by Lara Adrian
I draw back and find her gaze heavy-lidded and simmering with the same desire that’s streaking through me.
But there is a trace of mistrust in those storm-colored eyes, too. “Why did you leave the way you did the other day?”
“Wasn’t it obvious?”
“I need you to tell me.”
“You know the answer.” My voice rumbles out of me in a growl. “Because after you kissed me, I knew if I didn’t go there’d be no stopping what came next. No stopping this,” I murmur, as I lower my head and cover her mouth with mine.
There’s no resistance in her at all now, not in the way she melts deeper into my embrace, nor in the way she meets my kiss with equal, burning desire. Her arms move around me, one hand fisted in the fabric of my shirt at my back, the other reaching up to tangle in my loose hair.
The arousal that’s owned me from the moment I first laid eyes on her weeks ago in my club now erupts in a need I can no longer deny.
I push my tongue past her parted lips on a snarl. She never should have come here—not with Hathaway that first night, not to pose for me in order to save the son of a bitch, and sure as hell not today, after I gave her a fighting chance to keep well enough away.
I still have time to put a stop to this. If I slam on the brakes and push her away now, I know she’ll never be back. It’s a thought I should reach for like a life line. Instead, I shove it away and fill my hands with more of Melanie’s softness.
A tug of the elastic band holding her hair up brings the flame-hued waves tumbling down around my hand. I twist the silken mass around my fist and drag her closer, tipping her head back so my mouth can feast even more feverishly on hers.
She moans my name, her pulse galloping so hard I can feel it pound against my lips and every other place our bodies are melded together.
As hot as she looks in her little pink waitress uniform, I need it gone. I find the zipper behind her neck and draw it down, baring her from her tender nape to the small of her back.
“I want you naked,” I mutter, my voice thick with need.
She helps me slide the one-piece dress off her shoulders and down the length of her beautiful body. The tights and shoes come off next, leaving her standing before me in just her modest white lace bra and panties.
As impatient as I am to have her beneath me, I take my time unwrapping the rest of her. A flick of my thumb frees the clasp of her bra, baring the pretty swells of her perfect breasts. I catch the fullness of one of them in my palm and bend my head to suckle the peaked nipple into my mouth. Her answering sigh is ragged, her groan anguished as I pull away.
I skim my hands along her sides, loving the way she trembles for me. I’m careful with the scar that runs along her rib cage, not because I think she’s fragile, but because it reminds me of the strength and courage of the extraordinary woman who bears it.
I meet her gaze as I tenderly caress her, savoring the feel of her under my fingertips. “You’re so beautiful, Melanie. Even here,” I tell her, carefully tracing my thumb over the raised and ragged skin of the injury that might have killed her.
I feel her tense under my touch. She tries to flinch away from my tender exploration of her scars. “Jared, don’t . . . not there.”
“Look at me, sweetheart.” I still until she finds the courage to obey my quiet command. “You’re beautiful, Melanie. You’re beautiful especially here, because you survived.” With my free hand, I reach up and rest my palm along her cheek. “I’ve already got every gorgeous inch of you branded into my mind. I could paint you just from memory. Right now, though, I want to taste you.”
“Jared . . .” A lost look fills her gaze, but her voice is filled with surrender.
I lower myself in front of her, until I’ve sunk to my knees. She makes a whimpering noise as I lean in and press a kiss to the scarred gash.
That whimper dissolves into a strangled cry when I move my mouth to the mound of her pussy and nip her over the top of the thin satin of her panties. The scent of her fills my nostrils, sweet and earthy and delicious.
And she’s wet. I slip my fingers inside her panties, into the slick heat of her folds. A groan tears out of me, possessive and untamed. Hunger lashes at me, the scent and feel of her on my fingers making me drunk with the need to have my fill.
Touching her like this isn’t enough. I need to feel her on my tongue. I move forward, burying my face in the musky sweetness of her. She gasps as I cleave into her pussy, licking and suckling, lapping at her like a cat in the cream.
Her pleasured, wordless cries mingle with the harsh sounds of our breathing. I want to make her scream. I want my whole damn house and half the city to know she’s mine now. As of this moment, I refuse to think she will ever belong to any other man again.
“Jared. Oh, God.”
The sound of my name voiced around a shuddery moan spurs me on. My mouth moves relentlessly against her tender flesh, my tongue dominating her clit until she’s bucking against my face and the scream I need to hear from her suddenly boils out of her, wild and uncontained.
“I’m sorry,” she gasps brokenly, her breathing ragged. “I’ve never made that sound before. I tried to hold it back, but I couldn’t.”
I grin up at her, my lips slick with her juices. “Darlin’, don’t ever apologize to me for that.”
My hands are rough as I undress her the rest of the way. My breath saws out of my lungs, driven by the racing tempo of my heart. All the blood in my body seems to be flowing in the same direction, making me harder than I’ve ever been in my life.
My jeans feel like sandpaper against my engorged length. Sweat dampens my bespoke shirt.
My head is filled with a hundred damn good reasons why I should end this now, before things go any further.
Before I allow myself to need Melanie Laurent—to want her in my life—any more than I already do.
Instead I rise to my feet. Cupping her nape in my firm grasp, I pull her to me for another kiss. Her nakedness sears me through my clothes. Her dusky, pleasured gaze still smolders with desire, reducing all my logic and good intentions to ashes.
Her lips curve playfully as she looks up at me. “How does it always end up that I’m the one standing naked all by myself with you, Mr. Rush?”
Before I can answer, she reaches up and begins unbuttoning my shirt. I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until her hands slide underneath the opened front and onto my bare skin. Her touch is light, but sure. Explorative, but not shy.
If I imagined in the beginning that she was innocent because of her prim dresses and fresh-faced beauty, her hands on me now obliterate all those misgivings.
Her palms skim down my abdomen, fingertips tracing the ridges in a way that makes my cock jump in envious anticipation. She lifts on her toes to kiss me while her hands work my belt loose and unfasten the button of my jeans.
I groan in warning as the rasp of the loosening zipper vibrates through my every awakened nerve ending. Her hand slips inside, wrapping around my shaft. If lust were truly combustible I’d be nothing but cinders as she strokes my length, her eyes locked on mine.
“My friend Paige says you’re a deviant,” she murmurs as she moves her hand up and down on me. “She says she’s heard you have orgies right here in your house. Is she right?”
The questions are unexpected, and too much to contend with so long as she’s touching me. I scowl, gritting my teeth against the delicious friction of her hand all over my cock. “Is this your idea of torturing a confession out of me?”
She arches her brows. “Would it work?”
“Oh, yeah.”
She smiles in response, but then her hand slowly stills. Her touch leaves me, her eyes turning serious. “So, is it true?”
I can’t lie to her. I can’t pretend I’ve been a saint when my reputation and my art both speak volumes to the contrary. “Not for a long time.”
“How long, Jared?”
“About a year or so.” Not coincidentally, around the same
time the tremors in my hand became too frequent to ignore. I’ve been pulling back from everything I used to be, retreating into a self-imposed isolation. I’d almost had myself convinced I was comfortable there. Then I saw her. “What are you really asking me, Melanie?”
She swallows. “I know you’ve been with a lot of women. I know you probably still are—”
“I’m not. If you’re asking how long it’s been since I’ve been with anyone else, it was well before I first laid eyes on you. And there’s been no one after.”
“Not even Alyssa?”
I chuckle, not only because I hear a note of jealousy in the question, but also because the very idea is so far beyond the realm of possibility I can’t help but laugh.
“Why is that so funny?”
“Alyssa Gallo is seventeen years old. She’s a student in an art program I sponsor at one of Dominic Baine’s rec centers in Chelsea.”
“Oh.” She frowns, shaking her head. “But that first morning I came here, you let me believe—”
“I only let you believe what you wanted to about me. I thought it would’ve been easier if you despised me.”
I’m lost staring down into her desire-drenched, questioning eyes. All those reasons and rationales I had for inflicting harm on Daniel Hathaway by taking what he cherished most fell away after the first day she showed up to pose for me. The game I was so certain I could master had slipped out of my control before I’d even realized it.
“I thought if you despised me it would be easier for me not to feel anything for you.” My hand moves up to caress her exquisite face. “I was wrong about that, Melanie. I’ve been wrong about everything when it comes to you.”
Pulling her closer, I take her mouth in a slow, passionate kiss. Despite the wild gallop of my heart, and the lust that’s spurring into me with every hard beat of my pulse, I don’t hurry. I want her dizzy with pleasure before I’m finished with her.
I want her to understand all the things I can’t summon the courage to say.
That I’m sorry for how we started out.
That I wish I were a better, more deserving man.
If I can’t tell her with words, I can tell her with pleasure.
And in that way, I intend to leave no shred of doubt.
24
MELANIE
“Come with me,” he says, threading his fingers through mine after his deep, infinitely thorough kiss leaves me out of breath and boneless with need.
I’m too eager to feel his mouth on me again to question what he has in mind. With my hand in his, he starts walking further into the immense study, toward the ornate mahogany millwork of the rear wall. It’s not until I see the discreet crystal doorknob that I realize there’s a doorway cut into the dark, polished wood.
Jared opens it, revealing another large space. Inside this room is a huge king-size bed with four thick posters at the corners. Luxurious silk fabric in rich, masculine shades of bronze, burgundy, and cream cover both the bed and the walls. The room is decadent, yet classic, a fitting backdrop for the ruggedly gorgeous man standing in it now.
I give him an arch look. “A bedroom connected to your study? How convenient. I don’t suppose I want to know how often your conversations start in the other room and end up in here.”
He smirks. “This house has twenty bedrooms. I’ve never seen the benefit of this one until right now.”
Reaching past me, he closes the door behind us. His fingers light gently under my chin, tilting my face up for another of his soul-melting kisses.
“Where’d we leave off?” he murmurs, his teeth gently nipping my lower lip as he draws back to look at me. Desire smolders in his whisky-dark eyes. “Oh, yeah. I remember. I was just about to make you scream again.”
He takes my face in both his hands, then claims my mouth in a consuming kiss that’s even more possessive than the ones that have come before. I can taste his wild need, his unspoken demand. I taste myself in his kiss, too. The sweetness that lingers on his lips only heightens my arousal. My core pulses with every commanding thrust of his tongue, my nerve endings alive with electricity.
Still kissing me, Jared uses his body to guide me backward, inching us toward the massive bed. I sink into his strength, his masterful domination of my body and my will. Dimly, I remind myself this is the same dangerous, enigmatic man I met a week ago. The same arrogant, merciless artist whose reputation is as debauched as his paintings.
I can’t pretend Jared is none of those things, but I’ve glimpsed another side of him, too. A raw, tormented side of him that I feel instinctively he shares with no one. We’re alike in that way. We’re alike in more ways than I ever could have imagined.
And then, there is this side of him.
Passionate. Commanding.
Devastatingly seductive.
With our kiss unbroken, his strong hands tremble a bit as they leave my face to roam down the front of me. I’m dizzy with desire, hot all over, my skin aching and overheated as he caresses my naked breasts.
I cling to him, moaning as he lightly pinches my sensitive nipples while greedily devouring my mouth.
His name is a harsh whisper that gusts out of me as another orgasm begins to boil inside me. I’m drenched between my thighs, both from the climax he gave me in the other room and from the unbearable need to have him inside me.
I need him there now. I want him inside me so desperately, I can hardly stand the waiting.
“Jared.” I gasp his name as his mouth breaks from mine and descends my throat.
He dips his tongue into the sensitive notch at the base of my neck while his hands caress me with increasing urgency. His palms curve around my backside. He squeezes my ass, parting me, kneading me as his mouth trails fire onto my breasts.
He drags me closer, mashing our hips together. The ridge of his erection feels enormous against my abdomen, the grinding of his pelvis stoking delicious pressure that speeds my pulse and leaves me quivering in his arms.
His low growl vibrates through me as he slides his fingers between my thighs, giving me just a taste of what I really crave. Penetrating me with one digit, he rolls his thumb over my clit until I’m writhing against his palm and nearly out of my mind with sensation.
I need to touch him, too. I reach between us and feel him as firm as granite, bulging in the unzipped vee of his jeans. I squeeze and stroke his shaft over his straining boxer briefs, reveling in the power that surges against my palm and fingers.
His answering groan only inflames me more. I slide my hand inside to feel the immensity of his arousal. He is a thick column of satin-wrapped heat and power in my hand, hard and pulsing. A bead of slick fluid drips from the crown of his shaft. It coats my fingers as I caress him, creating a wet friction that makes him thrust and surge even harder in my grasp.
“Fuck,” he rasps lifting his head to the side of my neck while I run my hand up and down his length. A shudder racks him, his hips bucking in response to my touch. “I need to find a condom. Now.”
He takes my mouth in a hard, fast kiss, then breaks away from me on a curse. My legs are practically useless at this point, so I sit on the edge of the bed and watch, breath heaving and heart racing, as he pivots to the nightstand and pulls open the top drawer to rummage inside.
“I thought you never use this room.” I sound like I’m sulking, and maybe I am a little.
Jared doesn’t look up from his search of the drawer. “I don’t use it, but Gibson’s in charge of the household staff and inventory, and the man runs a tight ship.” He pauses, swiveling back to face me with several foil packets in his fingers and a wolfish grin on his handsome face. “Remind me to give the old guy a raise.”
His eyes scorch me as he stands there for a moment and drinks me in.
“Don’t move,” he orders, his deep voice husky with arousal.
He tosses the condoms on the nightstand then paces back to where I wait for him. My thighs are slightly parted and my hands are braced behind me on the mattress to hold
my balance. Jared stands between my knees, heat and desire pouring off him. He reaches down and spreads me wider, until I am open completely to his fevered gaze.
“Christ, you’re beautiful.”
He strokes my inner thighs, his fingers rasping over my tender skin, leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake. There is a slight shake in his right hand as he caresses me, but his touch is there and gone almost before I even notice it. With my sex entirely exposed to him, he lowers himself in front of me.
“I’m going to make you scream again when I fuck you,” he utters as he leans in to nip at my inner thigh. “But first I need another taste of this gorgeous pussy.”
“Oh, God.” My moan stretches out as his mouth presses into my wet cleft. His beard-shadowed face is a delicious abrasion, contrasted by the slick, soft strokes of his tongue and lips.
I feel unhinged, adrift in a pleasure I’ve never known before.
I’ve never known the need to surrender completely to a man, yet that’s all I can do as Jared feasts on me with toe-curling passion and a ferocity that sends my pulse into a breakneck pace. His mouth is greedy, possessive, an overwhelming force that sets off a shockwave of sensation rocketing through my body.
I whimper, thrashing under the skill of his talented mouth. It’s too much, and I’m too near the edge already. I arch back, my spine bowing as Jared sucks my clit between his teeth and teases it with his tongue.
“Jared, oh God, it feels too good. If you don’t stop, I’m going to break . . .”
His wicked mouth shows me no mercy whatsoever. Thank God.
I can’t halt the orgasm that roars up on me. I can’t slow it down for a second. Pleasure ripples from my clit to my core. I am molten, every fiber of my being splintering in bright shards that erupt in a sea of dizzying stars behind my closed eyelids.
Jared makes a low, animal sound while I come against his mouth. It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard. He rains more kisses on my quivering sex, giving my cleft a long, slow lick of his tongue before he rises up between my sagging legs.
I open my eyes, feeling drugged and unraveled. “That was . . .”
