about anything but the feel of his mouth on mine. His tongue is skilled and searing and the deepest, most hidden part of me sighs with relief. God, it’s so good. It’s so right, and so forbidden. Villains aren’t supposed to kiss the virtue out of you. Did I ever have any to begin with?
He sets me on a table and knocks my legs apart so he can stand between them, forcing them to stay that way with his body while he drags his mouth down the side of my neck. Nipping. Biting. Every movement makes my core clench tight, then tighter, curling around a burst of embarrassment that I’ve never been kissed this way before. No one has ever come close. Compared to Leo, every man I’ve ever known is a worthless, fumbling boy.
I’m on top of books. Open books.
Leo twists his fingers into my hair and tips my head back so he can lick sensitive skin and I have to steady myself with one hand. It meets pages. There is a project out on this table, someone’s work or someone’s story, and Leo doesn’t care. He ordered them out. He made them bring the book for me. Sixty-thousand-dollar books don’t sit out in rooms like this. He made this happen.
He’s hard between my legs when he breaks the kiss. For a long moment he stares above my head, catching his breath with both hands wrapped around the sides of my face. His eyes—Jesus. His eyes. It’s the way he looked at me when he told me he wasn’t hurt. All of his pain and lust and need are there at the surface, in plain sight. This time there’s no lie on his lips.
I reach for him, and he doesn’t stop me.
He lets me run my fingers down the line of his jaw. He lets me skim the shoulder of his jacket. He lets me brush my fingertips over his lips, his eyes glittering and black. I move to pull my fingers away, but Leo catches the tips between his teeth and bites. It pulls a stifled moan out of me, that sharp, pointed pain. He bites harder, teeth digging into flesh, but then he sucks my fingers into his mouth and soothes the marks. I don’t know how he does it, creating a direct line from my fingertips to my clit, but he does.
Leo turns me over with a low laugh that’s familiar and scary and hot. He presses me facedown into the books and shoves my dress up over my hips. “Oh, no,” I hear myself say. “Oh, no.”
But nothing is wrong except how filthy he’s being. He puts a knee between my thighs and spreads me open with big hands. And then Leo Morelli licks me over the lace of the lingerie. The slick heat of his tongue through cloth is so new it makes my knees buckle. Leo won’t let me fall. He only licks higher, to a far more forbidden spot, and drills his tongue into it. The delicate twists of lace and wet heat have me panting, embarrassed. He licks me again, again, again, and when he takes his tongue away, a tear runs down my cheek.
“Fuck, I love that,” he says from somewhere above me. “A pretty thing like you, crying for more.”
It’s true. I am. I shouldn’t want this, shouldn’t want any part of being fucked over a table by my family’s enemy, but I’ve never wanted anything more.
Leo tears the panties away. The lace doesn’t go without a fight. It burns on its last trip across my skin. Cool air reaches between my legs, lighting up every wet part of me, made wetter because he wanted it. It’s too hot to bear. I squirm into the table, rocking my hips mindlessly. Leo slaps his palm over my pussy and I jolt, the startle descending into more shivers.
“I was wrong about you. I thought I’d tease you with candlelight and gentle hands, but that’s not what you need.” He tests my thighs, then slides his thumbs up higher and higher and higher until he uses them to spread my ass, wider than before. I’d be frozen if it weren’t for the trembling. Exposed like this, bent over in this enormous room, air caressing parts of me that no one has ever seen except the woman who waxes me. One of the only things I’ll let myself waste money on, and god, I’m glad for it now. “Hold yourself open for me.