Page 48

Still, she hardened her voice as she laid down the only law that could allow her to survive the rest of this reckless encounter with her heart unscathed. “From now on, you have to lie back and let me do everything to you.”

His head tilted; rapid calculation shifted across his face. Before her eyes, despite his prone position and the unbreakable bindings that held him firmly in place, she saw her wickedly amorous captive transform once more into the dangerously brilliant and ruthlessly determined strategist who’d countered her every daring move for seven long years. “We’ll see about that,” he murmured.

Gerard had spent years fantasizing against his will about exactly this situation. In reality, though, even the sight of her gloriously lush breasts hanging over him—the most mouthwatering of offerings, maddeningly just out of reach—couldn’t blind him to the glaring truth: Lorelei was still running scared.

She wanted to make it clear that this was just another meaningless encounter, no different to her than any others she’d indulged in. She was gambling that, if only she stayed firmly enough in control, she wouldn’t be affected by any of it.

Gerard was more than willing to be sensually tormented by this particular woman … but he would be damned if he let her keep her own emotions out of it.

“Do you know how often I’ve dreamed of you in exactly this position?” He couldn’t move his arms or legs, but as she sat scandalously astride him, deep instinct drove him to roll his hips, pressing firmly up against her center. Her lips parted into a silent O, and molten heat flooded through all of his bound limbs, gathering at that single point as he rocked up against her again and again with focused intent. “Do you … have any notion … of just how you’ve tormented me across the years?”

She bit down on her generous lower lip, eyes fluttering closed and fingers flexing into fists in the air beside her as if she were grasping for something just out of reach. “I … think you’re the one tormenting me at the moment.” A stifled gasp ripped out of her throat as he shifted to a different angle, and her eyes flew open. “Aren’t you supposed to be a virgin?”

“I am inexperienced,” he agreed, “but I know how to pay attention.” He’d been obsessively studying this woman for years. It was a nearly vicious pleasure to learn new nuances of her expressions now as he deliberately tested her reactions to every possible approach.

“Well, maybe I can teach you a few new things.” She fluttered her lashes flirtatiously, and vibrant specks of rainbow glitter showered through the air around him. They were the fierce, bright colors she used for showing off to the world, not the pure gold she shed by nature whenever passion overcame her—and that observation put him on guard even before she reached down to unbutton the placket of his trousers.

Jovar, keep me strong. He swallowed hard, bracing every muscle as she released him from his confines.

As her soft hands closed around him, shock lanced his body, shooting white fire through his limbs … but he forced his eyes to stay open and fixed on her face.

“Lorelei…” His voice was hoarse, his head a pleasure-blurred jumble, but he still refused to surrender. This was the most vital battle of his life, so he fought for words through the flaming chaos. “This is you. Me. Us, together.”

Her small fingers stilled for one telltale moment before they began to move again, this time working with a firm confidence that left him gasping. “Well, I am glad you haven’t lost your memory, darling, and forgotten who we are. But if you can still think clearly enough to speak, I may be doing something wrong.”

“Don’t need … to think … to know the truth.” As his back arched against his will, every muscle straining against his floral bonds, Gerard forced his eyes open wider and levered his head up from the impossible grass that made his bed—one more reminder of the jaw-dropping powers of this woman, as if her touch weren’t magical enough—until he was staring directly at his tormenter, meeting her veiled gaze with all of his own shields lowered, emotions open and defenseless. “I love you … Lorelei. You … love me. It’s like this now … because it’s us. Together.”

She looked momentarily stricken as she wavered in her upright position, swaying closer …

And then she rallied, because this brilliant, headstrong hurricane of a woman would never offer him an easy victory. “Well, if there’s really only one way to make you finally stop talking…!” Dropping him a lascivious wink, she rose over him, shifted aside her skirts and petticoat … and then sank down to take his full length inside her.

Flames shot through him, and his vision whited out.

When he could finally see again, he found Lorelei’s head tipped back in an arc of wordless pleasure, her own eyes closed and their bodies still impossibly, incredibly connected. Every muscle urged Gerard to move, to power them both towards fulfilment—but he kept himself torturously locked in place, waiting.

Her eyes finally reopened, pupils so dilated that she looked utterly drunk on the sensation of him inside her. As if he were her most powerful intoxicant.

As Gerard met her gaze, he felt their connection in every tingling inch of his skin. “Us,” he gritted out through clenched teeth and shifted his hips in deliberate tandem with his statement.

“Oh, goddess … yes, Sylvana help me, us!” The words came out in a broken moan as Lorelei’s eyes crossed at his move. “But only this once. Do you understand?”

Her inner muscles squeezed tightly around him as she spoke, and he lost his own voice to a new, blazing madness … but he made a silent vow as they battled together towards a fiery completion that laid waste to every careful, logical plan he had ever made for his future.

Not just once, he swore.

Forever.

23

Lorelei had the unnerving feeling that she might have made a fatal mistake.

As she lay, limp and warm and far too comfortably plastered over Gerard’s big body, with gorgeous waves of pleasure still rippling beneath her skin, she could almost hear Ailana’s skeptical voice and see those elegant dark eyebrows rise in older-sisterly disapproval.

“Is that really how you plan to protect your heart?”

The icy Queen of Nornne had warned her countless times before that Lorelei opened herself to pain with every new lover she recklessly allowed into her bed—but ever since the last betrayal, none had even come close to piercing her diamond-hard emotional shields.

In the past hour, Gerard de Moireul had shattered them completely.