“Did I? That is easily remedied.”
“Yes, quite easily,” she said, tartly. It was all very well for him to mock her embarrassment. He no doubt awoke every morning with one woman or another in his bed. She, however, hadn’t the least experience in such matters. “All you need do is move aside so that I can rise…”
Her words ended in a squeak as Edmond rolled onto his back, hauling a startled Brianna on top of his hard, splendidly naked body.
“Is that better?”
Sprawled across his chest, she gazed down at his impossibly handsome face, shuddering as she encountered the smoldering hunger that burned in his eyes. It was a hunger that beat deep within her. She craved his kisses, his skilled caresses. His most intimate touch.
“No, it most certainly is not better.”
His smile held a wicked awareness of the delicious sensations assaulting her. Deliberately, he trailed his hands up the curve of her back, his smile widening as she trembled in response.
“How is your head?” He startled her by inquiring, an edge of genuine concern in his voice. “Does it still pain you?”
Brianna licked her dry lips, sensing it would be dangerous to admit that the pain from the night before had dulled to the point that she had to concentrate to actually feel the vague throb.
“At the moment, what pains me is the fact that the entire household knows you are in here,” she murmured. “You must let me go.”
“Must I?” His hands smoothed down her back, splaying over her hips. “Why?”
Her breath was wrenched from her lungs as his fingers seared through the thin silk of her chemise.
“Because this is wrong.”
“Wrong? The hell it is. This is…perfect.” His voice thickened, surprisingly holding a hint of a Russian accent, as if his growing desire stirred the more intense emotions of his mother’s ancestors.
Brianna stilled, her hands flat against his chest and her back arched so she could meet his smoldering gaze. Beneath her, his body deliberately shifted to press his swelling erection against her lower stomach.
Her every instinct urged her to part her legs and allow him to teach her the ultimate bliss to be found between a man and woman.
“You will ruin me,” she husked, more in an attempt to remind herself of the danger of allowing herself to be overwhelmed by the avalanche of sensations than to halt the caress of his hands as they explored the curve of her backside and ran down the back of her thighs.
With a savage curse, Edmond lifted his head and buried his face against her neck. His lips trailed a searing path down to the pulse pounding at the base of her throat, giving it a sharp nip before soothing it with the tip of his tongue.
“Does this feel like ruin?” he demanded, his fingers pulling the chemise upward until his hands could slip beneath the fabric and stroke her bare skin. Then, without warning, his hands slid between her legs and he was tugging them apart so they fell on either side of his hips. She whimpered as his hard arousal was pressed directly to her moist, nearly painfully sensitive cleft. “Does this?”
It felt like paradise. A wicked paradise that had her heart pounding and her breath coming in small pants.
“What do you want from me, Edmond?”
“You,” he rasped, his voice raw. “I want you.”
As if he couldn’t help himself, he rolled over, trapping her beneath his trembling body. With the late morning sunlight slanting over their entangled forms, his lips explored her face, closing her stunned eyes before they sought her mouth in a kiss that claimed her very soul.
A tiny voice in the back of her mind warned Brianna not to respond. There was still a part of her that understood the danger of giving herself to this man. Not so much the loss of her innocence, although that should no doubt be her greatest concern, but the knowledge that Edmond Summerville could steal far more than her virginity.
The voice, however, was easily drowned beneath the sensual flood of pleasure that raced through her body. Instead of pushing him away, her arms lifted to encircle his neck, her lips parting softly under his.
She felt as if she had been waging a war against fate since the day her father had died. First in her futile attempts to halt her mother’s slow, inevitable plunge into disaster, and then her terrified determination to prevent her stepfather’s mounting advances.
In this moment, she did not want to fight against destiny. She wanted to lower the ruthless barriers she had erected around herself and for a few hours, just be a carefree young woman who desired a man.
Easily sensing her capitulation, Edmond pulled back to regard her with a restless craving.
“I am not Stefan, ma souris. I am not noble or decent or selfless.” Holding her passion-darkened gaze, he grasped the bodice of her chemise and, with a fierce jerk, ripped it in two. His breath caught at the sight of her exposed breasts, his fingers moving to gently brush over one rosy nipple. “I want you and I intend to take you. Damn the consequences.”
Damn the consequences.