Page 26 of The Dreamer and the Deep Space Warrior (Xaal Alien Romance #1)

Isobel

A primal noise left him. He pulled his hands away from hers, only to place them around her waist instead. Ved lifted her at the same time he pulled her forward.

“On either side,” he ordered.

She obeyed instantly, placing her legs over his huge thighs.

It was the closest, most intimate position she’d ever been in. The opening of her underlayers exposed her center to the fabric of his trousers. Upon contact, something hot and dangerous sparked in her core.

When he was satisfied with her position, he squeezed her hips before bringing his fingers up to hover over her neck and cheeks. The wait between contact held the infinite space between colliding planets.

And then he was touching her. He brushed his thumb over her cheek. Drew it hesitantly over her lips. They both inhaled, chests heaving. From each point of contact, the heat of him sank into her flesh .

“I don’t think I could have survived another minute not being touched by you,” she confessed against the rough pad of his thumb before planting a soft kiss upon it.

“I’ve imagined touching you,” he growled as he moved his hands over her cheek, down her neck, through her hair.

“But I’m not sure once I start that I’ll be able to stop.

You have a lot of rules, and they are not the ones that govern me.

” He pulled his hands away with great effort, taking his heat with him.

It was her last chance to say no, to go no further. But the thought of stopping only left her reeling. “I’ve been breaking the rules since I met you. Please don’t stop,” she pleaded.

Before she even finished the sentence, he was touching her again.

Pulling the towel from her with a low snarl, he tossed it somewhere behind her.

Then his hands seemed to be everywhere at once—gripping her thighs, squeezing her backside, running up her spine, plunging into her hair.

Each touch was feral yet reverent. Rough but restrained.

Without thought, her hips rolled against his thighs, and that’s when she felt him.

His hard length strained against his trousers, pushing against the curves of her backside. “Oh,” she breathed.

He let out a soft grunt.

She placed her hands against his chest, and the hardness pressing into her center gave a noticeable throb against her. Liquid fire rushed through her veins and pooled in her core. She was feverish with want.

His hands wrapped around her ribs, just brushing the underside of her breasts. Her breathing was already uneven, but when he ran his thumbs over her nipples, she forgot how to breathe altogether. Even through the shift, his determined touch had her eyes closing in pleasure, her nipples pebbling.

“I want to see more of you,” he growled .

Her barely visible cleavage was tinged pink, her face heating as she leaned away from him. She should have bargained to see more of him first, but her mouth couldn’t form any words against what her body wanted.

He pulled at her shift exposing her shoulders and more of her collarbone until the fabric stretched dangerously over the swell of her chest.

Finally, she managed to say, “Don’t—don’t tear it. I can’t go home like that.”

His hold on the fabric seemed to hesitate as he balanced the consequences of taking what he wanted.

Then he ripped it, exposing her heaving bosom within a single heartbeat. “I’ll take you back.”

He paused, and she both wanted to see his face as he took her in and wanted to hide her own.

Cupping one of her breasts, he rolled her hardened nipple between his thumb and pointer finger.

The rough pads of his fingers sent jolts of pleasure through her rib cage and down.

Closing her eyes, she arched into his hold.

“You are the most exceptional thing I have ever had the honor to behold.” He worked to get his hands beneath her shift, finding her thinly covered thighs and hips beneath.

He grabbed her curves, then paused, but it was muscles tensing beneath her own exploring palms that let her know they were both lost to the moment.

His hands were so large they covered most of the expanse of her hips; his fingers sank into her backside with only the thin layer of her undergarments separating them.

He moved her against him, dragging her center against the impossible length of himself.

They both let out heavy, ragged breaths.

She buried her face in the thick muscle that ran from his shoulder to his neck. “I’ve never been touched like this before.”

Ved let out a rumbling, possessive noise. “I know, and I want to be the first.” There was something unspoken there, but instead of saying it, he pressed it into her with his grip of iron. Then, with one hand on her curves, he lifted her up on her knees while working the other hand between them.

“Ved,” she murmured.

“This Richard doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air as you, let alone touch you. No one does. Even I am unworthy of it.” His gravelly voice was low, but she didn’t have time to respond before one of his fingers brushed against the most sensitive spot of her core.

She gasped, tightening her arms around his shoulders. He was touching her there. In the deep of night, she had scarcely allowed herself to even imagine it.

“You’re wet with need for me, Isobel.” He teased her with another ghost of a touch, and she nearly collapsed against him from that alone. “I need to see the pleasure on your face.”

She shook her head. “I can’t,” she groaned.

His grip on her backside tightened. “I refuse to have you any other way. If this is the only time I take you, then I will see your face. I want to see what my fingers do to you.”

She pulled back, just a small amount, but he rewarded her by rubbing her again. Her eyes rolled back.

“You are so perfect.” The praise was a low and throaty grumble.

Her hips grinded against him of their own accord, chasing his caress every time it moved off her. But it wasn’t until he sank the tip of one of his fingers inside of her that he pulled a sound from her she never thought she would make. A moan—desperate and full of need.

“That’s it,” he coaxed. He moved his finger shallowly in her entrance, the rest of his hand cupping her in a way that made his palm rub against her mound. At this angle, his single digit stretched her, and he wasn’t even past her maidenhead yet.

“What are you doing to me?” she gasped.

“Taking you, as much as I dare to. Memorizing the way your lips look pouted in pleasure and how your chest moves with your panting breaths. I’m memorizing every supple inch of you.

Envisioning what you would look like with my cock buried deep in you.

” He shivered with a groan. “You’d look so good there, Isobel. Like you were mine.”

And she was surely going to hell because she was picturing it as she moved against his hand fervently. “Just for tonight, I can be,” she panted and closed her eyes. “Yours.”

“That’s right. Tonight, you’re mine, which means you’re going to look at me when you come all over my hand.”

She wanted to scream and faint at the same time, but she obeyed.

She realized, then, that she wasn’t embarrassed that Ved was the composer of something so carnal between them.

She wasn’t embarrassed at all. There was a rightness to every touch, to every sound.

Sparks of pleasure and intoxicating pressure ignited at the point of connection and spread throughout her until she was trembling in his arms. With each stroke of his finger, she recklessly bounded toward the brink of existence as she knew it.

When she broke, the world became nothing but her and Ved as his fingers conducted the orchestra of their sin. She collapsed against him, burying her face in his neck. Her body was nothing but a sacrifice to passion’s hungry fire.

“Others may not see you, Isobel Nott, but I see,” he said seconds or minutes later. His voice was an anchor, his body an island of safety beneath her. Never had she felt so held, so treasured.

Isobel wanted him to feel the same way.

“And I see you,” she rasped. “How do I show you?”

His chest rumbled beneath her with a hum. “You already have. Your pleasure is mine—it’s all I need.”

But there was something reckless taking hold of her, something insatiable and wanton. “But I want you, Ved. All of you.”