getting cold.” She touched her hair. “And my hair is already enough of a mess.”
“Your hair is gorgeous.”
Of course he’d say that. He always had the perfect words. And it wasn’t truly her hair that worried her. She was afraid the speed would turn her into a wild thing again, and she might actually throw herself at him while he was driving.
Slow, steady, rational—that was what had worked for Nathalie and Zion for the past several years, and she couldn’t risk messing up anything for the two of them. Especially not with a man like Darius, whom she sincerely doubted had the long haul on his mind.
It all made perfect sense in her head. Unfortunately, however, neither perfect sense nor the much slower ride back down the peninsula to her house did a darned thing to help quench her thirst for more of Darius.