“I’m as good as. Now, do you want to be a good girl and do as I say?”
A bolt of arousal went through me and my pussy throbbed. My breath was coming in short gasps as I slid onto my back and pulled the sheet up to my waist. He considered me for a moment and I was sure he would rip the sheet away and force me to bare myself to him. But he only brought the cigarette back up to his mouth and expelled the smoke in a steady stream. Sweat glittered on his forehead and throat and his gaze glinted in the darkness. He was the devil, wrapped up in ice and wreathed in smoke, and he was going to make me burn from shame and pleasure and everything in between.
“Please let me keep the sheet on,” I whispered.
“No, I don’t think so.”
He pulled it from me in a smooth gesture, leaving my legs naked, my pussy barely covered by the hem of my nightgown. Then he stepped back, going to the desk and putting out his cigarette. He moved back to me, rolling his sleeves up slowly to reveal his forearms. They were marked in dark tattoos, slashes of ink across his golden skin.
“Please,” I whispered. “I don’t know if we should do this.”
“Do what? I’m just enjoying watching you do what you’re too ashamed to admit you enjoy,” he said.
“I didn’t ask for any of this. For you or our wedding.”
He put his knee on the bed and bent over, his hands pressing down on either side of my thighs. “Neither of us did. But it was always going to end like this. You and me, in this bed together because someone more powerful than either of us willed it.”
What was he trying to say? That he didn’t desire me? My gaze drifted down to the front of his pants and there was a telltale ridge beneath the fabric.
“But…you want me,” I whispered.
“I do. A lot of things don’t make sense. This is one of those things.”
He lifted the fabric of my gown, his eyes fixed on me, and spat onto my clit. My hips jerked at the contact of wetness and he moved away, turning his back to me as he went to the desk to light another cigarette. His saliva made an achingly slow trail down my sex.
“Be a good girl and touch yourself for me,” he ordered.
He came back to the bed, his fingers unfastening the front of his shirt. For a moment I thought he was stripping, but then I saw the sweat glittering over his ridged chest. He was riled and warm with desire and drink. I let my eyes glide over the sliver of torso visible through his open shirt, at the tattoos that decorated his skin.
“Touch yourself the way you did in the bathroom that night.”
My fingers trembled as I slid them down my body and spread his saliva over my clit. A pulsing ache went through my pussy, clenching my core, and wetness leaked down onto the sheets. His eyes fixed on my fingers as I worked and his mouth was parted, the cigarette hovering just inches from his lips. He was transfixed and knowing I was the reason made my head spin.
I slid my other hand down and used the tip of my finger to draw back the hood of my clit. His mouth moved slightly and his tongue flicked out and ran over his bottom lip. My other finger swirled over the sensitive nub and my hips arched as pleasure flooded through me. I was already on the edge, swollen and wet from his eyes on me. I changed my rhythm, circling the edges of my inner folds, putting off my orgasm.
He knew I was teasing him and he didn’t like it. “Finish yourself,” he ordered.
Locking eyes with him, I slid the pad of my index over my clit and came hard. Our gazes remained locked as pleasure rippled through me and I bit my lip, but a sharp, gasping cry burst from me. My body stiffened again and again, clenching as my release worked through my hips and thighs.
“You come fast,” he said. “For a woman.”
I exhaled, shaking and confused if he meant to insult me with his words or praise me. My emotions roiled and for some reason I was crying, hot tears slipping through my lashes and wetting my hair.
“He touched me,” I whispered.
Lucien froze. “What did you say?”
Everything that had been knotted up in me for the last several months came rushing out like an uncontrollable flood. I had to confess what had happened or it would eat away at me slowly every time I laid eyes on him.
“The first night I was here, at the Romano’s house,” I whispered, my voice shaky. “I danced with Romano and he took me out to the garden and he—he did things I didn’t want. Then he said he would hurt us both if I told you.”
“What did he do?” Lucien’s voice was quiet, deadly. All of the arousal was gone from his face and body, leaving him as cold as ever.
“He asked me about you, if you were faithful to him and I said yes. And then he wanted to know if you had had sex with me yet and I said no, but he didn’t believe me. He pushed me against a stone fountain in the garden and tore my panties off…and put his fingers…you know. Then he said that he was surprised you hadn’t taken my virginity yet and that he would have taken it the minute I turned eighteen.”
“Fuck,” Lucien said quietly.
“I was too scared to tell you,” I whispered. I took a shuddering breath and tried to compose myself. “He told me not too, that he would hurt us both if I did.”