Her lower lip wavered slightly and her breath was coming shorter and shorter. “I still hate you.”
There was no heat in her words now, but they stung regardless. “If you hate me, why did you come across London to my door?”
“To tell you to your face that I despise you.”
“In the middle of the night. You had to tell me that in the middle of the night? That’s why you came, Julia?”
She didn’t answer for what felt like an eternity. She just stared at him, her face a mixture of that hatred she described and something else. Something heated and tempting and wrong. He knew it was wrong. He didn’t back away regardless.
“Bastard,” she whispered, almost whimpered, and then she caught his cravat in her fist, dragged him to her and kissed him.
Julia knew that later, when she reflected on this moment, she would try to tell herself she’d never intended for the kiss to happen. That she never would have come to this man’s home if she’d thought it would come to this.
She would lie to herself to make this less shocking and unexpected and everything else that it was when she lifted on her tiptoes and crushed her mouth to his.
In truth, though, in the very core of her, she knew she’d come here exactly for this. She’d come here because in the last few weeks she’d watched this man and thought of this man and perhaps even secretly dreamed of this man. And she wanted him, despite her anger and disappointment.
Despite it all, she wanted this to feel a spark of being alive.
He gave it easily, passionately. His arms came around her, tucking her close to his warm, broad chest, and he returned the kiss. Not just returned, he took over. His mouth opened, his tongue traced her lips, he devoured her when she let him in. She lifted to him with a shaky moan, hands gripping his lapels as the kiss deepened even further.
Everything was spinning now and she didn’t resist as he backed her across the room toward the settee. They collapsed against it together, his body half covering hers, his mouth still hard and heavy. He tasted of brandy, of pleasure, and she drowned in that.
His hands were moving, tracing the lines of her body, sending tingles of pleasure through every nerve ending in ways she hadn’t felt for a very long time. She lifted beneath him, rocking against his hips, sucking his tongue until he made a muffled moan into her mouth.
She released one lapel and let her hand wedge between them, stroking down the front of his body. She’d never danced with him, never touched him beyond the two times he’d taken her wrist in the last few weeks. He was always formally dressed, so she’d never known what was under those clothes.
It turned out it was very likely a fine specimen of a man. She felt the hard planes of muscle underneath all the layers of propriety, the tantalizing angles of him. He grunted as sheslipped her hand lower and unfastened the fall front of his trousers.
He was hard when the cloth moved away and she was able to touch him. He was hot as fire, thick and big, and she licked her lips as he drew back to look down at her in the dimness of the fading firelight.
“Julia,” he began.
She stroked him without looking away from his gaze. “Don’t talk to me.”
His eyes widened and she could see the struggle. What was happening here was…well,wrongmight not be the correct word. She was no longer engaged to his cousin, they were two unattached adults well-able to make decisions about who they wanted to fuck.
But she’d told him not ten minutes before that she despised him. It was hard to remember that when she was rubbing the heat of him and he was still gripping her hip with such firm command. They weren’t friends, they hardly knew each other and he had been part of the demise of her engagement.
She didn’t care and she’d never felt anything like it before in her life. She just wanted pleasure and passion and she blocked out everything else.
He bent his head and kissed her again, reaching between them so that their hands brushed as he shoved at her skirt and she widened her legs. When his fingers smoothed against her bare thigh, then stroked her sex, she gasped against his lips. It was such a gentle touch and yet there was such fire that followed. She felt alive in a way she wasn’t certain she’d felt before. Like the anger made the passion all the brighter and sharper.
He murmured her name against her mouth, but didn’t draw away. He parted her outer lips and stroked his thumb along her slit. She realized he was making certain she was wet so that he wouldn’t hurt her. And she was, oh she was. He let out a shakysigh when he discovered it and then he caught his cock and began to rub it back and forth against her. She lifted to him, twisting beneath him, reaching for what he teased her with.
She opened her eyes and found him watching her. There were equal amounts of uncertainty and desire on his face. She wanted only the second. She covered his hand with hers, lifted her hips and guided his cock into her just an inch.
They both moaned at the first breach, wet heat closing around velvety hardness.
“Fuck,” he grunted, and then the uncertainty was gone. He drove into her in a long stroke, filling her and stretching her as she wailed out pleasure in the quiet.
He took then, hard and fast, grinding his hips to hers as he moved, taking her lips with the same rough abandon with which he claimed her body. She’d done this same thing many times with many men, but there was something different in this joining. She forgot everything else, her mind swirling and focusing on where their bodies joined. All there was was this and him and the grip and release of every thrust. All that existed was streaking, powerful pleasure that seemed to warm her entire body.
And when it felt like it couldn’t get better, he shifted his hand back between them and swirled his thumb around her clitoris with steady, firm pressure. She dug her nails into his coat as he did so, waves of pleasure building harder and faster now. She could feel the edge of release teasing her and she chased it, moaning as she ground harder against him.
When she came, she dug her heels into the settee cushion and her hips lifted up, pushing against his as she cried out, her body out of her control, her pleasure erasing every other thing in the world, at least for a moment.
He stared at her as she shattered, his mouth slightly agape as if he was in awe of this, of her. But the moment passed asher body gripped him in steady waves and he returned to the powerful thrusting. She could feel his grip on control fading, she saw it on the tension of the tendons in his neck, she heard it in the gasping shortness of his breath and at last in the great, shaky moan that he gave as he withdrew from her and came between them.
