Mastered by Love (Bastion Club 8)

Hope flared—only to be drowned by a wave of disappointment.

Before she could decide what she truly felt, he walked forward again, then swung around. Her gaze raked the line of his armillary spheres. They were in his sitting room. Her last chance of being saved, by any means, died as she heard the door shut.

She waited, breath bated, to be put down. Instead, he walked through the next door, kicked it shut behind them, and continued on across his bedroom.

All the way to the foot of his massive four-poster bed.

Halting, he gripped her waist; dipping his shoulder, he slid her slowly down, breasts to his chest, until her toes touched the floor.

Valiantly ignoring the sudden rush of her pulse and her swooningly eager senses, she fixed her eyes, narrowed, on his as he straightened. “You can’t do this.” She made the statement absolute. “You cannot simply carry me in here, and”—she gestured wildly—“ravish me!”

It was the only word she could think of that matched the intent she could now see in his eyes.

He studied her for an instant, then raised his hands, framed her face. Tipped it up as he shifted closer, so their bodies touched, brushed, settled, as, eyes locked with hers, he bent his head. “Yes. I can.”

His statement trumped hers. It rang with innate conviction, with the overwhelming confidence that had been his from birth.

Lids falling, she braced for an assault.

It didn’t come.

Instead, he supped at her lips, a gentle, tantalizing, tempting caress.

Her lips already hungered, her body thrumming with awakening need when he lifted his head just enough to catch her eyes. “I’m going to ravish you—thoroughly. And I guarantee you’ll enjoy every minute.”

She would; she knew she would. And she no longer knew of any way to avoid it—was fast losing sight of why she should. She searched his eyes, his face. Moistened her lips. Looked at his, and didn’t know what to say.

What reply she wanted to convey.

As she stared at them, his lips curved. Thin, hard, yet mobile, the ends curved up just slightly, invitingly.

“You don’t have to say anything. You just have to accept. Just have to stop resisting…” He breathed the last words as his lips lowered to hers. “And let what we both want, simply be.”

His lips closed on hers again, still gentle, still persuasive, yet she felt the barely leashed hunger in the hands cradling her face. Lifting one hand, she closed it over the back of one of his—and knew to her bones his gentleness was a façade.

Ravish he’d said, and ravish he meant.

As if to prove her correct, his lips hardened, firmed; she felt his hunger, tasted his passion. She expected him to press her lips apart, with no further invitation claim her mouth, then her—but abruptly he reined in the passion about to break free.

Enough for him to lift his lips an inch from hers and demand, “If you don’t want to know what it would be like to lie with me, say so now.”

She’d dreamed of it, fantasized about it, spent long hours wondering…looking into the dark richness of his eyes, at the heat already burning in their depths, she knew she should deny it, grasp the chance and flee, yet the lie simply wouldn’t come.

“If you don’t want me, tell me now.”

The harsh words grated, deep and low.

His lips hovered over hers, waiting for her answer.

One of her hands lay on his chest, spread over his heart; she could feel the heavy, urgent thud, could see in his eyes, behind all the heat, a simple need—one that pleaded, that touched her.

That needed her to be assuaged.

If you don’t want me…

He wanted her.

Tipping up her face, she closed the distance, and kissed him.