She lowered her head and pressed her parted lips against his.

  Chapter Nine

  Dear God…

  Jericho had spent the past twenty-four hours wanting this woman, aching to touch her, to kiss her. To hold the heat of her body in his arms while he devoured the softness of her mouth.

  Having Marisha be the one to initiate kissing him wasn’t a pleasure he’d allowed himself to think about.

  He didn’t think about it now either. Instead, he wrapped one of his arms tightly around her waist and placed the other one on the back of her head as he deepened the kiss to one of possession as he thrust his tongue between her parted lips to explore the heat inside her mouth.

  He licked and sucked, returning again and again to the places that caused Marisha to groan or gasp the most.

  He wanted to own this woman.

  Claim her.

  Keep her.

  Jericho continued to kiss those lips that were as soft and velvety as rose petals.

  Her mouth was hot and wet, as he knew her pussy would be when his tongue claimed and fucked into that heat.

  Her perfume, a mixture of warm and just-woken-from-sleep woman and her increasing arousal, invaded all of Jericho’s senses. Until all he could taste and feel was her.

  Her lips. Her tits. Her abdomen. Her mound. Her silky legs entwined with his own.

  He rolled over so that she was beneath him once again, holding her fevered gaze captive as he pushed up the black T-shirt he had dressed her in last night, before sliding it completely up and over her head and then discarding it on the floor beside the bed.

  Her bruises aside, her body was like a work of art. A statue of some mythical goddess come to life. The beautiful symmetry of her face and that wild tumble of black hair added to Marisha’s otherworldliness.

  Jericho slowly began to kiss his way down that porcelain perfect body. He lingered to suck on one rosy and engorged nipple and then the other, until Marisha’s body arched with need and Jericho could feel the throb of her clit pressing against the pulsing hardness of his cock.

  Still, he didn’t hurry. Kissing, licking, sucking the smooth skin of her concave abdomen.

  The latter made him pause for a few seconds as he was reminded that Marisha’s kidnappers had been starving her for days. Perhaps he should feed her first…

  “Please,” she groaned a different need.

  He raised his head to look at her. The signs of her arousal and need were unmistakable. In the fever of her gaze. The flush in her normally pale cheeks. Her bottom lip was red and swollen from where she had chewed on it as Jericho gorged himself on her nipples.

  “Please, Jericho,” she urged again, her hands tightly gripping the bottom bedsheet on either side of her.

  “I’m clean.”

  “So am I.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes,” she stated firmly.

  He gave a barely perceptible nod before sliding the rest of the way down her body, until he was lying between her thighs. The width of his shoulders held her legs wide open, allowing him to feast his gaze on the slickness of her red and swollen pussy lips before he used his fingers to part the petals of her labia and bare her engorged clit.

  He licked his lips and breathed in the heady scent of her arousal before lowering his head. He ran the roughness of his tongue from the taut skin between her anus and her pussy, over the swollen lips at the entrance to her channel, and then higher, to where her clit pulsed with need between those parted petals.

  Jericho was overwhelmed with that same illogical feeling of possessiveness as he felt the way Marisha began to tremble and shake at the first lash of his wet tongue against that sensitive nubbin.

  That trembling increased as he lifted his head enough to blow on her throbbing clit. It instantly swelled and pulsed in response to that stimuli, causing his cock to throb and leak pre-cum onto the sheet beneath him.

  Jericho had always ensured he gave his sexual partners physical pleasure before taking his own. He knew how to please a woman, how to give her climax after climax until she was begging him to stop.

  And yet… “Did you like it when Toly gave you oral pleasure?” His voice was a harsh rasp in his continued irrational feelings of jealousy over a man Marisha had told him was dead.

  Marisha had absolutely no idea where that question had even come from. A place of confusion, apparently, because she’d already told Jericho she’d never had that sort of relationship with Toly.

  And he should believe me because…?

  Because everything she’d told Jericho had been the truth. But she knew, and so did he, that it had been a guarded truth, with only enough information to leave Jericho with more questions than answers.

  And this, with her poised on the brink of climax, wasn’t the time for him to be pressuring her for those answers.

  Unless that had been Jericho’s intention all along?

  Dear God, had he deliberately made love to her with the intention of using her arousal and need for release as a way of seducing answers out of her?

  “I don’t use sex for any other purpose but pleasure,” he rasped from between her widely parted and so vulnerable thighs.

  Telling Marisha she had either asked the question out loud or her expression had given her thoughts away. “Prove it,” she challenged huskily.

  “You little…” The frown smoothed from Jericho’s brow as he gave a smile of appreciation. “It will be my pleasure,” he assured. “I hope it will be yours too.”

  Pleasure didn’t begin to describe how she felt as Jericho took her to climax after climax without so much as a single moment of respite from that rise to ecstasy before he took her there again.

  “Enough,” she finally groaned, hitherto unused muscles aching so much, it felt as if she’d run a marathon and then decided to swim across the Volga afterward just for fun. “Jericho, please.” She begged for him to stop as she placed her hands on his shoulders, her fingers digging into the heat of his taut flesh.

  Jericho looked thoroughly debauched when he gazed up at her. His dark auburn hair was tousled, eyes glittering, cheeks flushed, his lips swollen and slick with her juices.

  “Come up here,” she invited softly, pleased when he did as she asked without argument. She really couldn’t take any more of that level of pleasure right now. “Now lie back.” She pushed him until he was lying flat on his back beside her.

  “Am I now supposed to think of England?” he drawled. “’Cause I’m actually Irish and proud of it. Besides which, I’ve never been a complacent lover— Marisha!” the last came out as a strangulated groan as, having slid down the bed, Marisha took a firm grasp of the base of Jericho’s long and engorged cock before taking the bulbous head into the heat of her mouth.

  She didn’t want to hear him speak another word about his other lovers.

  Her fingers didn’t meet around the thickness of his cock, and she knew there was no way she was going to be able to take more than half of that throbbing flesh into her mouth and down her throat.

  She stroked her fingers up and down the inches not inside her mouth, groaning as she tasted the increasing salty sweetness of his pre-cum as it coated her tongue. With her other hand she cupped beneath the tautness of his balls as she licked and sucked and then lapped up his pre-cum, before swallowing whenever her mouth became filled with that delicious nectar.

  She could hear Jericho’s increasing groans of pleasure, feel him reaching his impending release. His cock swelled even longer and wider, stretching Marisha’s lips to their full capacity as she continued to bob up and down on that silky length. His balls pulled up, the skin becoming tight and smooth.

  He was poised on the edge of his release, only needed a little more stimulation to— Ah, yes. The press of one of Marisha’s fingers against the skin beneath his ball sac was enough to tip him over that edge.

  Pulse after pulse of his release immediately flooded her mouth before being quickly swallowed. Hot and thick, the taste somehow reminded her of Jericho: virile male and wild desire.

  Once she was sure he had given her every drop of that nectar to swallow down, she released his cock to rest her head against the heat of his groin. His skin felt hot and slightly damp against her cheek, in response to the intensity of pleasure they had just shared.

  Even so, Marisha could feel Jericho’s wariness and tension returning the longer they lay there together. It didn’t matter that they were both naked, or that they had both just given and received mind-blowing pleasure together.

  Jericho still distrusted her and whatever he sensed was going on in her life that she wasn’t telling him.

  The intensity of the increasing distance between them settled heavily on her chest.

  Because there was nothing she could do to change the situation.

  Nothing she could tell him to ease his distrust of her.

  She moistened her lips as she swirled a finger through the damp whirl of dark auburn hair about his deflating cock. “Sometimes trust has to be given without proof,” she said softly. “Sometimes it has to be simply accepted as fact.”

  “Do you trust me?”

  She glanced up at him, some of the tightness in her chest melting when she saw the gentleness of his expression as he looked at her. “These past few days have been…traumatic, to say the least. I certainly want to trust you.”

  He nodded. “Same here.”

  Her smile was rueful. “Why don’t we just agree to trust each other until proven otherwise—” She was interrupted by the sound of a mobile ringtone. She instantly recognized it as Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.”

  Jericho shrugged at her questioning look. “I like the film,” he dismissed, turning on his side to reach for the mobile on the bedside table.

  Marisha took advantage of his distraction to gather up the black T-shirt from the floor and pull it on over her head. Jericho, completely unconcerned by his own nakedness, was listening intently to whoever had called him as he sat up and swung his feet to the floor before pacing the bedroom.

  She was distracted for several seconds by all those hard muscles and the swinging from side to side of his still semihard cock. He was like the Bernini sculptures she’d seen on a weekend trip to Rome the previous year. He had wide shoulders, the muscles clearly delineated in his arms. Each muscle of his chest and abdomen were clearly defined in an eight-pack, his long legs equally as muscular. His cock, even slightly deflated, was still long, with visible thick veins running along its length.

  Marisha gave a guilty start when Jericho ceased his pacing, sure he was about to mock or challenge her for staring at his nakedness so brazenly.

  Instead, he was looking across the bedroom at her with accusing hazel eyes.

  Accusing her of what, Marisha was unsure.

  She and Jericho might have made love together a few minutes ago, but she didn’t really know him, only that he had saved her from the Federovs. How long that would last, she had no idea.

  She believed Jericho when he said he wouldn’t physically hurt her, and that his employer wouldn’t either. But there were other ways of hurting someone than the physical. She didn’t—

  “Was Boris Borzikov your lover?”

  Marisha gave a start at the realization Jericho had ended his call while she was lost in thought and he was now staring at her with accusing eyes.

  She tensed, barely breathing as the full realization of what he’d said hit her with the force of a sledgehammer. “Was?” she prompted hollowly.

  “Sorry?”

  “You said ‘was’ Boris my lover,” she repeated woodenly.

  Because Jericho had spoken of Boris in the past tense.

  Chapter Ten

  Jericho didn’t know what to make of Marisha’s initial reaction to his question about the man who had been the head of the Moscow bratva before the Federovs killed him and took over the organization just days ago. She looked and sounded…horrified at the possibility Jericho’s words implied Borzikov was dead.

  Jericho grabbed some jeans from one of the drawers of the dressing table. He had no reservations about being naked when he talked to Marisha, or to anyone else, but the gravity of this conversation indicated he should at least not be waving his dick around when he told her Borzikov was dead.

  That her lover was dead?

  Jericho felt as if his thoughts were bouncing from one possibility to another when it came to who Marisha’s lover might be. One of the Federov brothers. Toly. Now Boris Borzikov.

  Because from what Kieran had just told him during their telephone conversation, all indications were that Marisha had been kidnapped at the Moscow airport by the Federovs because of her connection to Boris Borzikov.

  They hadn’t started questioning the Federovs yet. Once back at the estate, Leon had decided to let the Russian brothers spend the night contemplating what their fate was going to be the following morning. In the meantime, Kieran had done some research of his own.

  His brother had also discovered that Borzikov had paid for Marisha’s university degree and accommodation while she was in England, and that when she returned to Moscow for the holidays, Borzikov visited her at her apartment at least once a week while she was there.

  Kieran had also reported that Toly was, in fact, Anatoly Borzikov, and not only was he distantly related to Boris, but he had also been Marisha’s bodyguard since she was sixteen.

  Which didn’t mean he hadn’t also been her lover.

  Jericho badly needed Marisha to tell him what these men had been or were to her.

  Because this morning meant she was now his, damn it. His to protect, his to claim. Even the thought of her being involved with any of those other men filled him with jealous anger. It shouldn’t, but it did.

  “Marisha, what— Fuck!” Jericho quickly stepped forward as he saw her knees were about to buckle.

  “Don’t.” She held up a hand to warn him off, her head bent and her gaze fixed downward, making it impossible for Jericho to see the emotion in her eyes. “I can’t… I don’t…” She dropped abruptly onto the bedroom chair.

  One of her hands gripped the side of the seat to keep her balance; the other one pushed her disheveled hair back from her face. She seemed completely unaware of or unconcerned with the way her T-shirt had ridden up her bare thighs.

  She was blinking back tears when she finally looked up at him. “Are you saying Boris is dead?”

  Jericho frowned. “Marisha, who do you think the Federov brothers are?”

  She shrugged. “Some sort of bratva rival of Boris’s was my best guess.”

  “He never mentioned them?”

  She swallowed. “He didn’t talk about that part of his life to me.” She winced. “I just spoke about him in the past tense too,” she muttered fiercely.

  Jericho’s nostrils flared. “Then what the hell did he talk to you about?”

  Marisha frowned. “Why are you so angry?”

  “Why?” he repeated harshly. “Because we did everything but fuck each other just now and I have no idea whether Boris or Toly or who the fuck else is already your lover.”

  She blinked. “You asked about Toly, and I said no.”

  “Now I’m asking you again, and this time, I’m also asking about Boris Borzikov.”

  Marisha stared at Jericho, taking in the fiery glitter of his eyes, those flared nostrils, the grim set of his mouth and jaw. All outward signs of the anger he was keeping under control.

  Which, as Jericho chose to keep ninety percent of his emotions below the surface, much like an iceberg, meant he must be inwardly furious.

  And she had no idea why.

  She hadn’t asked Jericho about his previous lovers, or even if he had a current one. Which, now that she thought about it, was highly possible.

  Jericho was one of the most attractive men Marisha had ever met. He also gave off a dangerous vibe that warned anyone against crossing him. It was a danger most women would be drawn to, much like a moth to a flame. A warning the Federovs had ignored at their peril.

  Something she would do well not to ignore either?

  Her chin rose. “I don’t have a lover, past or present.”

  He stilled. “Are you saying you’ve never had one?”

  “I am,” she confirmed.

  “You’re a virgin still?”

  Could he look any more horrified? Marisha wondered self-derisively.

  Jericho’s reaction might even be funny if it wasn’t the truth.

  There had been no romantic relationships in her life before she went to England, and Toly’s presence in her apartment had made it impossible for there to be anyone during the three years they’d lived together in Oxford. The same applied to when they came back to Moscow during the academic holidays. Toly had still lived with her at her apartment, and with Boris also insisting on visiting her once a week, any possible boyfriends had been well and truly frightened off.

  “I’m only twenty-one, and I’ve been concentrating on finishing my university degree,” she snapped. “There’ll be plenty of time now for me to take as many lovers as I wish.”

  “The fuck there is!” Jericho’s hands were clenched at his sides. “This morning means I’m your lover now, and there won’t be anyone else for you while we’re together.”

  Her frown was pained. “And what about you? Would you be exclusive to me in a relationship between us?”

  This time, he took a step toward her and kept coming, finally coming to halt so that he could go down on his haunches in front of her, totally invading her space and giving her no choice but to look at him. “I wouldn’t have allowed things to go as far as they did with you earlier if I already had someone in my life. Nor will there be anyone else for me while we’re together.”

  She gave a derisive snort. “You aren’t seriously expecting this thing between us to last once we leave this cabin?” She wasn’t about to claim this morning had been a one-off, because she knew that if Jericho made love to her again while they were here that her traitorous body would respond.

  His eyes narrowed. “Why not?”

 

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