Page 30 of You Only Love Twice
Gemma froze as prickles of arousal swept through her.
"Do you want to know something?" His thumb slid along the laced stretch of her corset. Hooking his fingers in the bottom laces, he began to haul it tight. Gemma's breath caught as her corset squeezed. "I don't think I'm the only one not unaffected. Am I,moy sladkiy yad?"
Sweet poison, am I?She hissed out a breath as her corset drew tighter. A damning slickness between her thighs betrayed her.
Two could play this game.
She'd forgotten that.
Her lungs arrested as the corset compressed her breasts.Submit,said his touch, and Gemma found she couldn't breathe. A fuzzy light-headed sensation swept through her, danger arousing her to the point of intoxication. Teeth bit into the hard muscle tracing from her neck to her shoulder.
A soft cry escaped her.
And then he let her go, and her corset slackened, allowing the trapped blood in her veins to flood into blood-starved skin. The rush of sudden sensation was blinding. But the way he controlled her so deftly turned her into a puddle of mush.
Gemma gasped, fingers curling against the stone.Dangerous, dangerous man. For he remembered what she liked, if nothing else.
"Are you wet, Miss Townsend?" His breath ghosted along the back of her neck, his voice softly amused with her unraveled state. "If I search between your thighs again, will your wetness slick my gloves? Could I taste it, if I put those fingers to my lips?"
Anger burned within her. He sounded so mocking. "Why don't you test your theory?"
"What's wrong, Miss Townsend? You like to flirt. You like to talk," he said, slipping her sleeve down over her shoulder. "I remember that. You ran rings around half the Blood—"
"Never you," she admitted. It was the first thing that caught her attention when he'd been trying to distract her from her target all those years ago.
A handsome man intercepting her on the dance floor, insisting upon a dance.
She'd catalogued him in an instant. Tall, his shoulders straining within the well-fitted coat he wore. A full, dangerous mouth that drew her gaze for a second look. Silvery hair that cascaded to his shoulders, the color somewhat akin to moonlight on snow. Unlike the rest of the Blood Court, he'd worn no extravagant cravat, and his waistcoat was black.
One of Sergey's many "friends" but her target had been Sergey. And handsome men came and went. There would be others.
Except....
Nothing she'd ever said had been able to sway him from her side. Everywhere she looked, Dmitri was simplythere. Sergey's guard dog, she'd groused to Malloryn one night when he'd wanted to know why she was finding this mission so difficult. She'd flirted, she'd handed him a ringing set down, she'd argued, then tried cool distance. Dmitri took it all in his stride, his gray eyes mocking her, as if he knew exactly what she was doing.
And Gemma had found herself distracted from her mission.
The seductress found herself seduced.
But she hadn't been the only one.
"Sometimes me," Obsidian admitted quietly. "But not this time. I know what you are now."
"Do you?"
"And if you think I'm going to fall into your honeyed trap, then you can think again."
He gave a little tug on her dress, nudging it to her hips and revealing every inch of her corset and chemise.
Gemma shivered as the chill of the room bit her skin. Wait. This was not quite going the way she'd planned. "What the hell are you doing? You've searched me from top to toe. It's not as though my dress contains some secret weapon."
"Not true," he pointed out, in a raw voice. "You are your greatest weapon." Fisting both hands in the edges of her gown, he wrenched them apart.
Fabric tore. Gemma gasped, as he stripped the fabric from her body as if it were mere cotton. "That's my favorite dress!"
"Was." He ripped it down her arms, stripping the sleeves over her hands. "I'm certain you have others."
"No, you don't understand." She glanced down at the forsaken remains of her gown in a puddle on the ground around her feet. "It’s a MadameLefoux. It cost me a fortune. The silk.... The silk is all the way from the White Court in China."
