Page 27 of A Touch Wicked
The breath she let out was unsteady. She couldn’t speak when her corset joined her other clothes on the floor. He had her nearly naked, and somehow she knew it was to force her to let down her guard. He was unwrapping her secrets, her armor, everything she had put between them until nothing remained.
“No response?” He placed a kiss along the back of her neck. It should have been a gift; it felt more like a punishment. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, as long as we both get what we want.”
James tore her chemise up the back. Emma shivered at the cold air, hating how conflicted she was between wanting to explain, wanting him to continue.
Wanting him.
He knew this; his hands played her as easily as a master pianist, striking all the right keys. Even in his anger, his breathing was as uneven as hers. The arousal pressed against her didn’t lie; he wanted her too. But it was different this time, tainted by her secrets, by her lies.
“What we both want?” she asked, certain he heard how she barely managed the words.
He slid her drawers down her thighs until they pooled at her feet. She was naked now, every shield stripped away except for her mask — and if he untied it now, she would have let him.
But he left it in place, a choice she knew was deliberate.
“Isn’t this why you come to the Masquerade?” His lips ghosted over her shoulder and his hand slid across her breasts, inching closer to her thighs. “You want me to fuck you.”
Helplessly, Emma threw her head back when his fingers settled between her legs.
“Yes,” she breathed, but even that was a lie. She came now for him, for their conversation, for his touch, more.
Everything.
“So wet,” he murmured, sliding two fingers inside her. “I don’t even have to touch you and you’re ready. I suppose that’s what happens when a bored debutante can’t have the man she wants and has her first taste of the forbidden. She craves it.” He misinterpreted her flinch as an admission of guilt. “Isn’t this what you meant by wanting too much?”
Emma wanted to deny it, but she couldn’t, not without revealing herself. His fingers were still inside her, working in and out and she felt her orgasm building. Responses were beyond her.
She could only gasp out one word: “Please.”
“Shhh. I won’t make you beg.”
Clothing rustled as he unbutton his trousers. Then she felt him against her, hard and hot and so ready. But when she moved to face him, he caught her wrist with his free hand and pressed her to the door.
“No. Not facing each other. Let’s not pretend this time, not even with the courtesy of your fake name. You want my cock inside you. Yes or no?”
“James—”
His grip tightened on her wrist and his other hand stayed between her legs, moving in and out faster now.
“No names.Yes or no?”
She was so close now. After their weeks together, he knew how to make her come, how to leave her shaking with ecstasy until she felt like she’d float away without him there to anchor her.
And he used that against her now, until the only word she was capable of wasyesandyesandyes.
James thrust inside her. His strokes were hard and fast and frenzied; he pounded into her with enough force to shake the door on its hinges.
It ought to have felt impersonal. It didn’t. His hands were everywhere, stroking down her hips, her breasts. He kissed and licked across her spine, whispering filthy words in her ear that brought her to orgasm faster.
She cried out her release, but he kept going. He fucked her like he wanted to mark her soul. It was lovemaking with the single intent of forcing her to forget every man she had ever been with, until they were replaced with the memory of this.
Of him.
No one else.
He slid out of her and came with a rough groan, sinking his teeth into her shoulder. The pain brought her back to this room, this moment. Where the only sound was their breathing, the blood roaring in her ears.
Then he pressed his forehead against her and whispered, “Marry me.”
