Page 56 of Forgery, Love, and Other Lies
“I thought I amused you,” she breathed.
“In spades.” He kissed her neck, bit it so she yelped, then licked it.
“Is that… is that usual? The biting. I’ve been wondering—”
He kissed the spot and the warmth of his breath spiraled across her skin.
“Oh, never mind if it’s usual. I don’t particularly care because—” She could not breathe. He yanked one shoulder of her wrapper down. “Because…” she tried again.
He yanked the other side of her wrapper down, untied the thing entirely, and with eyes dark with desire, pushed it open, looked on her body, covered now only by the shift. “You are well prepared for this encounter.”
What had she been trying to say?
He stilled above her, and she used the pause to gather her breath and her wits. Oh yes. She liked it, the biting. That’s what she’d been about to say. She opened her mouth to tell him, but he descended once more, ravaging her lips like a starving man. His hand clutched at the bodice of her shift, almost quivering. He pulled from the kiss and laid his head on her forehead.
“Fiona,” he said, his voice deep and dark as onyx, as the hell he so often evoked, “I am not going to ruin you tonight. I refuse, but I cannot deny you.” A brief huff of hard-edged laughter. “Nor me, the delights of pleasuring your body.”
If her body had not already been hot as coals, it would have burst into that heat then, but all she could do was continue to simmer in her need, her blood sizzling along her veins, stars flaming across her skin, an explosion waiting to happen.
“I am not a good man, not truthful or talented or kind. I take advantage of people and situations, and I’m about to take advantage of you. Do you understand?” His grip tightened on the bodice of her shift, and he pulled her closer.
Her head tipped back on her neck. Her eyes found the sensual outline of his lips and could not look away. “I do.”
He dragged his lips up the column of her throat with an inhale that seemed to make him twice as broad of shoulder as before, and when he came to her lips, making her body shiver, making her hands cling to him anywhere they could, he said, “Tonight, I’m going to make you scream, little dragon. I’m going to make you roar.”
Then he wrenched her bodice down and cool air spiked across her breast. He kissed her where only he had ever touched, where no other man would ever touch her. Only him, and never again if not him.
She clutched at his waist and let her head fall forward, onto his shoulder warm and soft and too fully clothed. She raked her hands up his back, and though the pleasure he spiraled at the nipple of her breast was exquisite, she lifted his face to her for a kiss she took control of. Just as she took control of his cravat, tugging on one end, his fingers flying to help her, then unwinding, unwinding, unwinding until his neck—strong and corded—opened up to her hungry gaze. She kissed that neck, kissed the line of his jaw.
“Do… do you like that?” she stammered.
“Hell yes. There’s this little spot behind my ear that—” He hissed. “There. Yes, you vixen.”
“I want to learn all your secret spots.”
“You’ll hoard them?” He leaned away, his gaze glued to her breast, his hands coming up to cup them, squeeze them.
“Yes,” she moaned. “All mine.”
“All yours.”
Good thing he agreed.
His hands slid down her ribs and cinched her waist for one brief breath, and then he slid his hands, fingernails dragging slightly against her skin, down the tops of her thighs as he lowered to his knees before her.
She tilted her head and looked down into his gleaming onyx eyes. “What are you—”
“Do you remember the auction? When I touched you”—he blew softly against the juncture of her legs—“here.”
She shivered. “Yes.” Of course she remembered. Diamonds and black velvet. “I felt… I felt… every muscle tight and hard like a diamondis, but every nerve in my body, my blood even, sparking with fire, as a diamond looks. In the heat of flame or light.” Or his touch.
“There are other ways to make you feel like that.”
The mere idea that he might be about to apply one of those ways sped up her heart, made her ache to touch him more, to get the business started. “How fortuitous. I assume you’re about to show me one of those ways?”
That grin widened, a thief’s smile, one that promised mischief. Then he gripped the hem of her shift and pulled it up, pooled it around her hips, pressed her legs farther apart, and settled kisses on the sensitive inner skin of her thigh. Kissing slowly, methodically, inch by inch, higher and higher until his mouth teased where his fingers had at the auction.
And then, well, other than the inky curls on the top of his head, she saw very little. But felt everything. At first, each lick and tease and suck and kiss seemed odd, each sensation the actions curled through her, indescribable, but the more he worked between her legs, the more boneless her body became.
