“Impossible?”
One of her hands slid up to his groin, and he practically burst into flames. She wasn’t touching him, but she was close.
“Lydia.” He grasped her wrist.
“I am unconvinced.”
She was more stubborn than she had been last spring. In that short time since he’d sent her away, she had changed from a demure young lady to a headstrong woman.
And, God in heaven, she was even more tempting now. More beautiful. More powerful.
Utterly irresistible.
Her fingers uncurled beneath his hand and splayed over the fabric of his trousers, dangerously grazing the stretched material confining his damned unruly cock.
She leaned in. “I’m not a child to be kept locked away, to be protected from the ugliness in the world.” Her voice sounded throaty… sensual.
Her pupils were dilated, diminishing the blue so that the glints in her eyes were like stars in a moonless sky. Her softly rounded cheeks were flushed, heated. And her lips…
Her lips were parted, shining, and inviting him to do things he doubted she even knew possible. He stared past them, into the darker reds and tender textures, imagining other flesh he craved to know.
“You don’t hate me,” she insisted, leaning in, her hands resting on his arm, sweet breath fanning his jaw.
“No.” He clenched his fists, willing his heart to slow.
And then she touched her tongue to his earlobe.
“Lydia.”
“Tell me again this is impossible,” she demanded in a whisper. “I dare you to convince me.”
His willpower, which he’d always considered ironclad, chose that moment to shatter most spectacularly. Faster than lightning, Jeremy had her seated across his lap, one arm behind her and the other roving over her arm, the curve of her hip.
“Youare impossible,” he said. “Damnit, it’s you.”
He’d tried, by God, he’d tried. He claimed her mouth and then deepened their kiss. Her whimper vibrated between them.
“Not impossible,” she countered when he released her mouth to trail kisses down her neck.
But the two of them together like this was, in fact, impossible.
A voice of reason raged inside his head, even as his heart sang and his body breathed giant gulps of relief to hold her again.
He’d felt dead inside for so long. He would pay later for giving in to these emotions. He should push her away, run out the door as far as his feet would take him.
Except this was his house.
“Lydia,” he sighed, his hands wandering over her supple curves. How had he imagined he could live without her?
He’d clung to his need to absolve Arthur’s name, but he’d not been living. He’d merely been existing.
Her hands snaked around his neck, and she turned to face him, placing herself in an even more inappropriate position. Knees bent, bracketing his thighs.
By god, she was straddling him.
This. How long had he needed this? Needed her?
Memories of when she was a young girl flitted through his mind—and earlier that year, when she’d stood beside him at his brother’s funeral. When she’d met him on the bridge that separated his property from her brother’s.
