“Yes, damn you. You did. You made it easy formeto hurt you.”
She went still, her body going limp against him. She looked into his eyes, so dark and wild, so like she remembered them, and her words from earlier today came back to her.
No matter how often you insist you want to help me, I will always know it’s a lie.
But she hadn’t known, hadn’t realized… She’d also know when it was the truth.
“I never wanted…” His hand shook as he hovered his fingertips over her face, tracing the line of her jaw without touching her skin. “I never wanted to hurt you, Charlotte.”
Then his mouth was on hers, soft but insistent, his hot tongue teasing at her lips. Maybe he meant the kiss as a lesson, but to her it was a gift, one she’d received long ago, a gift she’d laid aside before she understood how precious it was.
Charlotte drew in a deep, slow breath and opened her lips under his. He surged inside with a low moan, his tongue tracing the inside of her mouth and licking delicately at her lower lip until she thought she’d fall to pieces in his arms.
He pulled away to hover his mouth over hers. “Does my kiss matter to you, Charlotte?” His voice was low in her ear, a whisper, and his warm breath tickled her cheek. He trailed his lips down to her jaw and over the soft skin of her neck, nipping at her.
Oh God, it did matter, it had never stopped, and yet she couldn’t tell him so. She couldn’t make any sound at all aside from a strangled whimper, but she knew as soon as it emerged from her throat, rough and needy, that it told him more than words ever could. She laid her palms against his cheeks to bring his mouth back to hers.
He groaned when her lips touched his. “Tell me. Tell me it matters.”
She slid her hands into his hair, the waves so soft, so familiar against her fingertips. “It matters. It matters, Julian.”
He raised his head to look into her eyes, and she only had time to trace a finger around his lips before his mouth was on hers again, sweet this time, coaxing hers apart so he could slip inside and drive her mad with each slick caress of his tongue against hers.
At last he tore his mouth away, but before she had time to sigh a protest he wrapped his hands around her back to arch her body into his. He bent his head to tease his tongue into the hollow at her throat, his mouth wide open and desperate against her flesh. “Lie back,” he murmured, his voice hoarse, his breath heaving in and out of his chest. He eased her down so she half reclined against the seat. He pulled away from her, his eyes glittering. “Are you pretending now?”
She shook her head once. “No.”
He looked down at her with half-closed eyes. “Don’t ever pretend with me. Don’t ever hide from me again. Promise it.”
Promise it.Her last defense stripped away. If she made him a promise she’d keep it, and yet she didn’t hesitate, but held out her arms to him—not to Captain West, but to Julian. “I—I promise.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, his long lashes dark against his cheeks; then he slid his hands under her skirts. He opened his eyes so he could watch her face as hands moved up her stocking-clad legs until he reached the bow on her garter. He toyed with the ribbon, then slid his fingers behind her knees to stroke the pale skin there.
She sighed, but when her eyes began to drift closed, his fingers tightened on her. “I need you to look at me, Charlotte.”
She opened her eyes and watched as he leaned forward and pressed his open mouth against the bare, hot skin of her thigh. “So sweet.” He darted his tongue under the edge of her stocking, uttering a low, harsh growl of triumph when her back arched sharply at the caress. “Even sweeter than I remember.”
Oh God, she remembered too, the feel of his hands feathering over her skin, touching her everywhere, his mouth devouring, ravenous. She cried out as he nipped lightly at her, her thighs parting as he worried her soft flesh with his teeth, then sucked the abraded skin into his mouth to soothe the bite.
“Yes. Open for me.” His hands slid higher, higher, until his fingertips brushed the soft curls between her thighs. She threw her head back against the cushioned bench, another cry escaping her lips as he parted her folds and dragged one finger gently up her damp center, lingering to circle the tender bud that leapt to meet his touch.
He made a hoarse sound in his throat, part groan and part protest. “Don’t look away.” He took her chin between the fingers of one hand to hold her face still even as he worked her with the other, his skilled touch so perfect against her swollen flesh. “I need to see your face when I touch you.”
His eyes met hers and held them as he probed delicately for her opening. She gasped as he slid one long finger inside her. “Do you feel me inside you, Charlotte?” The words rushed through his lips on a strangled breath. He dipped his head to kiss the insides of her knees, first one and then the other, but his dark gaze never left her face.
Her own voice emerged a choked whisper. “Yes.”
He slid a second finger inside her and began to thrust gently, his thumb still circling lazily. “Will you come for me?”
Ah God, she would, she would do anything he asked of her. “Yes.” Her hips rose in rhythm with his strokes, but her eyes never left his. “Please, Julian…”
A high flush of color stained his cheekbones and his chest heaved with his panting breaths. He released her chin to flick open the buttons on his falls. “Now, sweetheart. Let me see you…”
Charlotte arched against his hand as the ache between her legs began to pull tight, tighter, her lower belly clenching into that delicious tension, and oh, it had been so long since she’d been stroked this way, and yet the feeling was familiar still, and Julian too, above her, as if he’d never left her, as if no time had passed with so much despair between them, his dark eyes intense on her face and his whispered pleas in her ear to come, to take her pleasure—
A low, keening wail broke free from her lips as she shuddered into a devastating release, her body convulsing in waves around his fingers. He moved them inside her as she rode an endless climax, then slowed his thrusts as her taut spine went limp against the bench beneath her.
She lay for a long, quiet moment to catch her breath, but as the echo of her own impassioned cries faded she became aware of the growing silence between them and her face burned with sudden embarrassment. Oh God, she’d cried out for him, begged him, parted her thighs for him, and he…
