Rebel's Bargain

She swallowed the metallic tang of remembered panic and blinked to clear her vision.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’ She swallowed again. ‘Except having you here.’

‘I think you’re scared.’

His words plunged deep to the heart of her, to the place she’d kept hidden for years. The place no one but her mother had known about.

Her chin jutted as she looked up at him. Why did he have to goad and prod and interfere?

Why did he have to come back into her life, disrupting her hard-won peace after all this time?

Her nerves were shattered after a week with him under the same roof, evoking memories of a time when she’d naively thought herself the luckiest woman in the world.

Worse, she’d found herself jealous today, seeing him with other women. Jealous of the man who’d almost destroyed her! She couldn’t stand him and yet he made her feel things she shouldn’t. Her skin felt too tight, as if there was something inside, bursting to get out.

‘Scared? Of you?’ Poppy all but spat the words. She drilled her index finger into his chest, pushing that wall of solid muscle. ‘Think again, Orsino. There’s nothing you can do to me now.’

Nothing worse than abandoning her when she’d needed him most.

‘If you’re not scared of me then of what?’ His voice deepened and she felt it like a caress on her skin, making her quiver. He reached for his glasses and suddenly she was looking into ebony eyes that seemed to see right into her. The glasses clattered to the floor. ‘Of this?’

His head dipped, slowly, as if he expected her to pull back. But her legs seemed to have planted themselves and her heartbeat, instead of racing with anger, slowed to a sluggish, heavy throb of anticipation.

Poppy told herself to move, now, but nothing happened. Until Orsino’s mouth met hers and that expectant quiver became a shudder of pleasure.

Hunger slammed into her with a force that knocked all memory of the past from her mind. His lips were warm, firm and insistent, parting her mouth before she realised she should have stopped him. His tongue danced against hers, inviting her to join him, tempting her to pleasure. The taste of him was like all her ‘if onlys’ rolled into one.

Her hands inched up his broad chest to his shoulders, fingers sinking into fine cashmere and male heat. His hand anchored her head, demanding more as he bowed her back towards the wall.

Orsino’s mouth on hers was devastatingly familiar yet the urgency was new, heady and acute. It spiralled inside her from a place that had been dormant so long she’d thought it dead.

Need exploded with an intensity that couldn’t be denied. It swamped her, driving her against Orsino, begging him for more with her hands and mouth and her body.

He groaned deep in his throat, the sound kindling a spark that caught and flared in her blood. Orsino shifted his head for better access as she moved, too. Urgency made them clumsy, teeth catching flesh in their hunger for more.

Hands plucked at soft cashmere. Thighs shifted, slipping apart. Soft breast to hard torso, they strained together, driven by a storm that ripped apart caution and self-preservation.

Orsino’s hand was at her breast, his thumb swiping her beaded nipple, sending ripples of ecstasy through her body in tiny electric jolts.

Poppy’s hands slid down, around his back, clutching the taut bunching of his buttocks through soft denim. Fingers splayed, she pressed closer, right into that deliciously heavy ridge of arousal. Her chest thumped hard and seemed to melt at the rightness of it.

‘Yes,’ he hissed in her mouth. And ‘Yes’ again as he ground his pelvis in a tight circle against her. Scorching heat engulfed her as she gasped.

It had been so long.

She’d forgotten, had thought her memories had enhanced the excruciating delight of Orsino’s body melding with hers.

A tiny voice in the back of her head squawked about weakness and danger. But this wasn’t weakness. She felt suddenly, gloriously powerful. Strength and pleasure coursed in her veins, pure and unadulterated. Her grasp on his backside tightened, pulling him close.

‘Help me.’ Orsino’s voice was a ragged gasp barely audible over the thrum of her pulse. His hand fumbled at her waist, fingers grazing her skin as he wrestled with the catch on her trousers. Ripples of sensation rayed out across her abdomen and up to her breasts.

‘Help me!’ His voice was hoarse with frustration, echoing her own rising desperation.

Her fingers found his belt, sliding it free, ripping at the button on his jeans.

His ragged breathing was hot in Poppy’s ears as her trousers slid to the floor. A flurry of urgent movement and she was naked from the waist down, clothes discarded. In their place was Orsino, his hand doing things that made her eyes flutter shut and her breath clog.