Chapter 4
4
I set the bottle down and gathered my wits, turning to greet him properly. This was the man my father wanted me to marry?
Oh god, I’d been vicious with him in the boathouse.
I aimed a loaded pistol at him! I told him to go fuck himself!
But he’d kind of deserved it.
The son of a bitch must’ve known the entire time that we’d meet later. Why did he let me humiliate myself like that?
It didn’t matter. I could salvage this. I had to salvage this, or he might tell Daddy the whole story.
I extended my hand, giving him my sweet smile. “I’m Juliet. I’m sorry I wasn’t myself earlier.”
He grasped my hand, but instead of shaking it, he tugged it up to his mouth and planted a gentle kiss between my knuckles. His lips caressed my skin, every bit as soft as I’d imagined, but it was the light brush of his lip ring that made me shiver.
This was bad. This was really bad. I had absolutely no chance of keeping my wits about me with this guy.
I wanted to run from the room instead of facing him, but I fell back on a lifetime of training. Be polite. Do as you’re told. Don’t make a fuss.
“So we meet again. Drink?” I tried to sound relaxed.
“Whatever you’re having.”
I was still freaking out, but my hands were steady. I went through the ritual of making the drinks: measuring the gin and ice in a shaker, executing a perfect pour into a chilled glass, perching two olives daintily on the rim. It gave me a moment to compose myself, to feel back in control.
He watched my every move. “A martini? I would’ve pegged you for a champagne girl.”
It was decidedly not a compliment. His eyes scanned from my hair to my makeup to my gown, seeing me for the first time in the bright lighting.
“Champagne gives me a headache.” I smiled prettily through gritted teeth as I passed him one of the glasses.
He narrowed his eyes. “Drop the act.”
“What act?” I took a drink to stop from swearing at him again.
“Trying to pretend you’re a docile kitten when you were ready to shoot me an hour ago.”
I lifted the toothpick from the rim of my glass and slid an olive off with my teeth, watching him watch me.
A challenge glimmered in his eyes.
I raised my chin.
“I thought this meeting was with your father,” he said with a smirk that would’ve made Casanova blush. “You’re the one he sends to do his dirty work?”
Motherfucker. He didn’t even need to emphasize the word dirty for the innuendo to roll off his tongue. He knew exactly why I was there.
“If you’d prefer to marry him, I’d be happy to retrieve him for you.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Seduce him, Juliet. Don’t be a bitch to him.
Even his laughter sounded predatory, low and rumbling, somewhere between a warning and an invitation. “Based on your little performance in the boathouse, marriage isn’t what you want.” I opened my mouth to deny it, desperate for that not to get back to my father, but he cut me off. “Don’t bullshit me, Juliet. Why are you doing this?”
I blinked. “Because my father told me to.”
He stalked closer, placing a hand on each side of the bar next to my shoulders, effectively trapping me there. “Do you always do as you’re told?”
My heart thundered at his closeness. This wasn’t polite or proper, but instead of wanting to push him away, I wanted to pull him closer, to feel the hard planes I knew were hidden beneath his perfectly tailored tux.
I managed to keep my voice steady and aloof. “Not always. As you witnessed earlier.” I pressed my lips together, frustrated that he’d seen me so vulnerable. “But most of the time.”
He leaned closer, almost letting our bodies touch. “What about when you belong to another man? Will you still be obedient to your father then?”
I had to pause. Some na?ve part of my brain had assumed my father’s interests would always align with my future husband’s, so it wasn’t something I’d ever considered before. I twisted my fingers into the layers of my skirts, quickly trying to come up with the right answer. I wasn’t prepared for any of this.
I looked up at him from under my lashes. “I’ll still be loyal to my father. Not obedient.”
He smiled, and I felt it low in my stomach. I was desperate for what he promised with that smile...and it scared me. This was a man I could lose control with.
I swore he could see the fears swimming in my eyes, and it brought out the predator in him.
“If you belonged to me, would you be obedient?” He ran a thumb along my bottom lip, like he already owned me, and it sent delighted chills skittering down my spine.
I was shaking, but I felt alive and molten. I wanted him like I’d never wanted anyone in my life, and it had nothing to do with my father’s expectations.
“Yes,” I breathed.
He pulled me away from the bar and turned me around, placing my hands where his had been. He wrapped my hair around his hand and lifted it to brush possessive, searing kisses along the nape of my neck. In the mirror behind the bar, I could see the frown that creased his brow, which made him look like he was intently focused on devouring me. I was breathless from nothing more than kisses on the back of my neck.
He used his other hand to pull my skirts up. Then his rough palm suddenly skated over my thigh, and he pressed me back harder against his arousal. It was thrilling to feel how he wanted me too.
Touch me. Oh god, yes…more .
I didn’t say it, but he could feel my trembling thighs and panting breaths, the way I parted my legs wider, begging for it. I’d never let anyone touch me like this before, and I was desperate to know what came next. Sophia had taught me how to watch porn in secret, and I’d stolen some of my mother’s romance novels, so I knew the mechanics but had never expected to feel like I was combusting the very first time this happened.
I felt…reckless and needy, helpless and still somehow powerful because this man wanted me.
I gasped when his fingers slid over the satin of my panties. I didn’t want the smug bastard to feel how soaked they were, but I needed him to touch me more than I wanted to hide the effect he had on me. He teased his fingers under the side of the fabric, sliding up and down without touching me where it felt like I needed him most. I whimpered and rolled my hips, unsure of what I was even coaxing him to do.
“You really want this…” It wasn’t a question, not quite, but there was surprise in his gruff tone like I’d done something unexpected.
“ Please …”
He stopped moving. “Would you still want this if your father hadn’t sent you to charm me?”
How did he know the word my father had used?
I panted, trying to think clearly. I reached for some kind of answer that made me sound less pathetic, but all I could come up with was the truth. “I wanted this in the boathouse before I knew who you were.”
Like that was all the answer he needed, he tugged my panties to the floor in one swift movement, letting me step out of them before his fingers returned and he obliterated my understanding of pleasure. He pressed and rolled in clever controlled movements, swiftly bringing me close to release. I moaned and writhed, simultaneously reveling in the new sensation and yearning for something more.
He growled against my ear, “Would you let me sink into this tight pussy right here?”
“ Yes .” I was willing to let my first time be bent over a barstool if it meant I got to feel this with him.
He groaned. “You should demand your own pleasure first, princess.”
He lowered himself to the ground under the bar, kneeling before me in a ten-thousand-dollar tuxedo like it didn’t matter.
His dark eyes never left mine when his hands roamed under my skirts again, ever so slowly tracing a path to where I ached. He watched me with a hungry expression as he reached the apex of my thighs, like he was savoring my reactions as much as I was melting for his touch.
At first it was too light, but then I realized he was slowly building to something, deliberately drawing this out instead of getting me off as quickly as he could. He kept taking me higher, then letting the pleasure subside, then coaxing more from me again.
I fisted my hands, fighting the wanton part of me that wanted to weave my fingers into the long strands of his white-blonde hair. I needed to stay in control. There was too much at stake.
He looked at me curiously. “Why do you fight it, darling?”
I thrashed my head, trying to remember how to form a sentence that went beyond begging him for more. “We shouldn’t be doing this where anyone could walk in…”
His grin was dangerous. “If you still remember where you are, I need to try a little harder.” He ducked under my skirts, and the next thing I felt was the hot, wet slide of his tongue against my core. I gripped the bar harder and spread my thighs wider. It was like he knew my body better than I did, knew just what to do to make me mindless.
I didn’t know anything could feel this good!
He rolled his tongue over my clit with delicious pressure, holding my hips in place as I shook and moaned. It felt like I was coming apart with sensation, but he just kept going, never so much as pausing as I was slowly stripped of reason, existing only for the pleasure he drew from my body. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. I was so close, so desperately close.
He thrust two thick fingers inside me, and my knees started to buckle. The stretching pressure was intimate and intense, leaving me to wonder for a split second what losing my virginity with him would feel like, but then I lost the ability to think altogether. I rode out the most intense orgasm of my life, bucking and whimpering as he let me finish, still gripping my hip with one hand to keep me steady.
He stood slowly, meeting my gaze with an expression that was equal parts smug and lustful. Then he slid his fingers into his mouth and licked them clean.
He had every right to be smug. The man was a god of sex. Not that I’d ever had sex, but if there was something better than that, I wasn’t sure I’d survive it.
“What about you?” I asked in a husky voice I barely recognized.
He pushed me down to my knees. I’d never given a blow job before, but that didn’t stop me from scrambling to unfasten his pants.
He knocked my hands away. “Not yet, greedy girl. Turn around and show me how wet you are first.”
He leaned back against one of the stools, waiting for me to obey.
When he’d been in control, it had been easy to surrender to him and let it all happen, but this was harder. I bit my lip, hesitating.
“Typical spoiled brat,” he growled. “You promise to be obedient to get what you want, and then you immediately start to disobey. Show me .”
I gasped at the barked command even as I wanted to claw at him for calling me a spoiled brat. I gathered the voluminous layers of my skirt, trying to kneel and hold it all up, but he pushed me forward onto all fours.
“Let me help you,” he said, hiking the skirt up over my back to reveal my bare ass and pussy to him.
He teased a finger inside me. “I bet no one has ever made this pretty pussy come like that.” From the way he said it, he already knew the answer, and I hated him for being such a cocky bastard about it.
“No one has ever made me come, so it’s not exactly steep competition. Do you always fish for compliments?”
He ground his knuckles over my clit, and I moaned without meaning to, giving him yet another wordless compliment he obviously didn’t need. “Seems like your past sex partners weren’t trying very hard.” He rolled his thumb over my clit in torturous little circles as he thrust his fingers into me deeply this time. “I could make you come again in seconds.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, trying not to moan again. “I don’t have any past sex partners, jackass. Have you been living under a rock?”
Fuck, I was supposed to be nice to him, but I could barely remember why when he did that with his fingers. It felt so agonizingly good.
He went still, and I wanted to cry at the loss of sensation. “You’ve never…?”
I sighed at the disbelief in his tone. “As though it isn’t a publicly known fact?”
He smirked. “A fact created by the Bryson PR machine.”
“Well, it’s true,” I snapped. “One more thing for you to be smug about, I suppose. Isn’t a virgin bride what men like you value? Should I make you wait until the wedding?”
I was half venting and half taunting, still wanting him to just lose control and fuck me right there on the floor.
When he didn’t move, I turned around, but when I reached for him, his watch buzzed. He glanced at it. Then there was a brief second where he looked like he was considering something.
“I have to go,” he said definitively.
My stomach dropped. Now he didn’t want me?
I opened my mouth to question him, but he pressed his damp fingers against my lips. He lifted my chin, his eyes boring into mine. “Demand more for yourself, Juliet.”
What the fuck is going on?
“What…w-was this?” I stammered. Had he been testing me, and I failed? Was I too easy? Not experienced enough?
He shrugged. “I told you there’d be a price for my help.”
It felt like the floor had opened under me and I was Alice tumbling into the void.
He strode out through the room’s back entrance without another word.
Angry, confused tears burned my eyes, but I swallowed them back, not willing to fall apart.
I’d barely stood and straightened my gown when the other door opened, and my father walked in with a handsome dark-haired man who looked vaguely familiar.
“Kevin, this is my Juliet. Your Juliet if we can come to terms. Juliet, this is Kevin King.”
I could only stare at them for a horrifying moment, completely lost as to what to say.
Sorry, I thought the other guy was you and I let him go down on me and I’ve just realized I don’t even know his name, and ohmyfuckinggod, where are my panties?