The Problem with Seduction - By Emma Locke Page 0,138

mouth over hers. His fingers drew along her waist. His palm pressed into her flesh. She gasped, feeling each touch straight through her heart. For almost ten years she’d longed for this. Pined for him. While he’d been out destroying other innocents, she’d waited for the day he noticed her.

Her twenty-fourth year had finally been the year. He was mad for her now. The bulge in his breeches rubbed insistently between her legs, telling her so. She should object to him taking her on her desk, but it seemed fitting. This year, she’d learned the tricks of a woman, and used them to gain the freedom to start this school. She’d seduced London’s most notorious rake while doing so. If he wanted to take her across her desk, well, it was her place of power. It was where she felt the best.

She smiled against his mouth.

He groaned and began grabbing fistfuls of her plain gray gown. It inched up her legs. The room had been pleasantly warm when he’d come in, heated by a small fire in her grate, but as the air touched her stockings it felt cool.

“Lucy,” he said before tugging her fichu from her décolletage with his teeth. He dropped the sheer fabric halfway against her neck. The other half trailed to the desk. He bent and placed kisses along her exposed collarbone, each one searing like a tiny brand. “I’ve thought of nothing but this since the last time. You can’t deny it was magical. Say it. Tell me you missed me, too.”

There was a hard edge to his voice. She gripped the soft wool of his expensive greatcoat and inhaled air that seemed laden with his lemon scent. She’d thought of this, too. A woman didn’t forget the man who’d taken her innocence.

“Say it,” he urged her. His thumb teased her nipple between the many layers of cloth.

She couldn’t. She hadn’t missed him. She’d seduced him and walked away, taking with her memories that she’d intended to last her a lifetime. Leaving him had been her intent all along. Capturing the interest of a man known for his fickle-heartedness had been all she’d wanted, and missing that same fickle rake would have been pure foolishness.

Her lure had been dropped, then reeled in. She’d taken a look at her prize, weighed and recorded it, and tossed it back. She hadn’t expected him to return. If he’d swum back due to some masculine sense of failure and a need to try again, then by Zeus, she’d break his heart harder this time.

He left her suddenly. Her hand reached instinctively out to him. It caught thin air. Then he tossed up her skirts entirely, exposing both stockinged legs, and caught her waist. He pulled her body along the polished surface until her bottom almost reached the edge. His hands pushed gently at her knees and he looked up at her for one feral moment before opening her legs for him. She watched him in a trance, her heart pounding a staccato in her ears, as he dipped his face toward her most private place. His light blue eyes never left hers. His lips parted and his tongue darted out and when he touched her, she nearly exploded from the table.

Her hands gripped at the desk, but it was too slick. She twisted her fingers into his curls instead. Oh, my. He licked a place he’d only just taught her was there for her pleasure. Her moans grew to whimpers and she could feel something happening, building inside her from the place his tongue met her flesh. He worked faster and she couldn’t stop, couldn’t look away, couldn’t keep her body from contracting and arching toward him. Suddenly, pleasure seemed to burst from within her. She cried out, then clamped her hand across her lips, while the sound of her panting seemed to grow louder and louder until it was all she could hear.

It was as much his panting as hers, she realized. He rose from his knees and dropped the fall from his breeches. His member sprung forth and she reached for it, needing it to finish breaking her. For that’s how she felt, as though he’d cracked her in two.

He slid her down on the desk and brought her legs to either side of him. One hand gripped his hard length and the other looped under her arm and splayed across her back. He looked at her with those blue, blue eyes and said, “I did miss