Page 61 of A Stolen Heart

“I don’t want to.”

“I can see that those drugs certainly did nothing for your stubbornness. Drink it.”

She set her jaw. “I’m hot, and I don’t want to drink something hot. I don’t like this thing I have on, either. I’m stifling.” She wriggled a little inside the large dressing gown.

Sebastian ground his teeth and muttered a few heartfelt curses.

“Oh, all right,” Alexandra acceded grumpily. “I’ll drink it.” She took the cup from him and drank from it. “But you have to do something, too.”

She set the cup aside and came to stand only inches from him. She looked into his face. Sebastian could feel the heat of her body; he could not get out of his mind the picture of her slim body, naked before she had slipped on his dressing gown. He imagined the satin lining of his robe against her skin, caressing her with each movement.

He took a step back, reminding himself that she would not be looking at him this way or standing so close if she were not drugged. “All right.” He cleared his throat. “What do you want me to do?”

“Kiss me.”

He stared. It felt as if all the air had been suddenly sucked out of his lungs. “Alexandra, no. You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Yes, I do. You want something. I want something.”

“Alexandra, this is mad. You’ll—we’ll both regret it.”

“Why?” She went up a little on her toes, lifting her face toward him.

“I—I forget.”

Alexandra put her hands on his stomach, and his skin twitched beneath his shirt. He could remember with great clarity the way her hands had felt on his skin in the carriage. He knew he ought to pull back.

Instead, he kissed her.

CHAPTER TWELVE

ALEXANDRA’S LIPS MELTED AGAINST HIS, their breaths mingled, and with a shudder, Sebastian pulled her to him, his mouth grinding into hers. His hands slid down her back and cupped her buttocks, lifting her up and into him, moving her against the thick ridge of his desire. Alexandra groaned and dug her fingers into his hair, moving erotically against him. Sebastian made an inarticulate noise deep in his throat and squeezed his fingers into her full, firm flesh.

Her hands came between them, and she started on his buttons. Again his brain registered hazily that he should not allow this, but the thought did not spark any action. Sebastian was too consumed with kissing her. He reveled in the tastes and textures of her, in the scent of her skin and the silken softness of her hair against his cheek.

She opened his shirt and pushed it off his shoulders, and he paused long enough in his caresses to rip it the rest of the way off. Alexandra’s busy fingers went next to the dressing gown and undid the sash; then she shrugged out of the heavy gown in a single smooth gesture. It crumpled to the floor, and then it was Alexandra’s satiny skin beneath his hands, her heat searing his fingertips.

“Touch me,” she murmured, pressing herself into him. “Please, touch me.”

He could no more have resisted her plea than he could have walked away from her at that moment. His hands came around to her stomach and slid up to cup her breasts. Alexandra gasped and jerked, and her fingers dug into his hair.

“Yes. Please.”

Alexandra felt as if she were on fire. Her breasts ached for his touch; her nipples pointed and thrust toward him. And between her legs was a fierce throbbing, an unmistakable, undeniable hunger that she knew only Sebastian could satisfy. She whimpered as his fingers found her nipples and caressed them, gently squeezing and rubbing until they were as hard as pebbles, aching for something more.

He lifted her and carried her to the bed, laying her gently upon it. Then he lay beside her, propping himself on one elbow, and bent to run his tongue in a lazy circle around one nipple. Alexandra let out a choked noise, and her fingers dug into the cover beneath her. The velvet was soft upon her bare skin, unbelievably erotic as she moved upon the bed. She could not stay still as his tongue worked its magic upon her. Lightly, it teased the bud of her nipple, licking and stroking and lashing until she was digging in her heels and arching off the bed, her breath ragged in her throat. Then his mouth came down around her nipple, enclosing it in wet heat, and she shuddered in response. He began to suckle her nipple, pulling in long, lazy movements, while his tongue continued to play with the hard button.

While his mouth was busy on one creamy breast, his hand slid to her other nipple and teased it. Then he moved, trailing kisses across her chest to the other breast and took that nipple into his mouth. Alexandra moaned, feeling the pull of his mouth all through her, as if some cord ran straight from her breast to the center of her loins. His hand roamed down her body, smoothing over her flat stomach and down the sides of her legs, then up, drawing ever closer to the hot seat of her desire, until finally his fingers tangled in the thatch of hair and slid into the slick, wet folds of flesh. Alexandra groaned and began to tremble as he found her most intimate, neediest spot. Slowly he began to stroke, separating and caressing the folds, pressing and rubbing and gently arousing her. Alexandra writhed, panting, consumed by a fire she had never imagined. This was what she had ached for; this was what she wanted.

She breathed his name, arching against his hand, and he tightened upon her, his finger flickering over the tiny, slick nub that was the center of her pleasure. His tongue moved on her nipple in unison with his finger, heightening the pleasure almost past bearing. Alexandra thought that she might faint, but instead she let out a quiet scream as, suddenly, she was catapulted over the edge of her hunger into a pleasure more intense than anything she had felt before. She jerked, letting out little sobs, and Sebastian covered her mouth with his, taking her whimpers into his mouth, while his finger gently soothed and stroked until Alexandra was spent.

Alexandra looked at him dazedly. Sebastian gazed at her. Need raged in him so fiercely he could scarcely think. He wanted nothing but to be inside Alexandra, encased by her warmth, to drive to the glorious end that he knew waited for them.

He struggled to remember all the reasons he disliked and mistrusted Alexandra Ward, but none of them seemed very clear. What was clear, what was real, was the hunger that burned in him. When she had been kidnapped, he had been consumed by deadly fear and rage. Once he got her back, those violent emotions had turned into an ache to possess her that was equally fierce, exacerbated by her sensual aggression. Her beauty beckoned him like a siren’s call. Her desire made it almost irresistible. She wanted him; he wanted her. What was wrong with that?

She wasn’t thinking clearly, he reminded himself. She had obviously been drugged, not only into thinking poorly but also into feeling desire. Her sexual teasing had come not from true desire but from a false yearning created by the herb drink they had given her to make her “cooperative.”

Yet, as she put her hand on the flat of his stomach and ran it up to his chest, he wondered how he was supposed to remember that distinction. She had been playing havoc with his senses all evening, and he felt ready to explode. It wasn’t as if she were a maiden, the hunger inside him argued. She was, after all, an adventuress, not the young woman of quality she had pretended to be. And the way she had touched him this evening, the way she had kissed him, trailing her mouth all over his chest, had not been the action of an innocent.