A Bride to Redeem Him

Tipping her head back, she arched against him, rising just slightly onto her toes, and closed the gap between them, a thousand fireworks exploding in her head, her chest, and lower, as she finally pressed her lips to his.

CHAPTER EIGHT

IT WAS NOTHING Louis had ever known before.

The moment her hot, slick mouth fitted to his, an urgent need clawed within him. Even more raw and desperate than it had been back out there, in front of the restaurant.

Because this time there was no audience. This time they couldn’t pretend it was all about the game. This time there was nothing to stop them.

He deepened the kiss and the fact that Alex was lost, barely able to keep her grip on him in an effort to keep herself upright, only intensified the moment. From the delicious drugging draw of her fingernails over his muscled shoulder blades to the feel of her hair slipping through his hands like the finest silk.

His tongue slid deliciously over hers and she let out a sound that made everything tighten, coil in his lower abdomen. He cradled her cheek as though she was as precious as the irreplaceable, valuable sculptures dotted around his penthouse. And she cast every one of them into the shade.

It was bliss to kiss her. He paid homage to her lips, the corners of her mouth and then her jawline, blazing a trail of hot kisses down the neck and exulting in the way her whole body quivered in response.

When she moved against him again, moulding herself to his chest and pressing her breasts against him, he wanted her with a ferocity he hadn’t known before. Up against the panelled wall, in his bed, anywhere. Everywhere.

Every way.

He wanted to feel her without the barrier of the stupid winceyette nightgown, but he could use it to his advantage. He could make her wish she’d never brought the damned thing. Spanning her ribcage with his hands, he moved his palms to circle her and flicked his thumbs over nipples straining even beneath the heavy material. She swayed instinctively against him again, a muted cry slipping from her mouth—and a curse—and triumph stabbed through him.

‘Regretting your choice of night attire yet?’ he murmured against her throat, feeling her pulse fluttering wildly beneath his lips.

‘Shut up and take it off,’ she moaned hoarsely, and he smirked all the wider.

‘Soon. There’s no rush, we can take our time.’

Her eyes flew open. One minute heavy-lidded and dark, the next squinting at him and taking in his grin. A low gasp escaped her.

‘You’re enjoying this. Teasing me.’

‘Of course. Like I said, there’s no rush.’

‘You say it as though you’re perfectly in control,’ she muttered. ‘Only I know you’re not.’

Carefully, deliberately she moved her hips, rocking against him until she felt the unmistakeable ridge of his arousal. Solid, insistent, almost painfully hard. He hadn’t such an ache, such a desperate throb in a long time. Suddenly her hands moved to the twist of his towel, which still hung low on his hips, tugging the knot and releasing it before he could react. And then she was touching him, her fingers gliding up and down his length and sending him wild with desire.

Louis groaned. Things were moving fast. Too fast. This wasn’t the way he did things. He was never so...desperate. He had to slow it down, get back in control of this runaway train of need. He grasped her wrist, encircling it with his finger and thumb, and moved it from him. She protested even more when he moved her entire body from his, ignoring the way the loss of contact made him feel abruptly lost. Bereft.

Then he lifted the ugly, tent-like nightgown over her head in one easy movement, balled it up and tossed it across the room. And finally she was standing before him in nothing but the tiniest, sexiest scrap of lace he thought he’d ever seen.

‘Exquisite,’ he commented thickly, his hand sweeping over her shoulder, down over her chest, one perfect breast, and skimming over her abdomen before running a finger over the thin velvet band of her underwear. He traced patterns over her lower stomach and dipped low enough to brush against her hot, feminine heat, revelling in her gasp, then back up over her torso, leaving her aching for so much more.

‘It’s peacock-blue,’ she blurted out

abruptly. Rattled.

That she was so responsive to him, so brimming with need only made him all the harder. She poured through all his senses. A strange kind of insanity ran through his blood. He was consumed by her.

‘I wasn’t talking about the underwear,’ he managed gruffly, ‘so much as the woman wearing it.’

‘Oh.’

So demure, so modest, so unaware of her own sexuality. So his.

His lips curled upwards slightly. Such a possessive sensation should have alarmed him. It didn’t. Instead, he simply lowered his head and kissed her again, and she drank him in as if she thought this was her one and only chance.

It was like the most delectable adventure, kissing and nibbling and licking his way from her eager mouth, along that pretty jawline and down the long line of her elegant neck. He dawdled and dipped into the sensitive hollow that made her tremble so sublimely in his arms. When he rolled one glorious nipple in his fingers before bending his head to suck on it, his tongue swirling a pattern of its own, she called out as her fingers bit into his shoulders, her back curving as though she offered herself up to him all the more.