Page 4 of Once Upon a Dream
“Hello, wife,” he says.
2
“Ex-wife,” I say faintly, my breath caught somewhere in my chest.
He nods, that full mouth tipped up at the corners.
The stubble on his jaw is…edible. There’s no other word to describe it. I have the strange and dismaying realization that I could spend hours licking his face.
“Ex-wife,” he repeats, and for some reason, it sounds just as intimate as when he said the word wife. Maybe it’s his voice, which has always been husky and deep, or maybe it’s the way he’s looking down at me, his eyes searing hot trails down my dress and then back up again. “You look lovely tonight.”
“You look handsome.”
It’s true. Even with a white mask over the top half of his face, he is the handsomest man I’ve ever seen. He’s always been the handsomest man I’ve ever seen.
I try to regain my footing. “Lorne. What are you doing here tonight?”
“What, a simple lawyer can’t come to the Constantine masquerade?”
“You’re not a simple lawyer,” I reply. “You work for an environmental nonprofit that’s probably sued half the people here tonight.”
He lifts a shoulder in a rakish shrug, still smiling. “I’ve never minded mixing business with pleasure.”
“I seem to remember a lot less pleasure when we were married.”
I’m too busy arguing about this to argue about him leading me onto the dance floor, which is how we end up facing each other in the rustling whirl of dancers.
“And whose fault was that?” he murmurs, pulling me into his arms. His hand settles on the small of my back—intensifying the prickling there—and I’m so close to his chest that the fabric of his tuxedo lapels glides against my bodice. Under the tulle, my nipples harden. “Hmm?”
I want to say it was his fault, but of course, I can’t. I was the political one, the ambitious one, the work all day and work all night one. I was the one too haunted by my past to relax enough to enjoy the present.
And of course, there had been one other difference between us.
One too vast to bridge. Too deep to even try.
“Morgan,” he says firmly. “Answer me. Whose fault was it?”
I glare up at him. “Mine, if that’s what you want to hear.”
He spins me gracefully around, and the prickling of my dress feels like full-on burning now. But the silky underthings are doing their job too, and I’m very aware of the silk cupping me between my legs as I dance, of the delicate garter belt around my waist. Of how my nipples push against the tulle of my dress.
“It’s not what I want to hear, little witch,” he says, his voice going a little rough, a little possessive over his pet name for me. “Because you’re wrong, you know. It was my fault too.”
I’m so surprised by this concession that I don’t know what to say.
He just gives me another small smile. “Morgan le Fay struck speechless. I never thought I’d see the day.”
And I’m speechless still. As we dance, the burning on my bottom is reaching the point where I imagine flames dancing along my skin. And then Lorne’s hand slides down from the small of my back to grip my ass hard.
Pain—sharp and fiery—singes my skin. And then right behind it, right on its heels, are contrails of wet, achy pleasure. My cunt kicks hard enough with need that I gasp and stumble, although Lorne keeps us gliding effortlessly through the steps.
His hand stays though. A handprint-shaped sizzle of pain right on my ass.
“Lorne,” I manage. “You can’t—there’s something wrong with my dress.”
“There’s something wrong with your dress? Not ‘Stop, we’re divorced’?”
I blink up at him. I try to say stop, I really do. But that stubble and that mouth and those amber eyes behind that mask…
