Chapter Three #2
Oh God. She flashed her gaze to his, wondering if he could tell she was trying to imagine how his mouth would feel against her own. Her stomach tensed even as her bones turned to sand.
In the distance, the muted thump of music changed. There was a cheer of approval.
Whatever reaction flickered over her expression had him asking, “Do you want to rejoin the party? Dance?”
“God, no.” She instantly wanted to bite back how telling her repulsed reaction was, lest it get back to Giselle. Giselle. She would be looking for him. Both of them, maybe. “You should go if you want to.” She moved so she wasn’t blocking the door and walked her empty glass to the sideboard.
“I don’t want to be here, either. I’m waiting for my driver to take me back to London.”
“Oh?” She turned to face him. “Any chance I could go with you?”
“There is every chance.” The timbre of his voice, so filled with masculine appreciation, made her toes curl. “He should be here in thirty minutes.”
“Thanks. I’m, um, Jade.” She was the quintessential redhead who blushed way too easily.
She pretended it wasn’t happening and met him in the middle of the room to offer her hand, holding her breath at the same time.
Not everyone knew she was Noel Atbridge’s illegitimate daughter, but enough did that her reputation typically preceded her. And what a reputation it was.
She hands it out like samples at the fudge counter.
She was treated accordingly.
“Luca.” His expression didn’t alter and he didn’t retract his offer. When he took her hand, he kept it, caressing the back with his thumb before he drew her across the room with him as he set his glass on the edge of the desk.
“Dance with me here, then.” He turned back to her and brought her hand to his shoulder, then found her waist with his other hand.
“W-why?” Her breath stuttered in her lungs. The music was only a thudding heartbeat pulsing through the walls. The atmosphere in this room was both institutional and intimate with the lines of books and that single light burning on the desk.
“I like to dance. Don’t you?”
“Yes.” But she mostly she danced alone, in the privacy of her flat.
The sensible voice of self-preservation inside her said, Don’t do this, but the feel of his hand on her waist was enough to weaken her resolve. Another voice said, Who’s going to know? And, Why can’t I? It’s only a dance.
Why couldn’t she, just once, give in to impulse? To pleasure?
She pressed herself closer, letting her arms twine around his neck, inviting him to close his arms possessively around her.
Then she basked in the sensations of heat and strength.
They swayed and the brush of their bodies felt both safe and dangerous.
Terrifying enough to make her tremble, but exciting enough to make her want to caress his neck and rub against him and stoke the wonderful sparks that were crackling and glinting inside her.
She wanted to revel in the power of this strange storm he was inciting through nothing more than being here.
They were barely moving, barely touching.
They hadn’t even kissed, but she was aware of the column of his erection against her stomach.
Her nipples were stinging, feeling taut and abraded by the silk lining of her dress.
Her skin was tight, her eyes damp. There was a heavy ache in the notch of her thighs.
A profound yearning compelled her hand to the back of his head as she lifted her mouth to his.
It’s only a kiss, she thought dimly, but it was so much more than that.
It was a stumble into the outer universe where they melded and became pure energy.
She was aware of the corporeal sensations—the erotic scrape of his lips across hers, hard and hungry and possessive.
The pressure of his fingertips biting into her back and hips, the faint taste of scotch on his tongue and the hiss of his breath.
Or was that her gasp of growing arousal?
She was aware of the crispness of his collar and the heat of his neck and the faint scratch of worsted wool against her inner thigh.
Then there was the reaction within her, which was even more cataclysmic.
His roaming hands turned her blood to golden honey.
Her muscles wilted. Her body arced as though caught in an electrical charge that pulled her soul into his.
Her head felt too heavy, exposing her throat to the damp streak of his kisses into her neck.
Her naked breast swelled into the hand that slid past her neckline to claim it.
A feral moan left her as his fingers skimmed her nipple, then caught it in a delicate pinch.
She dropped the thin strap off her shoulder so her breast was fully exposed.
He growled out something unbridled and turned to press her into sitting on the desk before he bent and captured her distended nipple in the scorching pull of his mouth.
She braced her hand behind her, sifting her fingers through his hair, head tilted back at the sheer luxury of indulging herself. She was pure animal, pure being. Nothing but sensation and all of it was rapturous.
She liked sex. She reveled in being touched and held and feeling close to someone. She liked how the intense pleasure erased the trials of life, leaving her relaxed when she was usually nothing but coiled tension.
Admitting to that had gotten her in trouble before, though.
Tiny amber lights blinked on inside her, warning her that people would find out about this.
She would soon wear a fresh shade of scarlet.
Jade wasn’t allowed to indulge herself, or forget her place, or have exciting hookups in dangerous places.
But this feels so good was her next thought, as he straightened and kissed her, pushing her legs farther apart to stand between them.
His erection was right there, steely hard, threatening to singe through wool and cotton.
As his tongue plunged between her lips, she thought, Yes, please. She curled her ankle behind his thigh, encouraging him to rock his hips and make them both shiver in reaction.
No one knew they were in here, her inner harlot whispered. The door was locked. It had been so long since she had felt like this: desired and sensual and irresistible. In fact, she wasn’t sure she had ever felt like this—as though having sex right now, with this man, was beyond necessary.
“Do you have a condom?” she had the sense to ask in a voice laced with desire.
He dragged his head up. One hand still possessively cradled her breast. The other was flat on the desktop beside her hip so he wouldn’t fully knock her over. His gaze was hazed with lust, seeming not to comprehend the question. Then his teeth flashed in a wickedly handsome smile.
“I do.” His warm touch left her breast and he pushed two fingers into his shirt pocket, withdrawing a little gold square.
It was like a magician’s trick, one that was too much of a delightful discovery to question the premeditation that had gone into its appearance.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
She nodded, aware that some of her urgency was the nervous tension of doing something she shouldn’t—like shoplifting or ignoring a no-trespassing sign. She might never get a chance like this again without getting caught, so she clasped the moment in greedy, wicked hands.
He loomed closer, sweeping an arm behind her to clear the desk, knocking a cup of pens, a laptop stand and a photo out of the way before he pressed her onto her back. His other hand slid up her skirt and caught her knickers, twisting them down her hips and legs to leave them dangling off her ankle.
Later, she would remember how well-practiced that had seemed, how he’d had a condom at the ready, proving he was only here at this party to hook up.
Right now, she was more consumed by the way he pushed up her skirt and hitched her hips closer to the edge, then knelt to set her thighs on his shoulders.
When he lavished her most intimate flesh with a stomach-dropping lick, she jolted at the intensity of the sensation.
I don’t know him, she thought as he tasted her blatantly and thoroughly, but it was so excruciatingly pleasurable, she could only groan with abandon and clutch her fist in his hair and arch against the hard desk.