'I've been trying to tell you that,' he said dryly. 'You should run in terror when you see me coming.'
'I'm not afraid of you. I know you would never hurt me.'
Her utter confidence in the goodness of his character rattled him to the core. God help him if she ever came to care for him. He would never be able to resist her.
'How can you know that?' he challenged. 'My intentions toward you are not honorable.'
'Is that so? Then why do you wish to speak with me in a place where you can't take advantage?'
'Why don't you ask me instead what I'd do if you went further into the garden with me?'
Julienne crossed her arms and gave him a chastising look. 'Why is it so important to maintain your dissolute image?'
Mocking her, he crossed his arms and raised a sardonic brow. 'Why is it so difficult for you to collect that it's not merely an image?'
She pursed her lips.
He growled low in his throat. 'Damn you, Julienne! Your girlish fantasies about me are just that-fantasies. I've ruined dukes and then tumbled their wives. I've-' His voice choked into silence, his throat refusing to form the sounds that would drive her away.
Her gaze narrowed. 'Because if you were really as wicked as you say, you would have divested me of my virginity that night in your club. But you didn't. I'd wager I could lift up my skirts for you now and beg you to take me, and you wouldn't. You
'You innocent fool,' he bit out, suddenly furious that she would torture him so. 'Never challenge a man's virility. You force him to defend himself in the only way possible.'
Fuming and frustrated, wishing she would disdain him instead of entice him, Lucien wrapped his fingers around her elbow and dragged her away from the manse, descending the wide grassy steps into the darkened lower gardens. Julienne followed him easily, making no protest, and her acquiesce only inflamed him further. Finding a yew-enclosed alcove occupied by a marble statue, he pressed her against the cold stone with his aroused body and reclaimed her mouth.
His hands moved urgently over her curves, desperate for the feel of her satin skin. He tugged down the bodice of her gown, exposing her lush breasts. Pushing them up with his hands, Lucien licked a tender nipple, watching it pucker as the cool air drifted across the wet peak. 'God, your taste…' he groaned. 'It intoxicates me…'
She whimpered, her hands drifting into his hair, holding him close. 'Lucien.' Her voice, so husky and full of longing, urged him to greater heights of lust, but he held himself ruthlessly in check, gentling his touch even as he suckled voraciously at her breasts. His body shook with the force of his passion, but her pleasure was paramount, more important at this moment than his next breath.
Julienne pushed him away, presenting a tempting picture of wantonness with her breasts pressed upward by her gown, her nipples wet from his mouth. With challenge in her eyes, she lifted her skirts with a courtesan's grace, slowly exposing her long, graceful legs. Then her thighs. And then the honeyed curls of her sex. She widened her stance in open invitation.
'Lucien,' she whispered, a blush suffusing the delicate skin of her chest before moving up her throat to her cheeks. 'You will drive me to madness before you are finished with me.'
He wanted to reassure her and promise her things he never thought he could promise anyone. But he knew it would be wrong to say such things, to offer hope for a future that could never be. Desperate with need, and angry with her for being the cause of that need, he tore open the placket of his breeches and allowed his engorged cock to spring free.
He would show her what kind of man he was and ruin her for any other. She would hate him when he was through, but that was for the best. 'I'm going to fuck you,' he promised with savage intent, knowing the act with her could never be so base. 'I'm going to keep you pinned against that statue, filled with my cock, until you scream from the pleasure.'
With one hand under her thigh, Lucien lifted her leg, opening her wider. The head of his shaft found her, and bending his knees, he pressed for entry. She was so tight, but so hot and wet. She felt wonderful, and her helpless moan as he slid deeper into her made him mindless. His entire body was wracked with shudders as he forced himself to press slowly, carefully. He was generously sized, and Julienne was so small. He couldn't bear to hurt her.
He watched her face as he took her, her features pale in the moonlight, like the statue behind her. Her eyes gazed luminously into his, their depths burning with desire and undeserved affection. She should be frightened, but instead she trusted him implicitly. The way she looked at him made it impossible to breathe. He stilled, held rigid by the moment.
Julienne was correct. He couldn't take her like this, like a whore in someone's garden. And he couldn't make her hate him. It ripped at him to even think of it. With a tortured curse, Lucien pulled away, the heavy weight of his erection slipping from her body. She sobbed in protest, and the sound broke the heart he'd forgotten he had.
With his eyes squeezed shut, blocking out the sight of her, Lucien turned blindly away. His chest heaved with his breathing, his body hard, his blood hot. His cock ached with the pressure of unspent desire, every muscle burning with tension.
And then suddenly his cock was drenched in moist heat. Instinctively he tried to back away, but Julienne's hands gripped the cheeks of his ass and kept him still. He looked down, his eyes wide with stunned amazement, as she took more of his shaft into her delectable mouth.
In all of his life, with all of the women he'd been with, in all of the positions and places he'd been, Lucien had never seen anything as erotic as Julienne sucking his cock on her knees in the grass, her breasts spilling over the top of her gown, her lush form turned to silver in the moonlight.
Her attentions were unschooled, innocent, and all the more effective because of it. Her tongue swirled around the head, her mouth pulsing with a gentle suction, her fingertips kneading the clenching cheeks of his buttocks. She pulled her head back and then pushed forward again, her mouth stretched wide to accommodate his size.
Julienne rode his erection with heartening enthusiasm, making soft little humming noises as she sucked on him, and her enjoyment increased his a hundredfold. Unfamiliar with the act, she took him with shallow strokes, but the pleasure was still intense, brought on as much by her selfless giving as the burning that spread from his groin and coursed through his veins.
Lucien threw his head back and growled deep in his throat, his hands drifting into the golden curls at her nape, directing her rhythm, taking care not to completely disrupt the stylish arrangement of her hair. His hips pumped in an unconscious tempo, gently fucking her mouth, as his body sought the relief it could find only with Julienne. Her tongue dipped into the tiny hole at the tip of his cock, and his sac tightened, his shaft swelled. 'Pull away, sweet,' he gasped. 'I'm close… I can't…'
Julienne ignored his direction and sucked him harder, driving him mad, until he came in an orgasm so intense he swayed on his feet, his seed flooding her mouth, pouring out the depth of his lust and longing. Lucien cried out her name, grateful she held his hips so he didn't fall to his knees and crush her. Blood roared in a raging torrent through his veins, making his ears ring and his eyesight fade to blackness.
He had never come so hard in his life, his cock jerking until he was emptied.
When Julienne rose to her feet, wiping her mouth with the palm of her glove, her lovely face was alight with satisfaction. Trembling, Lucien leaned against her in a weary embrace, sated to his very soul.
Chapter Six
Julienne held Lucien tightly to her, bearing his weight as best she could, her heart light and rilled with joy that she had given him such pleasure. She licked her lips, tasting him, and felt a surge of female triumph at her accomplishment. The sensation was heady. Unable to contain it, Julienne laughed with delight.
'You find this to be funny?' he asked, his husky voice tinged with wry amusement. 'You will be the death of
