Page 94 of Under Arthur’s Protection

“I’m not normally someone who sleeps with a guy the night I meet him.” I nestled into his palm and kissed it. I couldn’t deny any of this anymore. I’d wanted him from the second I’d laid eyes on him. “But probably.”

“It’s just as well.” He brushed his thumb across my cheek. “I wouldn’t have been able to take you on as a client if we were involved.”

“Too late now?”

“Way too fucking late,” he whispered as he leaned in to kiss me.

It was gentle at first. I tasted blood and antiseptic, but when his tongue found mine, my brain zipped straight to everything else. To my hands sliding up to his neck, and his heartbeat against my chest.

He hooked his thumb under my jaw and tilted my head back, deepening the kiss until it stopped being gentle at all. Until it was open and wet and hungry, until he was kissing me like he’d been starving for it and gave up trying to pretend otherwise.

Good heavens, this man can kiss.

I pressed closer, unable to⁠—

He winced.

I jerked back. I must have hit one of his bruises or cuts. He had so many of them. “Sorry!”

“Don’t apologize.” He yanked me back to him. “It’s worth it.”

I kissed the hollow of his throat. The patch of skin above his collar where his pulse hammered. The side of his neck, below his ear. His throat moved under my lips, and the low sound he made vibrated against my mouth.

His hands found the hem of my shirt. “May I?”

“Please.”

He stripped off my shirt and tossed it aside. His gaze traveled over me, unhurried. Then he ghosted his fingertips over my skin as though waiting for permission to touch. “You are so fucking beautiful.”

“Thank you.” What a ridiculous response.

“No, sweetheart.” He eased his own shirt over his head, revealing a chest and abdomen mottled with bruises. His forearm was wrapped in gauze. His knuckles were swollen and dark. Every one of those injuries was evidence of what he’d sacrificed for me. “Thank you.”

I traced my fingers across his chest, and he caught my wrist.

“Where do I start with you, Dr. Lyons?” He drew one of my fingers between his lips and sucked, tongue flat against the pad. He held my gaze, and I burned to ashes under it.

“Wherever you⁠—”

He sucked harder, sending a jolt from my core all the way into my throat. He’d known precisely what he was doing with his thumb on my chin at the rental. He guided my finger out of his mouth. “I need to savor you. Taste every ounce. Learn every sound beyond the cake sound.”

“The cake sound?”

“The one you made at The Train Station.” He pressed a kiss to the tender skin of my wrist. “When you bit into the chocolate cake.”

I sighed, and whether it was the sound he meant or not, he smiled.

“I dreamed about that noise.” He ran his tongue up my forearm. “About being the cause of it.”

My eyelids fluttered shut beneath the slow, wet drag of his kisses up my arm.

“Come here.” He kissed his way along my upper arm as he inched us toward the narrow bed.

“That’s going to be tight,” I said.

“The tighter the better.” He sat on the edge and drew me between his knees. He unhooked my bra, and it fell to the floor. He cupped my breasts, thumbs brushing across my nipples, and my legs nearly gave out. He bent and lavished one nipple with his tongue until it ached. When his lips closed around it, the light scrape of his teeth made me press into him and grip his hair.

“God, Arthur.”