Beyond Seduction (Bastion Club 6)

She looked up, blinked, then rose. Behind his back, he turned the key; the click of the bolt fell into the silence.

He smiled, and started toward her.

Eyes widening, she put down her pen. “Ah…Gervase. Is there something….”

She turned to face him as he rounded the desk, eyes widening even more when he didn’t slow. With his knee, he nudged her chair aside, and finally halted, effectively trapping her between him and the desk.

“What…?” She swayed back, then straightened, stiffened, the instinct to lean away from him countered by her will.

He met her eyes, endeavored to keep his expression mild. “You told me that if I had any further questions, you’d happily answer them.” He’d let his gaze slide to her lips. Leaning closer, he brushed them with his. Not a kiss—a tantalizing touch.

Enough to distract her, but when he drew back an inch, she shook off the effect. Frowned. “About the festival—questions about the festival.”

“Oh.” He infused the word with boyish disappointment. “I’d hoped…” Again he touched his lips to hers, for longer this time, until he sensed her instinctive response; one hand rising, fingers lightly cradling her cheek, one side of her jaw, he held her—barely—and sent his lips cruising, tracing her jaw, feathering up over her cheekbone, over her ear, dipping down until he breathed in the scent of her, and closing his eyes breathed softly out, lips hovering above the sensitive hollow below her ear.

His other hand had risen to lightly grip her waist; he felt her reaction, the swift indrawn breath, the quiver of fascinated expectation.

Of curiosity awakening, stretching.

Inwardly smiling, he murmured, “I’d hoped…”—he drew back just enough to meet her eyes—“to learn the answer to a question that’s been

plaguing me since last we parted.”

Her eyes, peridot-bright, searched his; her lips, lush and ripe, were parted—she moistened them before whispering, “What…?”

Feeling his hands move between them, Madeline glanced down. Her lungs seized, her head spun as she watched his quick fingers unfasten the tiny buttons closing the bodice of her day gown.

They stood in her office with the afternoon sun streaming over them and he was baring her breasts, and intended God knew what. She should stop him—could stop him.

But she made no move to.

Unable to take her eyes off his fingers, off the swell of her breasts he was so rapidly exposing, she swallowed. “What was your question?”

“I need to know, I’m burning to know…” Her bodice open, her breasts laid bare, he cupped one swelling mound. Ran his thumb gently, tantalizingly, over the peak. Watched it harden.

Her gaze rose to his face; she couldn’t breathe. His features had never looked harder, more rigid. More clearly etched with passion reined.

“What these taste like.”

The intent words penetrated her mind only slowly; when they finally impinged, she blinked, went to look down, but he looked up at that moment and kissed her.

Not as he had in the past, so that her wits evaporated and her ability to think dissolved, but lightly, soothingly, enticingly.

Entreatingly, in patent supplication.

So that even while his lips supped at hers, she could feel his hand at her breast, could fully appreciate each evocative caress, feel each touch sink to her bones.

“Will you let me learn the answer?”

His words drifted over her lips, through her brain. There wasn’t any answer she could make—other than to let him take what he wished. To, when his lips feathered over her jaw and his head dipped, close her eyes and let it happen. His lips traced down the column of her throat, and she shivered. He paused as if to note it—all the answer, all the permission he needed. Then his head lowered.

Eyes tightly closed, she gasped; with one hand at her waist, he bent her back. Then his lips pressed hotly to the upper swell of her breast and she shuddered. Lost all touch with the world as with lips, tongue and teeth, with the hot wetness of his mouth, he tasted and learned.

And taught her. The sensations he evoked, that he sent whirling through her, that speared her, that wracked her, were more, far more intense than she’d imagined they might be. With his mouth on her breasts, he waltzed her into a new landscape of heat, hovering passion, and a deeper, sharper, more powerful yearning.

Not good, she knew, but oh so addictive. Her senses unfurled; parched, denied for so long, they gloried and wallowed in the bounty of delight he pressed on her.

He gripped, lifted her, then she was on the desk, lying back amid her ledgers and accounts, her knees and thighs spread with his hips between. And he was leaning over her; one of her hands had risen to his head, holding him to her as he devoured.