He’d been cold, and when he hadn’t been cold, he’d been that perfect brand of fake charming that she’d identified as such from moment one.
And he was trying to pull it on her again. Like he really was the womanizer that the press made him out to be. Like she didn’t know the truth about him.
Like she didn’t know the man had never had a partner who hadn’t paid cash for him. Like she hadn’t been his first lover.
And she couldn’t take it anymore. One minute, she was standing a perfectly respectable distance from him, and the next, she was lunging at him, her hand wrapped around his silk tie.
He had the decency to look shocked for a split second. And that second was all she needed. When his mouth opened, she pulled hard on his tie and angled her head, pressing her lips to his and thrusting her tongue in deep. Tasting him. Punishing him.
His arms wrapped tight around her waist, pulling her close to him. She could feel him hardening, lengthening against her stomach. Her internal muscles clenched in response, an ache building where she longed to be filled by him again.
She pulled at the knot on his tie and it loosened. She pulled again, undoing it completely, and throwing it to the floor. She unbuttoned the top of his shirt, and continued on without asking, without checking his face.
He could stop her if he wanted. He would have to. Because she couldn’t stop herself. She wanted him. With everything she had in her, she wanted him, and she didn’t want to let him hide behind that facade he’d built up.
She wanted him real. She wanted him raw. She wanted him naked. And that wanting, that need, unblocked, unchained, no more fear holding her back, felt like the most delicious freedom she’d ever tasted.
She felt like Julia. Not like Julia who had been told she was wrong. Not like Julia who had been told she should be thankful for her attempted rape, because no other man would want her. Not like Julia who had been hiding behind her armor.
She was just Julia. Who she would have been without all of that garbage. Without all that pain.
Finally she had his shirt open, her fingers skimming along his perfectly defined muscles, his chest hair tickling her palms.
She wasn’t taking orders today. She wasn’t afraid of being clumsy. And when she looked at his face, his expression taut, his eyes nearly black, she wasn’t afraid of being rejected, either.
She pushed his shirt off his shoulders and leaned in, pressing a kiss to his pectoral muscle before sliding her tongue around his nipple. He jerked beneath her touch and she smiled, kissing his skin again.
The way he responded to her now was completely different than after their first kiss. He’d been calm then, unruffled. Now, he wasn’t. His heart was raging, his erection hard. There was no pretending that their night together hadn’t changed things.
No way for him to pretend he was in absolute control. No way at all.
She had the control. But all she wanted to do with her control was pleasure him. Until he was shaking, until he was sweating. Until he was begging.
She dropped to her knees in front of him and started to work at his belt. Her fingers were trembling now. She’d never done this before, but she wanted to. She’d wanted to that first night they were together, and she would have, if he hadn’t gone to the couch.
“You kept me from living out all my fantasies that night we were together,” she said, sliding her hand over his cloth-covered shaft before undoing the button on his pants and lowering the zipper. “You won’t deny me again.”
She didn’t know where the confidence was coming from. Didn’t know who this woman was, with her hand wrapped around a man, with every intention of tasting him, having her way with him. She didn’t know who this woman was, but she liked her.
And then she realized, this woman was her. The real her.
He reached up and grabbed her bun, tugging her hair, pulling her head back so she had to meet his eyes. “You think not?” he growled.
“I think I have you in the palm of my hand.” She squeezed him and a feral groan escaped his lips, rumbling through his body. “You’re mine, Ferro Calvaresi.”
She reached beneath the waistband of his underwear and freed him, her fingers curled around his bare, heated flesh.