Julius's Passion (Regency Club Venus #4) - Carole Mortimer Page 0,31

Julius had thought his own physical stress earlier today to be never-ending. Bethany must now feel so much worse than that. “Will you allow me to show you how?” As he approached the bed, his cock hardened to half-mast merely at the thought of touching her so intimately.

“I will allow you to do it so that I might watch and learn while you do so,” she stated firmly.

“But—” Julius broke off with a strangled gasp as Bethany sat farther up the bed before leaning forward and pulling her night rail over her head and throwing it to the floor. Her chin tilted in challenge as, completely bare, she lay slowly back against the pillows.

Julius could barely breathe, let alone speak, as he stared at a completely naked Bethany.

She was a goddess as well as a warrior.

Aphrodite.

Goddess of beauty, pleasure, and passion.

Her hair was a glorious gold about creamy shoulders. Her breasts were small and uptilting, and tipped with those deep-rose nipples. Her belly was flat and smooth and her waist slender.

She threw back the bedclothes to reveal narrow hips, with golden curls covering the mound between slender and shapely legs.

Curls that were slightly damp as evidence of her arousal.

Julius gave a low groan, his cock having fully engorged. Bethany’s gaze remained on him as she slowly parted those silky thighs to reveal the slickness of the swollen lips of her pussy.

His even attempting to resist would, Julius knew, be utterly futile when his hands were literally shaking from the need to touch and caress all those slender curves.

In fact, his renewed desire for Bethany was such that if he did not soon bring himself under control, he might take this to a level of intimacy that far exceeded Bethany’s expectations.

“Do you trust me?” he prompted huskily.

Her eyes widened, no doubt with surprise that he should even voice such a thing when she was sitting in front of him completely and deliberately naked. “Implicitly.”

Her flushed face and feverish gaze, her arms and hands limp at her sides, told Julius this young woman would refuse him nothing. Not a single touch or caress, no matter how intimate. “Why do you?”

“We have already had this conversation,” she reminded. “I see you. The real you.” She held his gaze. “You are warm, passionate, kind, and exceedingly brave.”

All of them character traits most in Society would not attribute to Julius, and from a far longer acquaintance.

He grimaced. “Do not make me out to be a hero.”

“Why not, when you are one?”

“You do not know that.”

“Yes, I do,” she assured without hesitation. “As such, I shall continue to regard you exactly as I please.”

Julius breathed out his frustration with her determination to make him into something he did not wish to be.

“John does not bestow his friendship or his praise on many,” she continued firmly. “He had no hesitation in giving you both those things when I mentioned your name.”

John Harrow was indeed a hard man who knew the folly of trusting easily. As a smuggler, he needed to maintain that caution in order to continue the illegal practice, or be captured and suffer the consequences.

“Or you, apparently,” Julius drawled.

The fact the other man had bestowed that same friendship on Bethany, the niece of the man who might ensure he suffered those consequences if John should be arrested, was testimony to her own character.

Bethany now eyed him teasingly. “If this is meant as another diversion to what I have asked of you, then I think you should know my increasing arousal is making it more and more difficult for me to continue this conversation.”

Julius could see that from the deepening flush in her cheeks and the tops of her breasts, and her nipples were as engorged as ripe raspberries. The slickness had increased between her thighs, and the sweet aroma of her arousal along with it. That citrus and musk called to him.

It invited an intimacy Julius knew he should resist, but ultimately had no will to do so.

Bethany, sensing a weakening in Julius, sat forward to place her hands about his cheeks to hold him as she lifted her chin and pressed her lips softly against his. Hesitantly at first, and then with a deepening passion when Julius’s lips parted and his arms moved fiercely about her as he pulled her tightly into the hard muscles of his chest.

She groaned and fell back against the pillows the moment she felt his acquiescence in the searching sweep of his tongue, taking Julius with her. That heated