Once Touched, Never Forgotten - By Natasha Tate Page 0,33
shook her head, her mouth twisted into a distressed knot while pain cinched her lungs. “I agreed to be your mistress, to join you in your bed. But I never agreed to pretend I wanted to be there. Don’t ask me to play the role of seductress when we both know it will be a lie.”
“I’m willing to overlook a bit of acting.”
“Stop it!” Desperate now, she flung the lingerie at his chest. It fluttered harmlessly to his lap, a smear of apricot trailing over the black silk of his suit pants.
“In case you’ve forgotten,” he said, in voice of velvet overlaid with steel, “you’ve already played multiple roles for my pleasure. Roles we invented together. I’ve held and kissed your breasts, tasted your bare skin, and been close enough to smell the heat of your arousal.” His eyes darkened. Flared as they trailed over her body. “Surely you recall when we—?”
“That was different,” she interrupted while a torrent of unwanted memories raged through her. “I wanted to be there. I wanted to please you. It was my choice to be with you, and I always had the option to leave. I was in control.”
“You were, weren’t you?” he asked, rising from his seat while the apricot silk drifted down to puddle on the floor between them. He braced his palms beside her hips and leaned over her tipped face. “You set the boundaries. You chose the rules. While I, fool that I was, allowed it.”
“We had a relationship of equals,” she protested, terrified of this new shift in power.
“Did we?” A cool, mocking smile tugged against his mouth as he lifted his knuckles to stroke her jaw. “I seem to remember it differently. And, oddly enough, I suspect I’ll like it more this time around.”
“Well, I won’t.” Colette yanked free of his touch and tried to will the quaking from her limbs while her throat worked with her words. “And I won’t pretend otherwise.”
“We’ll see,” he said softly, leaning toward her until she had to arch her neck to keep his mouth from touching hers. “We’ll see if I can change your mind, now that I’m the one in charge.”
“You’re not in charge,” she challenged, and her eyes flashed with defiance. “You may direct my body, but you’ll never direct me.”
Stephen stared down at Colette’s mutinous face, wondering how in the hell he’d gotten into this situation. Yes, he’d been angry at her and, yes, he’d wanted to hurt her for keeping Emma from him. He’d wanted to make her pay. But somehow, between their argument yesterday and their vows this morning, desire for her had diluted his desire for revenge.
“Shall I try to convince you otherwise?” he murmured. Giving in to the desire that had been tugging against his groin since he’d left her yesterday, he pressed up against the seam of Colette’s gorgeous legs and brought his hands to her hips. “You might find that you can relinquish a bit of control and actually like it.”
Her face flushed to the same delectable color of the lingerie he’d bought her and her gaze dipped to his lips. “I won’t.”
“Really?” His palms moved to cup the tight curve of her buttocks.
Her long, narrow hands pressed against his chest while she arched away from him, her mouth parting on an inhale. “I can’t do this,” she said, twisting within the confines of his hands. “I can’t be your mistress. We have to come up with another compromise.”
“Like what?” He stared at her mouth, that lush, kissable mouth, while one hand moved inexorably up along the silk spine of her dress and to the back of her arched neck. He wanted to taste every centimeter of her defiant, trembling softness, to explore the fine, delicate curve of her upper lip, to nip at the lush, petal-smooth swell of it until she moaned beneath him.
Just thinking of how she’d respond, he felt the hairs along his arms lift, priming him for the battle he fully intended to win.
She stared at him, her hazel eyes huge and alarmed within her flushed face, while her hands shoved blindly at his shoulders. “Stephen—”
He caught her protest with his mouth, every last sense focused on the exquisite fit of her lips beneath his. For a moment neither of them moved. He allowed the feeling to wash over him, warm and heavy and so damned arousing he didn’t know how his skin contained the desire swelling within.
He lingered at her lower lip for a moment, plying its