Page 34 of Her Beautiful Bastard
She slowly deflated, her anger melting away to be replaced by the same pity she’d experienced when finding him alone in his study late at night. It was the same heart-wrenching empathy that had led her to bring him dinner, to offer him her company for a short time.
“What changed?” she asked, searching for his eyes, regretting that she could not see into the dark depths.
“I met you,” he murmured, his lips skimming her forehead, angling toward one of her eyebrows.
She sighed when his lips pressed down in a fleeting kiss. “Mr. Clayton—”
“I hadn’t touched her in months the night we met,” he whispered against her temple, kissing her again there. “And I haven’t touched a woman since … not until right now.”
Her breath hitched, then began racing as if she’d been running, her heart once again threatening to beat right out of her chest. “Mr. Clayton …”
His hands came to her waist, his fingers sinking into flesh she found to be entirely too soft, but that he touched with such reverence, urgency radiating from the tips of his fingers and into her skin.
“I have wanted,” he continued. “I have yearned and been tempted. There have been many opportunities for me to commit adultery, to sate my needs. But a part of me—the part that loved the angelic-looking girl with the powerful father—would not let me. I did not care that she’d stopped giving me her devotion … a part of me would not let me stop giving her mine.”
“What changed?” she asked again, wanting to know,needingto know.
“I discovered a real angel,” he replied, and this time, his mouth was right against the corner of hers, less than an inch away from gracing her with a kiss. “And I realized that I’d never known what true devotion looked like, what purity and goodness were. I didn’t knowyou, Lydia. Finding you that night, seeing in you all the things I had been missing … it made me hate myself for building my entire life around an illusion. It made me angry that I married Dru when I did, when I should have waited.”
She trembled as his hands came around to her back, his fingers spread, spanning her shoulders, pulling her closer, so close that not a breath of space existed between them.
“Waited for what?” she whispered, her lips parting just as his soft sigh skimmed across her lips.
“For you,” he murmured just before fitting his mouth over hers for the first time in four long years.
She hadn’t realized how badly she’d wanted it, how starved she’d been for it, until the moment their lips met, coming together in a melding of breaths and flesh. Her memory of their first kiss had been a poor substitute played out in her mind so many times that it had started to lose its sharpness. It felt so distant that it had become like some sort of dream. But this … this was real and raw, and in such sharp focus that she could do nothing but sink into it, drown in him, and in perfect bliss.
His lips were soft yet firm, just like she remembered, moving over hers gently at first, and then with a building urgency that took her breath away. His tongue skimmed her lower lip, his hands tightening at her back, holding her against him, pressing her breasts against his chest. She opened her mouth to him, tilting her head back to accept his invading tongue and meet it with her own. Hot flesh touched hot flesh, and they moaned together, Sinclair’s sound deep and guttural, hers high and breathy. His taste flooded her palate, the slight hint of brandy mingling with that of oranges.
He pulled away for a moment, tearing a shrill cry of regret from deep in her chest. She reached out for him, clutching the lapels of his coat and drawing him back in, now desperate for more of what she’d gone without for four years. Her senses had been dulled all this time, she realized as he came back to her with a low groan, his teeth nipping at her lower lip before he slipped his tongue back inside, consuming her with a desperation she felt to her core. She had forgotten what it was to feel, to live, to revel in primal sensation. She was akin to some storybook princess, awakened by a kiss, brought alive by a touch … arching into him as something long dead sparked back to life in her.
He shifted one of his legs between hers and pressed against her, his hold lifting her feet from the floor and straddling her over his thigh. She gasped into his mouth, shudders wracking her in response to that hard limb pressed right up against her mound. A rapid pulsation began there, her hips moving of their own accord to grind her pelvis against him, seeking out pressure, friction, closeness. Even pressed so tightly against her and his tongue thrusting into her mouth, he wasn’t close enough, deep enough.
He palmed her buttocks, squeezing, kneading, pulling her against him so that she could feel the strength of his erection, hard as flint now.
“Lydia,” he moaned against her mouth. “You’re just like I remember you. So sweet, so perfect, so responsive.”
She whimpered in response when his lips strayed to her chin, her throat, the patch of skin just below her collarbone and above her bodice.
“I’ve dreamed of you, angel,” he rasped against her ear, nibbling the lobe, teasing the edge with his tongue. “I’ve lain in my bed alone and stroked my cock to thoughts of you and only you … under me, on top of me, naked and spread for me. Tell me I was not alone. Tell me you wanted me, that you thought of me, too.”
“I … I …”
He bit her shoulder, and she cried out, swiftly clenching her teeth to silence herself. If they kept this up, they would be discovered, for certain.
“Say it, Lydia,” he demanded, his hands skimming her thighs, squeezing, exploring, his lips roaming to kiss whatever exposed skin he could find. “Tell me.”
“I … I thought of you,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he groaned. “Tell me more.”
“I dreamed about you,” she told him, the darkness emboldening her, making it easy to say such things. “So many nights, I woke up sweating and shivering, tears in my eyes because a mere dream could never satisfy me.”
He sighed, lazily nibbling on her neck, his tongue flicking out at her pulse now and then. “What did I do to you in those dreams? Did I kiss you … touch you … undress you?”
“Yes,” she moaned, her hands traveling up and into his hair, holding him against her, neck arching in an offering. “You did.”
“Where?” he urged, dipping his head to nuzzle her breast through her gown. “Where did I kiss you and touch you?”
