. . . for a little while, anyway.

Without a word, he began to undress her, sweeping her coat off and tossing it carelessly on a chair, raising the thin sweater over her shoulders and head and discarding it on the mattress. His actions mussed her hair even further. He delved his fingers into the gathered mass at the back of her head, finding three long, smooth wooden hair sticks and removing them. He tossed them. The pins flew several feet where they landed with clicks on a bedside table, rolled and came to a rest. He never took his eyes off her. A midnight mass of hair whispered around her white shoulders. He clutched at it with both hands, burying his fingers in the curls. Gently, he arranged it around her back and upper arms.

“I’ve never seen an Asian woman with curly hair. It’s beautiful,” he muttered, distracted by the sensation of it coiling around his fingers. Her hair was a lighter weight than he would have thought considering the mass at the back of her head, but there was tons of it. The fragrance of the liberated tendrils reached his nose—fruit and flowers, musky and sensual. It whisked next to his calloused fingers, feeling like silk and air combined.

“It’s not that common. The humidity makes it worse,” she said huskily, staring up at him with a solemn, dark-eyed gaze.

His jaw tightened as he reached to unfasten her bra, the anticipation cutting at him. He could tell by her shape in the clinging bra she was going to be lovely. After he’d removed the bra, he just stared for a moment, lust and something sharp and unexpected tightening his throat and cock. When air finally escaped his lungs, it did so on a rough, uncontrollable groan.

“Lin,” he said as he opened his hands along her rib cage, feeling the delicate lines of her carriage, her rapidly beating heart, her softness, her heat. He went lower, encircling her waist. He’d been right. He could nearly encompass her in his grasp. He scooted her farther up the bedcover and came down over her. Their mouths fused, hot and voracious from the first. He’d realized earlier that although her figure was slender and her features small, she was tall for a woman. Their fit was ideal. He rested one hip on the bed, but she curved against him like a heat-seeking kitten, cupping his aching cock between her thighs. The evidence of her returned ardor inflamed him further.

He rolled on top of her, pressing her down into the mattress and ravening her mouth, suddenly too hungry to be polite.

“Ah God,” she whispered when he raised his head a moment later and flexed, his straining cock pressing against the juncture of her thighs. She gyrated her hips, and he saw red. His lips found her cheek and her ear. He kissed the opening and she squirmed beneath him, gasping. He bit gently at the shell and brought her earlobe into his mouth, laving both skin and the smooth pearl inserted in the flesh, licking at the succulent contrast of smooth hardness and tender softness. The feeling of her sleek body writhing beneath him almost made him go berserk. Only his single-minded desire to taste more of her stopped him from driving into her then and there, from discovering firsthand if she was as soft and warm on the inside as she was on the surface.

Her neck was fragrant, her trapped cries delicious against his lips and gently scraping teeth. She craned her head up, trying to find his mouth again. Her hands moved frantically over his back, scooping his light jacket and the material of his shirt with them. He lifted his head and hissed when her fingernails scraped against bare skin and a shiver of sharp sensation rippled through him.

Their stares met briefly as he shifted on top of her, gathering her hands. He held her wrists and pressed them to the pillow above her head. He waited two heartbeats . . . three, but she didn’t protest at his restraint.

Instead, she arched her back in an offering.

Lust tore at him, undeniable. Feral. She’d exceeded his expectations. Her breasts were mouthwateringly beautiful. They had the thrusting firmness of small breasts, but they weren’t small. They were fleshy and ripe, and the way they stood out from her narrow, delicate rib cage drove him mad. He transferred her wrists to one hand and used the other to shape a breast, plumping the tender, extremely firm flesh.

“C’est si bon,” he muttered before he went lower. Her skin was so flawless, so transparent, that he could see the delicate blue veins beneath it. He slipped a crown between his lips and laved the pebbled flesh against his tongue, drinking in her moans of pleasure, becoming drunk by her softness and scent, by her responsiveness. When he drew on her more forcefully, she bucked her hips and moaned her approval. Her pussy rubbed against his heavy erection, beckoning him . . . taunting.

He snarled in barely leashed restraint and secured his hold on her wrists. He transferred to her other sweet breast, keeping her immobile for his ravening mouth by cupping her rib cage with one hand and pressing her wrists down into the pillow. After he’d sucked and laved at her nipple until it grew tight and distended and her desperate cries told him how sensitive the flesh had become, he transferred his mouth to the sides of her heaving ribs.

“Please . . . Kam,” she whispered frantically when he opened his mouth and scraped the skin covering her ribs. A shudder ran through her, delicate and delicious as the rest of her. His tongue ran over her skin, feeling the slight bumps his caresses had raised. He released his hold on her torso—it excited him how much of her trembling body he could hold with even one hand—and ran it over the mound between her thighs. She parted her legs immediately, and he looked into her face. Her cheeks were flushed, her pink mouth a parted invitation as she panted shallowly.

Fuck.

It was as much a curse as it was an order from the primitive part of his brain.

“You want it now, ma petite minette? You want it fast and hard?” he muttered roughly through clenched teeth.

“Please,” she repeated, this time soundlessly.

He fell on her, ravaging her mouth. So sweet. So responsive. His hand moved, pulling up the edge of her skirt, fingers skimming across smooth, taut thighs partially covered in cool, smooth, clingy material. Arousal spiked through him and he lifted his head, staring downward. Jesus. She was wearing some kind of lacy, thigh-high stockings that were nearly as pale and soft as her skin. His cock lurched at the vision she made. Frenchmen were supposedly used to women in luxury lingerie, but the women Kam bedded usually weren’t the type to wear such refined, feminine, frilly things—or to afford them, for that matter.

Spellbound, he moved his hand over her silk-covered mound. He felt her heat and jerked the pretty panties downward roughly. A groan scored his throat when he touched her. She was smooth here, too. Warm, sleek, and creamy. He dipped the ridge of his forefinger between shaved labia. Desire had softened and plumped her flesh. He leaned down and ate her aroused cries. She strained against him and writhed when he inserted a finger into her clasping vagina.

He lifted his head, his breath sounding ragged as he stimulated her and met her gaze. A primitive pulse pounded in his swollen cock, demanding he act. She was going to squeeze him until he didn’t know his own name. She was going to wring him until he was an ecstatic, rutting savage.

Something hit him like a dull thud to the gut.

“I don’t have a condom,” he ground out, the harsh reality penetrating his rabid lust. He always brought condoms when he planned to be with a woman, but it wasn’t part of his normal routine to carry one around. He was used to living in isolation in the country.

None of this—from the glittering city to these new clothes to this stunning woman beneath him who had been both what he expected and drastically different—remotely resembled his typical life.

She lifted her head slightly and glanced at the bedside table where he’d tossed the hairpins. “There,” she said.

Caught between the choice of continuing to bind her wrists or remove his hand from her slippery, tight pussy, he let go of her wrists and strained toward the table, whipping open the small drawer. His hand moved over items in blind desperation.

“Merde,” he muttered under his breath, forced to remove his hand from paradise in order to eventually achieve even more sublime raptures. He scooted up on the bed, peering into the drawer. He shoved aside a small bottle of lotion, a jar of lip emollient, a couple of elastic headbands, some pens, and what appeared to be several carefully dried and pressed purple lotus flowers inserted into a plastic sleeve. He finally spied an unopened box of condoms.

Her palm cupped his cock from below. She slid it along the shaft, as though testing his weight. He hissed and clamped his eyes closed as she closed her fingers around him, her touch even through his clothing thundering through him. He felt huge in her small, stroking hand, heavy . . . hurting.

He snarled and reached for the offending hand. The sweet one.

“I’m going to come in my pants if you keep that up,” he uttered harshly. He focused on her face with effort. “Put your hand back above your head and keep it there, mon petit chaton. I’m not going to be exploding anywhere but deep inside you.”

Lin tried to control her ragged breathing as she followed his instructions and placed her hands above her head, resting them on the pillow. She failed. Panting, she watched him as he impatiently shucked off his jacket and shirt. There was a good amount of dark hair on his chest, but it didn’t hide smooth skin and flexing muscle. He came down on his hip on the bed and unfastened his jeans. She’d held his cock in her hand, felt his weight and heat throbbing against her sex.