Page 53 of The Last Chance
“Us as we might have been had life treated us fairly.”
She caressed his chest. “Sneaking into hidden places to steal forbidden kisses? Where nothing else matters but pleasing each other?”
She painted an idyllic picture. A glimpse of heaven on earth.
“Yes.” A life where she would be his priority.
“It sounds divine.”
He could not afford to dwell on the thought. He had to meet with his brothers tomorrow and inform them of the threats. They were grown men who deserved to know the truth. Their safety would be his focus then.
“Did you mean what you said, Joanna? Do you want me to devour your mouth? Do you want to feel my tongue sliding over yours, my hands on your body? Or was it all an act to please the crowd?”
“I want all of those things,” she uttered, her breath a mist of white in the cool night air. “The crowd merely allowed me to say what I’ve wanted to say all day.”
His gaze moved to her bare shoulders. “Are you cold?”
“A little, but I have a plan to keep warm.”
She responded by wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him in the darkness. Her lips were soft and pliant andhis. She would always be his. Touching her would always feel like he had found his way home.
He deepened the kiss, drinking from her like he was dying of thirst. The desire to touch her intimately, to be the first man to make her climax—the only damn man—throbbed in his fingers, his lust a potent beat in his blood.
He tore his mouth from hers with a gasp. “I’m going to take liberties but don’t want to frighten you.”
She pressed a chaste kiss to his lips. “You could never frighten me.”
“You’re one of the few people in London who can say that.”
“No one knows you like I do.”
“You only know one part of me.” He dreaded to think what she would do when she saw the savage in him, pounding men with his fists, reclaiming debts, knowing the innocent would suffer. “I’ve done things you would find abhorrent. I’m ruthless in business. I take no prisoners.”
“You’re a loving family man.”
“I’d tear anyone apart who tried to hurt them.”
“And yet I find your strength arousing, not terrifying.”
“Why?” he demanded.
“I cannot define what exists between us. All I know is it’s mutual and so powerful I’m not thinking about finding Venus, only anticipating the moment your lips take mine.”
That moment came less than a second later.
Their mouths collided in a kiss to rock the heavens. The sudden urgency to ease a physical ache had them grasping each other, their roving hands mimicking the frantic movements of their lips.
He was drowning in the smell and taste of her. He was lost as he drank her in, her essence filling his body like she belonged there. Yet it wasn’t enough.
“Tell me you want more,” he growled, moving to rain kissesdown her slender neck and bare shoulder. He meant to brand her, leave his mark on every inch of her porcelain skin.
She tilted her head. “When it comes to you, I’m insatiable.”
“Do you touch yourself, Joanna?”
She hesitated.
“Tell me,” he whispered. “You can tell me anything.”
