Page 67 of Tempting the Scoundrel
A masked couple stumbled into the observation room. Their laughter faded to soft sounds as the man pressed the woman to the door and they shared a fierce kiss. Some desperate desire must have taken over, for they scrambled to undress. Buttons skittered across the carpet, fabric rendered in their haste. Their whispered words barely reached Alexandra’s ears through the glass, but she imagined the vocabulary. All those words she’d wielded over Nick, demands she’d made of him in Gretna, and again on the train to London.
Fuck me.
Fuck me.
Fuck me.
Alexandra told herself to shut the panel—look away, stop, look away—but her body had other ideas. She sat beside Nick on the chaise, the sight in the next room riveting her. They conjured so many memories, so many things she only allowed in dreams. Nick had kissed her like that, at the inn outside of Gretna. Had peeled away the dusty travel dress that served as her wedding gown, and slid his lips across her skin inch by inch. Her dreams over the years had begun to blur the details, add new words, different scenarios. Sometimes it was fast. Sometimes it was achingly slow. Sometimes, when she was angriest with herself for still wanting him, she would take him beneath her and press him into the mattress and use his need as an instrument of torment until he pleaded with her.
And sometimes, when she forgot her anger, she would imagine the look in his eyes that night.
Is it always like this?
No. Only with you.
“What are you thinking of?” Nick’s voice was husky, the warmth of his exhale at the shell of her ear. When she only shook her head, he whispered one word, a question: “Us?”
She couldn’t say yes, couldn’t answer. Wouldn’t that betray everything she had vowed never to reveal? The pieces of her heart that she had spent years stitching back together?
The man in the next room carried the woman to the bed.
Nick slid closer, his warm thigh touching hers. His lips were so near her neck she could feel the heat of his breath. A fraction of an inch and he’d be kissing her. “I dream every night of Gretna,” he told her, his words coasting along the curve of her shoulder. “Sometimes I wish I had gone slower. The man in there? He has the right of it. Watch him slide his lips down—ah,there. Remember?”
Alexandra’s breath caught as the man knelt between the woman’s thighs and licked, and feasted, anddevoured.“Yes.”
Nick made a small sound of encouragement. “In my dreams, sometimes we don’t even get to fucking,” he murmured. “Some nights I lick your cunny until you come so hard and so often that you can’t leave my bed for hours. Then—”
The man caught the woman around the waist and lowered her onto the bed. In a single, swift move, he pushed his cock inside her.
“—I fuck you just like that. You liked it hard and fast.”
Heat stroked between her legs. Alexandra’s dug her fingernails into the upholstery of the chaise. She required something to anchor her, for if she let go, she would grasp him by the collar of his jacket. Nip at his skin. Lose herself in him as easily as being swept into the sea.
Control. Control.
But he leaned in once more, his low voice sending a shiver through her. “Answer me one question, Alex.” His lips brushed the skin of her throat. “Are you wet right now?”
She swallowed hard. Part of her wanted to pretend she hadn’t heard, but his question burned her ears, and she couldn’t stop the answer anymore than she could stop wanting him. “Yes,” she breathed.
Nick dropped his forehead against her shoulder with a groan. “Christ god,” he whispered. “I misspoke before. I would give up every fucking thing I own if you let me kiss you just once.”
Yes. Say yes. It doesn’t have to mean anything. He’s not asking for your heart. It doesn’t have to—
Below stairs, a door slammed shut. It jolted Alexandra to awareness: they were in a club in Mayfair where anyone could discover them. She jerked away from Nick and stood. “We have to go. I need—”You.“I need air.”
Without waiting for him to follow, Alexandra fled the room.
Chapter 21
When they arrived at the Brimstone, Alex strode past the kitchens and up the stairs to the club’s private wing. Thorne ignored the curious stares of his staff and hurried after her. The entire hackney ride home, she had huddled to one side, her face a silent message:Not now.
But he had to say something. Apologize? Tell her he loved her? Christ if he knew.
“Alex.”
She paused at her bedchamber door, but didn’t turn when he approached. Thorne reached for her, settling a hand gently on her arm. Some ragged sound left her, almost like an acknowledgment. An admission of her feelings.
Alex wanted him.
