He smiled intently. “Consider it an incentive to learn more.”
Her eyes couldn’t get any narrower; they gleamed like molten gold. With her hand trapped in his, no more than an inch separated them, separated the black bombazine covering her breasts from his chest.
“What, then?”
Her voice had lowered, her tone provocative, challenging, demanding. A tone that, despite all, certainly despite her intention, racked his arousal one notch higher.
She held his gaze. “What do you want?”
The answer was obvious. “A kiss.”
“A kiss?”
Her expression was, to him, transparent; she’d guessed his direction regarding payment correctly. She wasn’t surprised by his choice; instead, she was…
Angry all over again. He saw the flash of temper in her eyes in the instant before she wrenched her hand from his slackened grasp, snapped, “Very well,” reached up with both hands, framed his face, moved into him-and kissed him.
With all the passion her temper had stirred.
With all the heat, all the fire pent up inside her.
It was a relief to let it go. Letitia let every reservation, every barrier she had, all the walls she’d erected over the long years to bank her passion, fall. Simply fall to the ground.
Let all the yearning in her passionate soul free.
He wanted a kiss? Very well. She would give him one, one he wouldn’t soon forget, and gain as much as she gave-for one long moment revel as the woman she used to be.
His.
She wasn’t the least bit surprised when he reacted, when he wrapped his arms about her and hauled her against his chest. It had always been like that-her passion effortlessly igniting his.
His lips firmed, then he tilted his head, the kiss changed and he was in command, so he could part her lips and invade her mouth and lay claim.
And send her senses soaring.
Heat poured through her, welled and swelled and spread. She could feel it in him, that same helpless reaction, in the hot kisses he pressed on her, the scorching heat between them as he stole her breath, then gave it back.
Need and desire infused her, and him, there, potent and real in the hardness of his lips, in the grip of his hands on her back.
She would have laughed if she could have, thrown back her head in sheer joy. In the indescribable delight of feeling alive again, of feeling lust, desire, and physical need again.
Of being his again, for however short a time.
She grasped the moment voraciously, tunneled her fingers into his hair and gripped his skull, clung, hung on as they swirled in the spiraling vortex that had risen up and seized them. Frankly reveled in the knowledge that she could still lure him, could provoke the languid lion to action, and more, could still arouse him.
That last was beyond question. The hard ridge pressed against her belly was testament enough to his state. As were his increasingly hungry, nay ravenous, kisses.
She urged him on. Reached up and wound her arms about his neck, pressing against him in flagrant invitation.
Need flared deep inside. Hotter than she remembered, molten and greedy.
And suddenly the kiss wasn’t enough.
Dragging her hands from his hair, she pressed her palms to his shoulders, ran them
She knew what it felt like to touch his skin, to feel it against hers. The memories surged, brilliant moments that had tided her over all the long years since. They erupted into her reeling consciousness, and compelled.
Then his hands were on her, closing about her breasts and kneading, sculpting her body, blatantly possessive, and she had to respond.
To his heat and his need and his desire.
To the passion he pressed on her through the kiss, through the commanding, demanding caresses that set her skin afire, that flayed her nerves with sensual pleasure, and an explicit promise of more to come.
She had to have that more.
Had to make him want as she did, make him desire as she did. To strip away the studied calm with which he faced the rest of the world and touch the real man-the warrior, the ruthless demanding conqueror-beneath.
The knowledge that she could had always thrilled-a thrill she’d never thought to feel again. But he was there, arms like steel trapping her, his lips on hers, his tongue plundering her mouth, his large hard hands sliding down to cup her bottom and shift her provocatively against him again…and nothing else mattered.
She pressed his coat wide, fell on the buttons closing his shirt, returned his kiss with a fervor to match his. To taunt, to incite, to demand.
And he gave her what she wanted, dropped every last shield and joined her on that primitive sensual plane on which they’d always danced.
She wasn’t even aware when they sank to the floor, to the silk rug that lay between the sofas.
Christian drew her down beside him. Thought had long flown. Instinct ruled.
In asking for a kiss, he hadn’t expected this-an explosion of need, his as well as hers, a raging fire in his blood he was unable to deny, to control, to even guide. A conflagration from which there was no drawing back.
She was the heat he’d been searching for, the warmth, the life. She was raw passion and need, a bright, slender, scorching flame he’d never been able to forget.
Yet he’d forgotten the danger of playing with fire.
She’d set him alight, and now he burned.
No other woman had ever been able to cinder his control, not in any circumstances and certainly never with just a kiss.
His only consolation was that on the plane of need they’d breached, she had no more control than he.
She wanted him with the same urgent scorching passion as he wanted her. In that, nothing had changed.
As he slid free the last button closing her bodice and yanked the fabric aside, slid his hand beneath and with a flick of his fingers dispensed with her chemise, and finally, finally, after twelve long years, set his hand to her firm flesh, she arched into him, then sighed.
So did he. For one finite moment he savored the silken skin beneath his palm, then she wriggled, urgent and demanding, and he bent his head and set his lips to her flesh-to taste and possess and drive her wild.
How long he managed to string out the heated moments, he couldn’t tell, but he doubted it was long; they were both too hungry-their passions too long denied-too desperate for all that they both knew could be to linger.
As he pushed up her black skirts and exposed her long legs, ivory pale and so familiar just a glimpse of them sent yet more heat racing to his groin, he didn’t even wonder whether she would stop him.
She’d found the buttons at his waistband, then she found him-and his world rocked. He paused, eyes closed, felt every touch of her too knowing fingers, their hungry, greedy stroking, felt her simple possession like a brand, not just on his skin but in his brain; head back, he groaned.
Heard the delighted chuckle she gave.
That acted like a spur, pricking sharp and deep, as she’d known it would. In this arena, they’d always wrestled for supremacy, and while he usually won, she held enough power in her Vaux soul, enough passion, to challenge him.
To provoke him as no other woman ever had. Ever could.
Even as he thrust one knee between hers, forced her legs apart and touched her, even as his fingers delved in her wet heat, stroked, then penetrated, then thrust more deeply-even as she gasped and clutched his upper arms, a supplicant surrendering to her master, breathlessly, wordlessly, begging him for more-he knew it was all illusion. That he was as much her slave as ever she was his.
He yielded to the urgent tug of her hands, yielded to his own raging desire, and moved over her, spreading her
