Chapter 16

Tessa placed her hands on his thighs, parting them and stepping between, and Julian realized a truth vital to this moment.

He didn't need to be in control.

She reached down to grab his shirt, giving it a few tugs until it pulled free of his waistband. Then it was up over his head and tossed away.

"Oh, my," she said at the sight of him. "How many muscles does one man need?"

A wave of gratification washed through him.

A shallow line formed between her eyebrows. "What is…" Light fingertips trailed across his shoulders to a point just below his clavicle. "Is that a bruise?"

"It's nothing."

"It very much looks like something." Her fingers trailed across him to another spot, lower. "And is this bruise nothing?"

"I spar."

"As in boxing?"

"Aye."

She leaned forward and pressed her mouth to the bruise beneath her fingertips, her lips so soft and generous against him, touching and warming his skin…touching and warming a place deeper.

She found another bruise, then another, exploring his body with her mouth and hands.

All he wanted was to reach out and touch her.

But he couldn't.

If he surrendered to that urge, then he would surrender to another, then another, and down that path lay destruction—he felt the certainty in every cell of his body.

Already, he'd let it go too far.

She kissed a bruise just below his bottom rib and hesitated. She'd reached the final and lowest bruise.

His cock throbbed.

Light fingertips brushed along his waistband, and her gaze lifted and met his across his reclined body.

"I want to taste you."

His cock begged.

Too far.

Here she was, again, pushing him too far—determined to do so.

"You shouldn't."

No.He should've spoken a flat, final no.

But the simple fact was he couldn't make himself.

"Don't deny yourself the pleasure you so freely give," she said. "Not tonight."

Not tonight.

As if tonight were different from any other night.

And yet…

Perhaps it could be.

What was one night in a lifetime of thousands, anyway?

"Don't deny me the pleasure of pleasuring you."

And he knew it wasn't in him to deny this woman anything.

A dangerous woman, indeed.

Though it was the worst thing he could do, he nodded.

She settled back a few inches and considered what lay before her—the buttoned falls of his trousers and what throbbed beneath…the thickened length barely contained by black superfine.

Trembly fingers grazed across him, and he sucked in a sharp breath. He could spend here.

His eyes drifted shut. He couldn't watch her as if she were a vassal in worship to his cock and not spend.

But as her nimble fingers worked the buttons of his trousers, he wasn't sure it was better to have his eyes closed. For now, all he could do was feel and anticipate, which only heightened the lust coursing through his blood, fizzing it into bright effervescence.

He knew the instant the final button was freed and the falls tucked back. He felt a whisper of cooling air across his length—and her gasp that held the trace of a giggle.

Gratifying, that gasp and giggle, and he squeezed his eyes tighter.

Then he felt them—feathery fingertips brushing across him. A groan escaped his parted lips. So much contained within that vocal release—pleasure…a sweet sort of pain…impatience…want…need…

The need for more.

Driven by instinct, he reached out and covered her hand with his. Unsteady fingers became firmer, tightening around him.

Or was that tremble coming from him?

Impossible to tell, for what he was experiencing with her and she with him and they together was a oneness.

His tremble or her tremble…it mattered not.

For tonight.

Together, they stroked up, then down, his length, and another ragged moan poured from his throat as she found a rhythm. He released her hand, his tutelage no longer needed.

Then he felt it—a soft, slick glide all the way up his length.

He shouldn't open his eyes—truly, he shouldn't—but how could he not when her tongue was teasing and flicking and stroking his length.

His gaze slitted open, and he watched her taste him, even as her hand used the slickness to move up and down. Her eyes lifted and met his across his reclined body, her black pupils pushing irises into thin blue rings, as she wrapped her mouth around the crown of his cock.

It was the most erotic sight of his life.

He was in trouble.

This magnificent, logical, fearless woman, who was clear about what she wanted out of life, wanted him.

He'd never encountered a greater aphrodisiac.

She shifted backward, and her mouth slid off him. A groan of protest escaped him. Silver-blue eyes fast on his, she languidly fingered the strand of pearls, caught the amethyst clasp and flicked it open.

Intention and mischief sparking about her, the pearls swung from her forefinger. "You like playthings, don't you?"

He gave an unhurried nod. No use denying it.

"What if we used these for…" Her gaze moved between his cock and the pearls.

"For?" He hardly knew his own voice, so rumbly and ragged it had gone.

A secret smile curled about her mouth. "You'll see."

She slid the pearls across her lips, wetting them with her tongue, and all Julian could do was watch, transfixed, as she took the strand and grazed them across him and began wrapping them around his rigid length, layer upon stacked layer. She interlaced her fingers and closed around him and began rolling the slick stack of pearls up and down.

Yet another groan scraped across his throat. "That feels so…good."

He'd used pearls on a woman's body—had, in fact, fantasized about using these very pearls on this woman's body—but never on his. The absolute pleasure of slick, rolling pressure as she moved them up and down, her mouth taking in his crown as she did so.

A notion—one he'd been avoiding—came to him.

He'd met his match in Lady Tessa.

A distinct and known feeling began to build inside him—the build toward release—and he felt himself resist the momentum.

He should allow it to happen. Then he would return pleasure for pleasure, and they would both end the night satisfied.

Except he wouldn't be satisfied. He understood as much on a fundamental level.

For tonight…he wanted…craved…ached for an outcome he'd long denied himself.

For tonight, all he wanted was the relief of surrender.

He reached out and covered her fingers with his, staying her hand before it was too late.

Before his mind got in the way of capitulation.

Her gaze lifted and met his, his cock still in her mouth.

Heaven help him.

With care, he pushed himself to a sitting position and slid from between her swollen lips. She unwound the pearls from around him, dropping them onto the coverlet, and stood. Her hands found his shoulders, and she leaned forward, her gaze steady on his. "I need you inside me."

She wasn't one for equivocation, this woman.

Even as he questioned his sanity, he grabbed her waist and pulled her against him, so her breasts pressed into his chest. She lifted onto her toes and swung one knee, then the other, to either side of his thighs, so she straddled him, her quim a hairsbreadth above his length, her mouth nearly touching his, her shallow breath a whisper across his lips.

Then her mouth lowered onto his in a slow, languorous kiss that said they had all the time in the world, even as urgency pressed in at the edges.

He'd kissed her once and had known it to be a mistake—and even now he wasn't sure he'd been wrong. It was simply that her lips were too soft and too sweet and too irresistible. Now, as then, he wanted to tumble headlong into her kiss and never break surface again.

A note of fear shimmered through him, for within a kiss lay intimacy beyond pleasure.

Pleasure could be a cold object.

But not a kiss.

There was no place to hide within a kiss.

On an impatient moan, she shifted closer, pressing her slick cunny against his rigid length and ground up and down him. They wouldn't have all night, but a mere few seconds, if she kept that up.

Right.

His hands tightened around her waist as he half stood and swiveled them around in a swift, efficient motion that had their places on the bed reversed—it was now her lying on the coverlet and him hovering above her. Her long legs crooked at the knees before reaching out and wrapping around his hips, squeezing him closer, demanding his surrender.

"Please, Julian," she said. "Give me this one night."

This woman didn't beg easily.

And it wasn't in Julian to refuse her.

One forearm propped to the side of her head, with his other hand he reached between them and positioned himself at the entrance to her sex, so wet and swollen and ready…

With slow deliberation, he pushed inside, the feel of her hot and tight…so deliciously tight…

He stopped.

Blast.

"You're a virgin." He'd forgotten the possibility.

Her eyes told him he wasn't telling her anything she didn't already know.

Right.

"I want this," she said, her voice a raw, fervent scrape across her throat. "I want you."

I want you.

She wanted the pleasure his body could bring to hers.

That was what she wanted.

She didn't actually want him.

And he told himself this not because he wanted to hear it.

But because he needed to hear it.

On a single, swift stroke, he thrust into her sweet, slick cunny, and she pinched her eyes shut for a quick instant.

He shouldn't be doing this.

She was a lady.

She was a virgin.

He was in no way, shape, or form worthy of her.

And here he was, surrendering to the weakness he'd known was lying in wait inside him.

Waiting for the right woman to test and expose it.

Waiting for Tessa.

And now they were joined, his head bent, mouth pressed against her neck, her breath quick and shallow in his ear, and there was no retreating.

Slowly, he began to move inside her, trying for tenderness, but a hard cock was a blunt instrument of force and ache and demand, no subtlety to it, and she was responding, her hips finding a rhythm with his, as they moved together with the unified goal of delivering and extracting pleasure from one another's bodies.

He wouldn't last long.

It had been how many years since he'd experienced a woman's body in this way? Six…? Seven years?

But this wasn't any woman's body.

This was Tessa beneath him, demanding everything he had.

The movement of her hips became focused and intentioned. Though it had been years since he'd bedded a woman in this way, he knew what she was reaching for. He kept his rhythm slow and shallow, even as she clawed at his back for more.

"Tessa," he spoke into her ear. "Be patient, my?—"

He flinched, the next word sticking in his throat.

Love.

He'd almost called her my love.

And he couldn't help wondering.

If he'd said it, would he have meant it?

Another thought for another moment.

"Oh, Julian," she cried, straining against him, her head arched back in frustration and pleasure and incompletion.

Still, he penetrated her steadily, letting her meet her need on his body.

Then the breath caught in her throat, and she went still in the specific way just before climax. He gripped her hips, unwilling to let her lose this. He moved in and out, dragging cries from her, his control slipping from his grasp. He was only a man, and she was a woman bent on pulling him over the edge with her.

Then she broke, her cunny pulsing its release around him, a ragged cry tearing from her throat and toward the ceiling. And that was all it took for his own release to nip at him and demand its due.

Never had surrender felt so sweet and so…right.

It was only when he began to spend that reality crashed onto him, and he pulled from her and spilled the rest of his seed onto the rumpled coverlet.

Blast.

Then it was one reality after another collapsed onto him as he stilled and the final reality of what he'd done seeped in.

He'd made love to Tessa.

He'd spilled his seed inside her.

Neither was supposed to happen.

In fact, he'd carefully fashioned a life where none of this would happen.

Then Tessa had come along.

And nothing had been the same since.

With the clearest eyes he'd had since their first conversation, he saw the inevitability of this outcome.

They'd been careening toward this all these weeks.

It had never been about a wager.

He'd been deluding himself.

It had been about his desire to have her.

He felt her steady gaze on the side of his face. "Julian?"

He couldn't look at her.

Not if he wasn't going to take her in his arms.

Not if he was to leave.

Without a backward glance, he shoved off the bed and grabbed his shirt, donning it in a few efficient movements. His other clothes quickly followed, and he was striding across the room. His hand closed around the door handle, and he heard at his back, firm, "Julian."

He hesitated.

If she called him back to her bed, he wasn't sure he could resist.

"Our wager is settled," she said.

Disappointment sheered through him.

He'd wanted her to call him back to her bed.

He'd wanted to be weak.

Then he was through the door, the catch clicking behind him.

They were free of each other.

He was free.

Then why didn't he feel free?

Why did he feel utterly, irrevocably, irretrievably bound?

For the next three minutes…orthree hours—it didn't much matter—Tessa lay in bed, alone, eyes fixed on the ceiling, silken strains of violin seeping through the walls.

She'd let him go.

She'd set him free.

Except he didn't walk like a free man.

He walked like a man with the weight of the world yoked to his shoulders.

And she didn't understand why.

He had it all—wealth, looks, the rare gift of having people genuinely like him, fast racehorses…All the trappings a marquess could ask for to navigate the world as he liked.

Didn't the Marquess of Ormonde possess all the necessary ingredients to combine into a fulfilled man?

Yet he wasn't.

He was alone…lonely.

By his own choice.

Something was broken within Julian.

And though Tessa longed to know what, she accepted she might never know, for nothing bound them now.

An ache pulsed through her and settled in the center of her chest.

Yet…

Did nothing truly bind them?

The ache in the center of her chest seemed to suggest otherwise.