Loving The Temperamental Adonis
Chapter 147: Don’t!

Chapter 147: Don’t!

He wasn’t amused. "Unfortunately, I don’t." He didn’t like the feeling he was having nor did he like the wild beating of his heart whenever he looked into her eyes.

"Oh..." Mia drawled, disappointed at the realization that what she’d read into his expression wasn’t really what she’d thought it to be.

Neil continued to speak, "In fact, I think we’d better reach some sort of clear understanding about what is going on between us and what we want to go on between us." In the back of his mind, Neil knew he was being completely irrational, but five years of imprisonment along with the harrowing emotional and physical events of the days and the roller-coaster ride she’d had him on for the last twenty-four hours were all combining to play havoc with his temper, his emotions, and his judgment.

"Well, do you agree?" He asked impatiently.

"I...guess so." She murmured softly.

"Fine, do you want me to start talking right now, or would you like to sit down?"

She swallowed, torn between dread and amusement at the fact that he even cared to ask if she’d sit down when he’d already looked so impatient to set the thing going on between them. "I don’t have to sit down."

He nodded and started to speak. "Half the time we’ve been together I have the craziest feeling that you’re not real...that you’re too naive to be twenty-six years old...that you’re still a little girl pretending to be a woman." His little girl from the past, who he’d decided to bury away five years ago when he’d been sent to prison.

Mia smiled with relief that he hadn’t said anything worse. "And the other half of the time?" She urged him to continue speaking when he fell silent for a moment.

"You make me feel like I’m twelve again." He said, and he could tell she liked that from the quick amused sparkle in her large brown eyes, and suddenly Neil felt twistedly compelled to shatter whatever remaining illusions she might possibly have about him personally as well as his intentions for the evening. He wasn’t a Prince charming gentleman from whatever fantasy world she must have thought he was, he was, in fact the opposite of whatever she thought of him, thus he was set on making her understand that before anything would happen between them and then she’d go ahead of herself.

He continued, "No matter how you interprete what occurred at the river, I am not a knight in shining armor, querida. I am not a hopeless romantic, and I am far from being a naive, idealistic teenager. Whatever innocence and idealism I was born with, I lost them a long time ago. I am not a child, and neither are you. We are adults. Both of us understand what is happening between us right now, and we are fully aware of where all of this is leading."

The amusement faded from her eyes, replaced by a mix of emotions that were not quite fear and not quite anger. "Do you want me to continue, so there is no misunderstanding my intentions?" he pressed on, observing a blush spreading across her smooth cheeks as her smile vanished. Disheartened by the realization that his desire to take her to bed had erased her smile, he purposefully expressed his point without sugar-coating his directness.

"My intentions are not noble, they are mature and natural. We are not teenagers, and this is not a school dance, with my mind not set with whether I will be able to kiss you goodnight. It is already certain that I will kiss you goodnight. The truth is, I want you, and I believe you want me nearly as much. Before this night ends, I plan to ensure that you do, and once that is achieved, I plan to lead you to my bed, undress you, and make love to you thoroughly and unhurriedly. For now, I wish to dance with you, to feel your body against mine. As we dance, my thoughts will wander to all the things I intend to do to you—and with you—once we are in my bed together. Have I made everything clear? If none of this aligns with your wishes, then tell me what you desire, and we will act accordingly. Well?" he asked impatiently as she remained silent, her head bowed. "What do you want to do before we go to bed?"

Mia bit her trembling lip and raised her eyes glowing with a surprising amusement and said. "How would you like to help me rearrange the entire house?" She said, "That’s what I want to do."

"Do you have a second choice?" he demanded, so irritated that he didn’t realize she was joking.

"Actually," she said, furrowing her brows and lowering her gaze to the vee at the throat of his open shirt collar. "That was my second choice."

"Well then, what is your first choice? And don’t pretend I’m making you so nervous you want to rearrange the entire house, because I couldn’t make you nervous at gunpoint!"

Mia sighed and internally added annoyance and stubbornness to the qualities she admired in him, he was too short tempered to take a joke for what it was, if she hadn’t known about his temper, she’d have gotten offended by the look of annoyance in his eyes and voice. But she’d known him better to get offended; he was, after all a temperamental Adonis.

Mia took a shaky breath, ready to end the game, but she couldn’t bring herself to look directly at him as she softly said, "You’re correct. You couldn’t possibly make me this nervous even under gunpoint, and after today, I could bet my life on it that you’d never hurt me for the world. The only thing that could make me nervous is your recent behavior..."

"What behavior?" he demanded.

"I mean...Your actions have me questioning if you’ll ever kiss me the way you did last night... One moment you act like you really wanted to kiss me, and the next..."

Neil grasped her face, tilted it up, and passionately silenced her words with a deep kiss, running his fingers through her hair. As she responded by reciprocating his affection, sliding her hands up his chest and wrapping her arms around him and returning the kiss, he felt a growing sense of pleasure and overwhelming happiness that was almost unbearable.

Trying to atone for his earlier roughness, he dragged his lips from hers and brushed a kiss along her jaw and cheek and temple, then he sought her mouth again, rubbing his lips over their soft contours. He traced the trembling line between her lips with his tongue, urging them to part, and when they did, he dove fully into her mouth like a starving man helplessly trying to satisfy a hunger by teaching her to intensify it. And the woman in his arms was a willing and gifted student. She melted against him and crushed her mouth to his, welcoming his tongue and giving him hers with only the hint from him that he wanted it.

Long minutes later, Neil finally forced himself to drag his mouth from hers and lift his head, he gazed down into her moistened brown eyes, unconsciously memorizing the way she looked, all flushed and fresh and alluring. Trying to smile, he slid his hand around her nape and slowly stroked his thumb over her soft bottom lip, but the deep brown of her large eyes were pulling him unstoppably into their depths again.

His thumb stopped moving on her lips, he then pressed it down to force her lips apart and hungrily captured her mouth with his again. Trembling in his arms, she leaned up on her toes and the slight increase in pressure against his rigid erection made his heart thunder and his fingers clench convulsively against her back. He crushed her smaller body into his, his hands rushing over the sides of her breasts and back, then angling across her buttocks, holding her tightly against his straining body. He was losing control, and he knew it.

Neil told himself to slow down, ordered himself to stop before he forced her to the floor and followed her down, before he behaved like the sex-starved monster he was instead of the leisurely lover he’d promised to be in his angry outburst. However, he couldn’t stop, he wanted her so bad he couldn’t command his body to obey him. It was the distant, nagging memory of his promise that finally made him try to slow down and prolong what was to come, and to heed the warning of his pounding arousal that the climax was going to happen much too quickly for her, once it began now.

He slowly forced his hands away from her breasts and settled them on the curve of her waist instead, but it was harder by far to stop the driving movements of his tongue when she was clinging to him and answering and digging her nails into his back. When he finally pulled his mouth an inch from hers, Neil wasn’t certain if it was she or he who moaned with the loss before she leaned her forehead weakly against his chest, breathing shakily.

With his eyes closed and his heart pumping fast, he dragged air into his lungs and slid his arms around her back to steady her against him. But it was no use, he had to have her, all of her, now before he’d run mad from the desire flowing into his body. Drawing a ragged breath, he put his hand under her chin and tipped her face up. Her eyes were closed with the shadows of her long lashes lying on her creamy cheeks, and she instinctively lifted her lips to his.

Neil’s control snapped with her action. His mouth captured hers with fierce desperation, forcing her lips to part as his hands pulled the silk tie of the robe she wore over the red dress, then shoved it apart, pushing the sleeves of her dress down her arms and sending it to the floor in front of the fireplace so that he could feast on the sight and touch of her skin.

Wrapped in his arms naked, Mia felt him lowering her to the floor, but she didn’t snap out from her state of mindless pleasure until he took his mouth and hands from her. She opened her eyes and saw him hurriedly unbutton his shirt and yank it off and tossed it aside, revealing the ominous looking snake tattoos on his chest, but not until he looked up at her did she feel the first stirrings of panic of what was about to happen between them.

In the firelight, his gray eyes had a fierce glitter as they moved restlessly over her naked body, passion had turned his face hard and intense, making her suddenly feel shy, and when she lifted her arm self-consciously to cover her exposed breasts, his voice was harsh as he commanded, "Don’t!"