He laved it with his tongue, circling the taut peak before drawing it in again, sucking with a rhythm that echoed much lower in her body. His hand slid down her side, over the curve of her hip, and hooked into the waistband of her panties.
In one fluid motion, he stripped them from her. The cool air hit her damp flesh, and she shuddered violently. He knelt between her legs, his eyes burning as he looked his fill. She was completely exposed, utterly vulnerable, and the raw hunger in his gaze made her burn instead of freeze.
"God, Sari," he whispered, his voice thick. "Look at you."
He didn't give her time to be self-conscious. He leaned down, but not where she expected. He kissed the inside of her knee, his lips soft, then his tongue traced a slow, wet path up her inner thigh. The contrast between the tenderness of the act and the illicit destination was dizzying. She trembled, her legs falling further apart almost against her will.
His breath washed over her, warm and intimate, and she jerked. "Nobu, wait—"
"You said once," he murmured, his lips now brushing the sensitive skin of her lower belly. "You didn't specify how."
Then his mouth was on her.
The first touch of his tongue was a lightning strike. A flat, broad stroke from bottom to top that made her back bow off the mattress with a sharp cry. It was not gentle. It was ravenous. He licked into her as if starved for her taste, his tongue delving deep, exploring her folds with a focused, relentless intensity.
"Oh, god," she sobbed, her hands flying to his head, her fingers twisting in his hair. She meant to push him away, but her body betrayed her, holding him there.
He settled in with a low, approving hum that vibrated through her most sensitive nerves. He used his tongue like a weapon of pure pleasure, licking, stroking, circling. He found the swollen, aching center of her and focused there, his tongue flicking over it with rapid, precise strokes that had her hips lifting off the bed, seeking more pressure, more friction, more.
"Yes… right there, please…" she babbled, coherence gone, lost in a rising tide of sensation she had never allowed herself to feel, not since him.
He obeyed, sucking the tender bud gently between his lips, applying a steady, rhythmic pressure that made her see stars. One of his hands came up to splay across her lower stomach, holding her down as her body tried to twist away from the overwhelming pleasure. The other hand slid beneath her, fingers digging into the flesh of her rear, tilting her pelvis to give him better access.
He was everywhere. The wet, slick sounds of his mouth on her filled the quiet room, a brutally erotic soundtrack. His tongue speared inside her, then retreated to lap at her, over and over, building a tension so fierce it was agony. She was panting, her chest heaving, every muscle coiled tight.
"I can't… I'm going to…" she choked out, her thighs beginning to shake violently around his head.
He pulled back slightly, blowing a cool stream of air over her soaked flesh, and she whimpered at the loss. "Not yet," he commanded, his voice dark and rough. "Not until I'm inside you."
Before she could process the words, he moved. He shoved his own underwear down, freeing himself. He was thick, veined, and fully erect, the head flushed a deep, ruddy color. He fumbled for the box on the nightstand, ripped it open, and sheathed himself with a condom in two frantic, efficient movements.
He came back over her, bracing himself on his arms, his eyes locked on hers. His face was glistening, wet with her. The sight was the most debauched, most erotic thing she had ever seen.
"This is it," he said, the words gritted out. "Your once."
He positioned himself, the blunt head of him nudging against her entrance. She was so wet, so ready, her body screaming for completion. But there was a final, fragile barrier of pride in her eyes.
He saw it. He paused, his entire body trembling with the effort of holding still. "Tell me to stop," he challenged, his breath coming in ragged gusts. "Tell me this is just the contract, and I'll make it quick. Clinical."
She stared up at him, at the man who had broken her heart and was now shattering her body with pleasure. The past and the present collided, anger and desire fusing into something white-hot and inevitable. She didn't want clinical. She wanted this—the furious, erotic spiral.
Her legs came up, wrapping around his hips, her heels digging into the hard muscles of his ass. She pulled him down, and at the same time, lifted her hips.
"Stop talking," she gasped.
He drove into her in one deep, relentless thrust.
The feeling of fullness was breathtaking. He was large, stretching her exquisitely, filling a void she hadn't let herself acknowledge in years. A punched-out groan tore from his throat, and he dropped his forehead to hers, his eyes squeezed shut.
"Sari," he breathed, her name a prayer and a ruin.
He began to move. There was no slow build, no careful acclimation. The dam had broken, and what poured out was a torrent of pent-up years. His thrusts were deep, powerful, each one grinding the base of him against the very spot his mouth had just lavished. The angle was perfect, brutal, and devastatingly effective.
She met him thrust for thrust, her nails scoring down his back, her cries growing louder, more desperate. The room filled with the sound of skin slapping against skin, of labored breathing, of the bedframe creaking in protest. It was raw. It was messy. It was the furthest thing from a cold, contractual duty imaginable.
"Look at me," he demanded, his voice guttural.
Her green eyes, glazed with pleasure, fluttered open to meet his stormy blue. In that locked gaze, something shifted. The fury began to transmute, melting into a sheer, overwhelming intensity of connection. He was watching her, every flinch, every gasp, every ripple of feeling across her face, as if memorizing her.
"You feel… too good," she moaned, the admission ripped from her.
"You're everything," he grunted, his pace becoming erratic, harder, faster. "Tighter than I remember. Hotter. Mine."
The possessive word, instead of angering her, ignited something deeper. The coil inside her, wound so tight by his mouth and now by his relentless pounding, suddenly snapped.
Her climax hit her like a freight train. It tore through her without warning, a violent, convulsive wave of pleasure that wrenched a scream from her throat. Her inner muscles clamped around him, milking him in rhythmic pulses that seemed to go on and on, pulling her under a crashing wave of sensation.
Feeling her convulse around him was his undoing. With a raw shout that was half her name, half a wordless roar, he buried himself to the hilt and shuddered, his own release pumping into the condom in hot, pulsing jets. He collapsed on top of her, his weight crushing but welcome, his face buried in the sweat-dampened hair at her neck.
For long minutes, the only sounds were their ragged, syncopated breathing and the slow settling of the bed. The scent of sex and sweat and spent passion hung heavy in the air.
Nobu was the first to move, rolling off her to dispose of the condom. He came back to the bed, lying on his side, propped up on an elbow, looking down at her. She kept her eyes closed, trying to reassemble the pieces of herself, of her hatred, which lay scattered like the rose petals on the floor.
His finger touched her cheek, tracing a path through a tear she hadn't realized had fallen.
The gentle, hesitant slide of his calloused skin against her wet cheek was a violent shock to her system. Sari's eyes snapped open. The tear was a catastrophic mistake. It was a massive, undeniable breach in the firewall she had spent eight years building. She looked up and saw the expression on Nobu's face—unguarded, raw, and completely devoid of the aristocratic disdain he usually wore like armor. He looked exactly like the boy who had kissed her at two in the morning.
Panic, cold and absolute, flooded her veins.
She jerked away from his touch, scrambling backward across the massive mattress until she was out of his reach. She didn't say a word. Her throat was too tight, locked around a jagged breath she refused to let loose. She slid off the edge of the bed, her bare feet hitting the freezing cypress floorboards.
Her hands shook violently as she snatched her discarded clothes from the floor. She jammed her arms into the sleeves of her blouse, her fingers clumsy and frantic as she pulled the soft cotton over her head, the fabric catching painfully on her tangled braid. She couldn't look at him. If she met his eyes again, she knew she would shatter completely. This was supposed to be a transaction, a physical requirement to satisfy a corporate contract, but the heavy, suffocating softness expanding in her chest terrified her more than the million-dollar penalty ever could. She was giving him the same power he had used to destroy her at eighteen.
Nobu didn't reach for her. He didn't speak. He pushed himself up into a sitting position, the heavy silk sheet pooling at his waist, his jaw clenched so tight a muscle ticked near his ear. He watched her tear through the room in a blind panic, his own chest heaving. He knew exactly why she was running, because the same terrifying vulnerability was currently clawing at his own throat. He was entirely compromised. If he stopped her—if he pulled her back into that bed and wiped the rest of those tears away—he would be admitting that the extortion, the anger, and the cold indifference were all a lie. He couldn't take a chance on this softness, not when the foundation of their entire marriage was built on a trap his own father had set.
So, he remained perfectly still, letting her run.
Sari grabbed her yoga pants and bolted for the door, pulling them up her legs as she stumbled out into the freezing corridor. She slid the heavy painted door shut behind her with a sharp, definitive clack, instantly cutting off the sight of him sitting in the wreckage of their sheets.
She practically ran down the dark, winding hallway, the icy mountain wind seeping through the paper screens and biting at her exposed skin. When she finally reached the Lady's Suite at the far end of the house, she slid the screen shut, sank to the floor, and pulled her knees to her chest, burying her face in her hands as the absolute silence of the Hokkaido mountains swallowed her whole.