Page 64 of The Lady is Trouble

This night had been years of fevered dreams in the making.

She moaned, head twisting on the counterpane.No, she voiced without sound. Her hands clenched, silk trapping in her fists. With a wicked smile, he lifted his mouth from her, his finger stilling, teasing with nothing but his breath across her heated flesh. She gasped, thwarted, lashes fluttering, her bewildered gaze meeting his. Her eyes had darkened, the shadowy green of moss in the dead of the forest, her pupils wide and unfocused.

He imagined she wasn’t even sure what he’d asked of her.

“There you are.” He felt pleased in an absurdly masculine way. Piper Scott was, for once, under his thumb.Literally. In fact, she looked as baked as a cake. Generous lover that he was, he took mercy and renewed his assault.

With a tortured cry, she collapsed to the bed.

Stroke after hungry stroke, he worked her into a frenzy as her pleasure built, her body contracting and releasing, her words part supplication, part threat. A fantasy, her rampant longing thrilled. He gripped her hip, guiding her twisting body against his tongue as they mimicked the joining that would come later.

“Let go,” he coaxed and slipped a second finger inside her. She tasted of fresh rain and something sharp, piquant, like a flower’s nectar and was so wet she was trailing moisture to his wrist. As she closed in on bliss, he again let his gaze skate over her gently rounded belly, her heaving breasts, to find her arms thrown wide, head tilted so far back on the mattress her expression was lost to him.

Stretched out before him in the throes of release, she was the sensual answer to his dreams.

A goddess of his design—mind, soul, and body.

With a throat-deep gasp, she came apart, her carnal cry shattering the silent night. Her fingers clenched in his hair and urged him against her, harder,harder, then, seconds later, pushing away, begging for freedom.

Gentling his touch, he counted to ten and imagined Cook, a woman who had to be close to seventy, naked. He was honestly desperate to keep his body from erupting like an untaught boy on her thigh.

His belief that nothing could be as good as imagined evaporated in the mist.

Piper arrived from her tour of the universe, feeling as if she’d closed in on Julian’s beloved Canis Minor only to find herself lying weakly on his bed. Choked for breath, her skin—every inch of it—covered in a light sheen, muscles she’d not known she had quivering, she was utterly destroyed. The triangle between her thighs throbbed in time with her racing heartbeat; her nipples were hard enough, she surmised as she brushed her hand across them, to snap off like pieces of chalk.

The mystery of passion was unfolding around her.

Show me, she had asked without knowing.

Blinking into hazy moonlight, she was stunned to find she held a strand of Julian’s hair in her fist. Had she torn out hishair? Gazing down the curves and twists of her body, she watched as he lifted his head from her thigh, his gaze glowing as fiercely as his distant star when it met hers. There was an incredulous expression on his gorgeous face, as potent as what was surely stamped across hers. He gulped a breath, dropping his head once more, sweat from his skin fusing with hers. After a long moment, he laid a tender kiss on her thigh, and she, amazingly, felt desire spike.

“Stop those little mewling sounds. Or I’m going to have to imagine Cook naked for the rest of the night.”

With a gust of laughter, she propped up on her elbow as he slid from the bed, heading to the lone window in the room. His body was glorious, she marveled as he entered and exited a broad beam of silvery light. The meager glow did nothingbutilluminate the bands of muscle, the flex of his buttocks as he stretched to open the window, the give of his calf muscles as he settled back to the floor. Helplessly, she tracked the enticing line of hair trailing down his chest to his erect penis. Her body lit from within. He was flawlessly masculine, a physical specimen much like a statue in the National Gallery.

As if he tried to control himself, he braced his hands on either side of the window and leaned out into the night. A gust of air swept inside, fluttering the hair at the nape of his neck, skin she’d worshipped with everything in her.

“Youarebeautiful,” she vowed across the short distance.

His hands tensed around the window frame, the muscles in his back rippling, her words disrupting like a pebble thrown in a still pond. He took a hard breath, two. When he turned, blocking the light and throwing his body into silhouette, he looked a hero crossing the moors, windswept, skin flushed, eyes wild.

Although she wanted to separate her gift from this night, she couldn’t help but record his aura as it blossomed, a dazzling, sensual blue.

Her power rose as his attraction raced across the space like a bullet discharged from a pistol. Dropping her head, she trailed her hands over her body, touching each spot he had, neck, shoulders, breasts, nipples. With a muttered curse, he was there, flowing over her, pinning her to the bed before her exploration made it any lower. She gasped as his weight landed fully atop her, his hips pressing as his indescribably hard shaft found a welcoming home. The area expanded and throbbed in preparation for ecstasy.

For invasion.

“Wider,” he urged, bringing her leg alongside his hip.

Oh, she thought and lifted it high and around, her heel digging into his firm buttock. The other she locked in place around his calf as she curved into him. Incredible leverage, trapping him within the circle of her limbs.

“I feel the pupil,” he murmured, then kissed her deeply, tilting her head to better enable his assault. Any sensation that drifted away following her orgasm circled back, escalating, pulse points thumping along every inch of skin he touched.

“You taste of me,” she whispered against his lips.

Julian cupped her face, his heavy-lidded eyes deepening dark as gunmetal. The intense, imperturbable focus he was known for fixed solely on her. “You tasteintoxicating.” He kissed the side of her mouth, her cheek, her jaw. His breath came in great gusts from his lips. “I would bottle the essence if I could.”

Grinding his hips, he worked his length against her. She sighed at the pressure, foreign but so longed for. Anticipation danced along her skin. Her hand locked on his hip, nails biting into skin.