She didn’t seem to care. She thrust her tongue against his in equal desperation and need, sucking him in, meeting him halfway, her body grinding against his with longing that matched his own.
He staggered backward, keeping her in his arms as he fell into a seated position on the black velvet settee. She straddled his lap, her gown tangling around her legs as she dug her fingers into his hair and pressed herself hard against him.
He wasn’t going to stop this. That thought ripped through his mind, tearing past all the high emotion. This was going to happen, right here in Vivien’s parlor, on a night when he’d come looking for a woman so he would forget the very one writhing on his lap.
This was so much better.
He kept kissing her even as he gripped a hand at the hem of her skirt and began to bunch it, shoving it up the length of her long legs and revealing pretty stitched stockings. He stroked his fingers over the satiny smoothness and knew that his arousal was probably eminently obvious to her. His cock was pressing against her thigh and it wasn’t subtle.
She broke the kiss at last and stared down at him, green eyes wide and slightly off focus. “Is this real?” she whispered as he let his hand span the side of her thigh.
“I hope so,” he growled. “But do you want it?”
She nodded immediately. “More than anything.”
There was nothing else to say. As she shifted to accommodate him, he shoved her skirt up and around her hips and gasped. She was utterly bare from the waist down, save for those stockings. He lifted his gaze and her cheeks brightened with color as she turned her face away.
Of course she would wear nothing beneath her gown. She was here to seduce a lover. And she was, though not the one she had likely thought she would end up with.
He shoved aside the brutal jealousy at that thought and let his hand brush over her hip, then down and around to stroke over her sex. She sucked in a breath through her teeth and shut her eyes as he trailed his fingers over her entrance. She was wet already. Slick with need, and his cock actually twitched as he stretched her open slightly and found her clitoris. He pressed a thumb to her and she jolted with a soft cry.
He leaned up, finding the soft column of her graceful neck, and began to kiss there as he stroked her, stroked her, teasing her pleasure from her until she was jerking against him with a wild rhythm. She was on the edge now, ready for release, and that’s when he pulled away.
Her eyes fluttered open and she glanced down at him with wild, wide eyes. Eyes that dilated when he moved his hand to the flap of his trousers and opened them, releasing his hard cock into the space between them.
She licked her lips and he nearly spent right then and there. He took a few long breaths as she locked eyes with him. Slowly she reached out and wrapped her fingers around him. He gripped his own fingers into the settee cushion as she stroked over him once, twice, three times. Then she shifted up on her knees and positioned herself over him.
He felt her heat and then her slickness wrapped around him. He slid into her one inch after another as both of them let out a long, shuddering sigh. As he filled her completely, he realized this was like coming back to a home he’d thought he’d lost.
He didn’t want to feel that way, but there it was, and he stared up into Elise’s beautiful face, taut with pleasure and tension, and he knew in his heart that he had been waiting for her, waiting forthis, for three long years. Now he was here, and he lifted his hips up into her as she shuddered in pleasure.
She rocked against him, meeting his driving rhythm as she ground down over him hard and steady. He cupped her hips, moving her against him as he lifted his mouth to her throat again.
As she took him, Elise began to make soft moans. Her rocking motion grew erratic and her face twisted with pleasure. She was close to release and he lifted his fingers up to cup the back of her head and tilt her face toward his. She opened her eyes and met his stare, her hair falling around them as her mouth contorted and she let out a shaky cry of release. Her body tightened around his, milking him, drawing his own pleasure to mix with hers. He lifted her aside and grunted as he spent away from her and then collapsed back on the settee, his breath coming hard and his heart pounding not just with release, but relief.
But as that same heart rate slowed and the ability to have rational thought returned, he let his gaze slide back to Elise, who was curled up next to him on the settee, her hair tangled around her face, her dress still hitched around her hips.
Need, want, relief aside, Stenfax realized what he had just done. The thing he’d vowed never to do again. He’d just let Elise have the upper hand over him. He’d just revealed a piece of himself to her.
Andthatwas an utter mistake.
Chapter Three
One a warm summer night very much like this one three years before, Elise had stood before this man and given herself to him. Not since that night had she felt such passion and desire and utter pleasure. Certainly not with her husband, who she had never found or even sought pleasure with. Not even with her own hand, when she feverishly tried to reach the same heights she recalled with Lucien.
Now her body thrummed with pleasure and peace, like this was where she had been meant to be all along. And in truth, it was. What she had done, how she had turned away from Lucien, it never should have happened.Thiswas where she belonged. He was where she belonged.
She smiled up at him and he met her gaze cautiously. When she saw the hardness of his expression, the anger and the hate still bubbling below the surface, her peaceful feeling faded into numbness. In that moment, she saw nothing had truly changed between them. And why would it? Lucien didn’t understand what she’d done, he never would.
Even if she could explain it to him, he’d never forgive her. Trying to find those words seemed futile, they would only cause more pain for them both.
For him, this night hadn’t been about reunion or repair, but something else. As if to prove it, he shoved to his feet and began to fix himself. He turned to the chair and caught up his jacket, flinging it over his shoulders without looking at her.
“Thatwas a mistake.” His tone was so harsh that it felt like a physical strike.
She closed her eyes and drew in a few long breaths so her own voice would be calm when she said, “I see.”
He froze in his motions as she got to her feet and let her gown fall back over her half-naked body. She reached down and began gathering up the pins that had fallen from her hair and then moved to a mirror across the room to fix it. She could almost see the tracks of his fingers through her locks, and God, how she wished she could keep them there as proof that he had wanted her.
