I skim my hands along her sides, loving the way she trembles for me. I’m careful with the scar that runs along her rib cage, not because I think she’s fragile, but because it reminds me of the strength and courage of the extraordinary woman who bears it.
I meet her gaze as I tenderly caress her, savoring the feel of her under my fingertips. “You’re so beautiful, Melanie. Even here,” I tell her, carefully tracing my thumb over the raised and ragged skin of the injury that might have killed her.
I feel her tense under my touch. She tries to flinch away from my tender exploration of her scars. “Jared, don’t . . . not there.”
“Look at me, sweetheart.” I still until she finds the courage to obey my quiet command. “You’re beautiful, Melanie. You’re beautiful especially here, because you survived.” With my free hand, I reach up and rest my palm along her cheek. “I’ve already got every gorgeous inch of you branded into my mind. I could paint you just from memory. Right now, though, I want to taste you.”
“Jared . . .” A lost look fills her gaze, but her voice is filled with surrender.
I lower myself in front of her, until I’ve sunk to my knees. She makes a whimpering noise as I lean in and press a kiss to the scarred gash.
That whimper dissolves into a strangled cry when I move my mouth to the mound of her pussy and nip her over the top of the thin satin of her panties. The scent of her fills my nostrils, sweet and earthy and delicious.
And she’s wet. I slip my fingers inside her panties, into the slick heat of her folds. A groan tears out of me, possessive and untamed. Hunger lashes at me, the scent and feel of her on my fingers making me drunk with the need to have my fill.
Touching her like this isn’t enough. I need to feel her on my tongue. I move forward, burying my face in the musky sweetness of her. She gasps as I cleave into her pussy, licking and suckling, lapping at her like a cat in the cream.
Her pleasured, wordless cries mingle with the harsh sounds of our breathing. I want to make her scream. I want my whole damn house and half the city to know she’s mine now. As of this moment, I refuse to think she will ever belong to any other man again.
“Jared. Oh, God.”
The sound of my name voiced around a shuddery moan spurs me on. My mouth moves relentlessly against her tender flesh, my tongue dominating her clit until she’s bucking against my face and the scream I need to hear from her suddenly boils out of her, wild and uncontained.
“I’m sorry,” she gasps brokenly, her breathing ragged. “I’ve never made that sound before. I tried to hold it back, but I couldn’t.”
I grin up at her, my lips slick with her juices. “Darlin’, don’t ever apologize to me for that.”
My hands are rough as I undress her the rest of the way. My breath saws out of my lungs, driven by the racing tempo of my heart. All the blood in my body seems to be flowing in the same direction, making me harder than I’ve ever been in my life.
My jeans feel like sandpaper against my engorged length. Sweat dampens my bespoke shirt.
My head is filled with a hundred damn good reasons why I should end this now, before things go any further.
Before I allow myself to need Melanie Laurent—to want her in my life—any more than I already do.
Instead I rise to my feet. Cupping her nape in my firm grasp, I pull her to me for another kiss. Her nakedness sears me through my clothes. Her dusky, pleasured gaze still smolders with desire, reducing all my logic and good intentions to ashes.
Her lips curve playfully as she looks up at me. “How does it always end up that I’m the one standing naked all by myself with you, Mr. Rush?”
Before I can answer, she reaches up and begins unbuttoning my shirt. I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until her hands slide underneath the opened front and onto my bare skin. Her touch is light, but sure. Explorative, but not shy.
If I imagined in the beginning that she was innocent because of her prim dresses and fresh-faced beauty, her hands on me now obliterate all those misgivings.
Her palms skim down my abdomen, fingertips tracing the ridges in a way that makes my cock jump in envious anticipation. She lifts on her toes to kiss me while her hands work my belt loose and unfasten the button of my jeans.
I groan in warning as the rasp of the loosening zipper vibrates through my every awakened nerve ending. Her hand slips inside, wrapping around my shaft. If lust were truly combustible I’d be nothing but cinders as she strokes my length, her eyes locked on mine.
“My friend Paige says you’re a deviant,” she murmurs as she moves her hand up and down on me. “She says she’s heard you have orgies right here in your house. Is she right?”
The questions are unexpected, and too much to contend with so long as she’s touching me. I scowl, gritting my teeth against the delicious friction of her hand all over my cock. “Is this your idea of torturing a confession out of me?”
She arches her brows. “Would it work?”
“Oh, yeah.”
She smiles in response, but then her hand slowly stills. Her touch leaves me, her eyes turning serious. “So, is it true?”
I can’t lie to her. I can’t pretend I’ve been a saint when my reputation and my art both speak volumes to the contrary. “Not for a long time.”
“How long, Jared?”
“About a year or so.” Not coincidentally, around the same time the tremors in my
