Even as he didn’t deserve it. And he was a bastard enough that he wanted it anyway.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“Everything, love.”
Neither moved.
Love. A rogue, he’d never tendered that endearment.
Until now.
A charged energy moved in the air around them.
Their breaths tangled as one in a joining more intimate than the wickedest acts in a bedchamber.
Until her.
From where their bodies touched, heat radiated.
At some point, Arran’s hand had found its way to her sinfully curved hip, a hip made for a man’s hands. His fingers curled reflexively.Mine.
Lucy didn’t step away.
He couldnotstep away.
She possessed a voice that compelled his stare, the song of her voice, the rising, musical lilt at the ends of her sentence. A slight lyrical roll to her R’s. The melodic Scot’s intonation that softened her English.
She was a siren.
And Arran?
Longing for this woman as he did, Arran was on a direct path to hell.
“You’re a marvel, Lucy LeBeau,” he whispered.
“A-Aye?” Her breathless whisper rang with an endearing shyness. Sweeter than the confectionary treats they’d together baked. It left him—sheleft him—ravenous for a taste of her.
He and Lucy trailed unblinking stares upon one another’s face.
Their mouths moved in concert.
He curled his fingers into her waist at the same moment she climbed her hands around his nape. She rose onto her tiptoes, pressing herself to him. It wasn’t enough. Arran gripped her harder, drew her closer—tighter—against him. His cock pressed against the softness of her belly.
He took her mouth. Claimed it—claimed her—as though she belonged to him. In this moment, she did. In this moment, he did not care. Right or wrong. Sin or salvation. Nothing mattered but this embrace…this woman. Honor be damned. His soul had been past saving long ago.
“Open for me,” Arran rasped against her mouth. He’d go mad if he didn’t taste her. Hell, he’d crossed that point long before now. “Let me taste you…please.”
Breath coming fast, her chest rising and falling, she caught his face between her hands. “You do not have to beg me foranything, Arran. Certainly not something I am all too happy to—”
Arran kissed the rest of that confession away. There were too many words. The more they spoke, the sooner reality would creep in, and he was selfish enough to slam the door on it—and keep reaching for a woman he had no right to want.
He swallowed her breath, burying his tongue inside the hot, welcoming cavern of her mouth. She responded—soft at first—but he didn’t want tenderness.
Nor did Lucy.
The Scottish enchantress came alive like a lone ember that had finally found ancient, dried-out kindling.
And she blazed—ignited—into an explosive conflagration.
