“No more,” he growled.
He slid his hands up her back to curl his fingers over her bare shoulders, he pulled her against him as he forced an arch to her spine that exposed the length of her throat. As she gasped a needed breath, he lowered his head, pressing his open mouth to her neck. His kiss was consuming and hot and wicked. He sucked her skin against his teeth and teased with a hot flick of his tongue. He found her fluttering pulse and rubbed his lips along it reverently.
Charlotte trembled. Against any conscious direction, her hands lifted to fist in the lapels of his coat. Her legs shifted restlessly against his, seeking a more solid connection.
His compliance was perfection as he pressed his muscled thigh between hers, high against the apex, until she felt the hard surface against her melting sex.
A moan escaped her lips and he caught it deftly with a kiss that sunk straight to her soul. He took from her then. With a viscous intent. Like a man too long denied. He drew her breath into his lungs and thrust his tongue deep into her mouth, obliterating any remaining resistance.
Though a thread of fear ran through her, Charlotte focused on the pleasure. The sharp, explosive passion and desperate yearning.
She arched into him. She twisted her tongue against his, tasting a hint of anger in his passion and loving it. He thought to punish her for avoiding him. She wanted to be punished.
Rocking her pelvis along his thigh, she gasped at the sensations. Unabashed in her desire, she pulled him closer. She wanted to wrap her legs around him. She wanted to consume him. Take him into her body. Make him hers.
But the blasted man apparently had other intentions.
He pulled away. Releasing her mouth to set his forehead against the wall beside her head. His breath panted over her bare shoulder. His heart thudded against her ribcage. And then he smoothed his hands slowly down her back, pausing to squeeze her waist, before settling heavily on the curve of her hips where his fingertips kneaded into the swell of her buttocks in a rhythmic pattern she suspected he wasn’t even aware of.
She wanted to insist he keep going. She knew that once their mouths weren’t kissing, he’d want to do something else with them and she was in no mood to talk. When she tried to sidestep out of his embrace, out of the shadows and out of the alcove, he tightened his grip.
She stilled. Perhaps, it was time to face the truth of what was happening between them.
“Why?” he asked.
A single word. Growled and low and confused and a bit angry, but also still so very lustful.
Charlotte shivered. She understood the chaotic mixture emotions. She felt them too.
But how to explain…?
And he did deserve an explanation. By now, things had gone so far beyond her original intention. Though she’d felt far morehatred and fury in these last few months than in her entire life combined, leading her to do things she’d never have considered prior to her mother’s death, she wasn’t truly a masochist. She was just…angry. And…
Sangbleu.
How could she possibly explain something she didn’t fully understand?
Frustration roughened his voice. “Where did you come from?”
This, at least, was something she could answer.
“Paris,” she whispered. “Before that…Rome. Before that…Edinburgh.”
“What brought you to London?”
This made her tense and tremble as a thickness threatened to close her throat.
As though sensing her distress, he turned his head and pressed a light kiss to her temple. Did he think to comfort her?
Charlotte felt herself melting and quickly hardened herself.
“Vengeance.”
There was a long pause.
“Against me?” he asked.
“No. You are a complication.”
