Chapter Twenty-Two
Bea could not sleep.But not for lack of trying.She had blown out her candle, folded her hands primly atop the coverlet, and willed herself toward peaceful oblivion.
It did not work.
It did not even come close.
Every time she closed her eyes, she felthim.
His mouth on hers.His breath against her cheek.His body over hers, solid and warm and so devastatingly certain of itself.
Heat slid through her at the memory, slow, molten, and impossible to ignore.
Bea groaned into her pillow.What had he done to her today?It had been surprising.Entirely unexpected.Pure, base lust.Completely beneath her as a serious political thinker, as the mastermind behind B.Adroit, as a revolutionary.
And yet…
As a woman…
Her fingers curled into the sheets.
He’d asked her if she regretted it.That was the most damning part of all.She didn’t regret it.She wanted more.
Oh, at first she’d tried to tell herself he had coaxed her, maneuvered her, tricked her into kissing him again.That he had manipulated the moment, arranged it like a chessboard so her only possible move was to lean in.
But that wasn’t true.In fact, it was the opposite.
She’d told himexactlywhat she wanted.
She hadfeltwhat he was doing.Every gentle prod.Every cleverly placed remark.Every heated glance meant to lure her closer.She had recognized the strategy as it unfolded and still taken hold of his lapels and dragged his mouth to hers.
A shiver ran through her at the memory.
It had not been Nicholas who forced the moment.She had wanted him.She hadn’t allowed him to goad her like before.Let him draw her in.Let him kiss her and touch her while she’d done the same to him.
And good heavens, the way he had looked at her before he’d pulled her hand down between her legs.Teaching her something she could never banish from her fantasies.
She shifted restlessly, staring up into the darkness.
Nicholas Archer.Impossibly handsome.Apparently infinitely skilled with his hands.
And—curse him—every bit as tempting as he believed himself to be.
He had kissed her back with something more than triumph.More than tactics.More than smug certainty.
He had kissed her like a starving man.
And then—oh Lord—then he had laid her back against the cushions, braced above her, his weight a sinful, perfect pressure she had never known she needed.She could still feel the solid line of his chest, the way his breath had caught when she touched his shoulders, the way he had murmured her name like a secret.
And his mouth on her breast?—
Heat swept through her so quickly she had to squeeze her eyes shut more tightly.
Her nipples tingled at the memory.The slow, deliberate pull of his lips.The shocking, delicious scrape of his teeth.The low sound he’d made—half growl, half groan—when she’d arched helplessly beneath him.
Bea pressed a trembling hand to her sternum as if she could calm the frantic beat of her heart.
No one had ever touched her like that.
