“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too vulgar.”
Those words lit her fuse. Because hadn’t her whole life been about keeping herself at bay? Protecting herself from the vulgarity of her own body and the pull of natural instinct? And where had that left her? Not innocent, but ignorant. Stupid rather than pure. It had robbed her of the very essence of her humanity—her freedom to choose.
“Tell me,” she demanded in a voice forged of steel.
After a pause, where he looked lost and young and a bit guilty, his eyes shifted back to hers, and he said the words. Every one of them pierced her like a dart. But instead of poison, they injected her with lust, filling her until she couldn’t help but squirm.
“I want to lift up your dress and look at you, smell you. I want to run my tongue over every centimeter of your body before…” He paused and cleared his throat. He couldn’t stop now. Not with the way her breath had gone wild with the shock of those images, her body overripe and ready to explode. “I’m not a poet.” How could he be so sure when everything he said lit her on fire?
“I don’t care. Tell me more.”
She leaned back, and his eyes tracked her, his breath ragged and desperate.
Slowly, as if waiting for her to stop him, he lifted his hand to stroke her lip, an echo of that moment in the vineyard, so gently she couldn’t be sure he’d even touched her.
“I can’t stop thinking of your lips, Abby, and your—” He opened his mouth as if to say something and seemed to reconsider. The slide of his eyes down her body was palpable, solid and so real she knew he was imagining his hands on her. “Downthere,” he whispered. And at that, his gaze raced up to clash with hers. She ate up his words, the images, their unholy union. Wallowing in the sins he blanketed her with. The wrongs he fed her. The many, many transgressions they shared. “I want to slide into you. To fill you and fuck you. I want to make you feel good.”
He stroked her cheek now, and letting her body lead, she turned her head and took his finger in her mouth. With a groan, he leaned in to kiss her again, only it was different this time. Deeper and more explicit, but playful, too. His tongue teased hers, his caresses asking for as much as he gave.
This was what she wanted. A man who sought her pleasure along with his own. No more fumbling in the dark, but rather a give-and-take between their bodies. He tasted good, smelled right, and felt like desire. Abby couldn’t stop replaying the image his words had conjured—of her lifting her dress, baring herself to him, inviting him in. Her breath came out in shuddery gasps.
From somewhere close by, the dog barked, startling her and sending her out of his arms, where she teetered, blinking blindly in the light of the setting sun, one hand pressed to her mouth. Finally, once she’d caught her breath and stopped her head spinning, she turned to Luc. With his cheeks bright red and his eyes hungry and vague, he looked as flustered as she felt.
“I want that,” she said, taking a step back, head shaking. “But I can’t.”
Because nobody had told her that a kiss could kill you. That words, as surely as a melding of the flesh, could turn you into a sinner. Oh, they’d warned her that she’d lose herself in just this type of carnal embrace, but she hadn’t believed them. And now look at her. Forgetting everything that had brought her here.
“This isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing,” she said, racked with a new kind of remorse. “I should go.”
* * *
Luc blinked, coming to with difficulty. He was worked up, his body more taut and excited than it had been in ages.
Beyond the window, the sun’s last, sharp rays lingered behind a scattering of clouds. Enough to illuminate the room, but not for long. Winter nights came fast and hard around here.
“Wait. Why did you come here?” Luc asked. He took a step away from her, putting more air between them. He couldn’t remember disappearing into a haze of craving like that. Ever.
“I came to see you.” She glanced at the door, then back at him. “Things aren’t easy back home.”
“What’s wrong?”
She shook her head, convincing him she wouldn’t answer, and then appeared to change her mind. “I have a friend. He’s sick. Don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
“What kind of sick?”
“He shakes. Shakes and disappears. His eyes roll back, and he falls down, hits his head, and—”
“Epilepsy?”
“That what it’s called?” She watched him, hungry for answers.
“In English, I think you call them seizures.”
“Seizures.” She sounded it out, as if filing the information away. “What should I do?”
