"Good night, Lucas." She turned toward the staircase, suddenly tired. The weight of his scrutiny propelled her across the foyer, incited a desperation to escape it. Tomorrow, when the veneer over her emotions didn't stretch so thin as to be damn near transparent, she could face him again. But not tonight …
A hard, solid wall of muscle smacked against her back, driving the breath from her lungs. Only the unyielding band of a black-sleeved arm prevented her from pitching forward. Heat licked against her spine and neck.
"You're right," Lucas murmured in her ear, the almost gentle tone at complete odds with the arm anchoring her waist … and the rigid, thick erection branding her through layers of clothes. She sank her teeth into her bottom lip, battling back a groan and the prurient desire to grind against the steely length. "I've never been with a woman like you. They're faceless, nameless, insignificant, while you? I can't exorcise you from my mind. Sweetheart, sex has been good before, but nothing like the damn near primal need that has been riding me day and night. And I haven't even been inside you yet. One kiss, Sydney. One kiss. I haven't felt you tremble under me, haven't had your arms and legs wrapped around me. But damn, do I want it. No, don't do that," he murmured. Softening his hold on her waist, he placed his thumb on her lip and eased it from beneath her teeth. "There you go." He hummed, rubbing the slight tenderness from her flesh. "Let me … "
He slowly tunneled his fingers under her bun, maybe giving her time to push him away or step out of his embrace. Her carefully styled hair started to loosen and unravel as his blunt nails grazed her scalp, and he gently pulled her head back. This time, she couldn't contain the moan. It slipped free of its own will.
"I love that sound coming from you. Is that what you were trying to hold back from me?" He smoothed another caress over the lip she'd closed her teeth over. "Why? When this"-he brushed a kiss over the corner of her mouth-"is the only honesty we have between us."
He tugged her head back farther and covered her mouth with his. His hand returned to her chin, keeping her steady for the plunge of his tongue. While his grip might've been devastatingly tender and sensual, the kiss wasn't. He didn't cajole or tease playfully. He took. And God, she gave. Surrendered. Submitted. When his tongue coiled around hers, demanding she do the same, she did. When he squeezed her jaw and slowly thrust in and out, mimicking how his cock would stroke her sex, she shuddered and let him. And when he angled his head and muttered, "Open wider," before sweeping deeper, claiming more, she obeyed.
A faint ache pulsed along her neck as he bent her head back even farther. But she didn't resist, didn't whimper a protest. Because then he would stop drowning her in the most wicked, blistering desire she'd ever experienced. Then a cool draft blew over, combating the fire.
Startled, she opened her eyes. Met his sensual, hooded stare.
More air bathed her shoulders, her chest, her … breasts. Oh, God. "Wait," she breathed, struggling in his embrace.
"Shh," he soothed, his lips skimming along her jaw. "Easy."
No, she couldn't … His big, warm hands closed over her bared breasts. Cupped them. Lust struck her like a lightning bolt, sizzling along her veins and crackling between her weak legs.
"Lucas," she whimpered, arching into his hands, grinding her head against his shoulder. She clawed at his arms, cuffed his wrists, uncertain. She should drag his hands away from her, but the purely sexual animal inside her held him to her flesh. Dared him to stop. "Please."
Please don't. Please don't stop. She couldn't voice what she didn't know.
But he seemed to understand what her mind and body warred against and came down firmly on the side of her libido. With another of those sexy growls that caused her belly to tighten and quiver, he shaped her, molded, squeezed. She didn't have time to be embarrassed over the weight of her C cups. Not when his hands enveloped her with such ease and reverence. His thumbs swept across the stiff, aching points of her nipples, and pleasure screamed through her like high-velocity winds. She groaned as her core, wet and needy, clamped down on a phantom cock that wasn't there to fill her.
"So sensitive," he praised, the rumble a rough caress over her skin. "And pretty. Goddamn, you're so pretty." He circled the hard tips, plucked and pinched them until she squirmed in his arms. Desperate for a harder touch, a deeper touch, she closed her hands over his, commanding him to give her more. His low chuckle echoed in her ear. "Can you come from just my hands on your breasts and nipples, Sydney?" He tweaked the buds, and she cried out, shuddering. "I think you can. What about my mouth, too? Come apart for me, Sydney."
Come apart. Come. Apart.
Her flesh cried out a resounding "hell, yes" at the silken, erotic invitation, but her heart, her brain shouted a blaring warning. Because if she did-if she came apart-what would be left? They weren't even married yet, and already she was surrendering to the very thing she'd vowed not to allow happen. Not sex-she'd agreed to sex in the marriage bed. But her emotions, her passion. She'd promised herself she'd walk away from this arrangement with her soul intact.
Not tonight. She couldn't give in when she was already hurting and vulnerable from the evening. Tonight she wasn't strong enough to wake up in his bed with her defenses intact.
"No," she rasped, infusing all her fear and confusion into a final shove. A second later, his arms fell from around her, freeing her. Surprising her.
She didn't question his immediate acquiescence, just took advantage of it. With fumbling fingers, she yanked her dress up over her shoulders, covering her flesh. She didn't turn around, afraid if she spied the hunger stamped on his taut features, she would change her mind and let him cast her into an abyss of pleasure that would leave her stripped and lost.
An image of her mother wavered and solidified. Not Charlene's cool, blond beauty, but the painful yearning and bitter acceptance as she stared after her father's retreating back. Yearning because her mother adored him. Bitterness because she knew the "business meeting" he was headed to would involve the newest young plaything he was cheating with. If Sydney didn't guard her heart, in a year she would become a perfect reflection of her mother-hardened, angry, and longing for a man who didn't love her.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, scrabbling for the banister. "I can't."
Then she fled up the stairs.
Fled from him.
Fled from the consuming passion he ignited in her.
Fled from herself.
Chapter Eleven
Sydney inhaled. Exhaled. Did it again.
Nope.
Her heart still pounded in her chest like a captive wild thing.
Her wedding day.
Oh, God. She grasped the gleaming banister and contemplated the curving flight of stairs leading from the second level like it had transformed into a booby-trapped maze straight out of an Indiana Jones film. And she had to traverse it in less than sixty seconds to meet her groom.
Her groom. The man she would pledge her body, heart, and fidelity to. The man who had coerced her into a devil's bargain called marriage. The man who would force her to lie in front of friends and a man of the cloth.
They were both going to hell.
Below her the beautiful opening notes of Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 danced in the air. Her cue to descend the steps and begin the walk down the aisle. Her belly did another roll and dive.
You can do this. You've come this far. You're doing this for your father, and he's worth it.
Sucking in another deep breath, she began her bridal march down the staircase. The dull roar in her ears almost drowned out the music as she neared the entrance to the brownstone's great room. The space had been cleared of furniture and transformed into a makeshift chapel, complete with ribboned chairs on either side of the aisle for their thirty or so guests, tall candelabra and flowers. A white runner had been rolled down the middle of the aisle, leading her to her soon-to-be husband like the yellow brick road guided Dorothy to the Emerald City.
Clutching her small bouquet-strangling it, really-she risked a glance in the room. And her heart thumped in a sharp leap of joy. Her father and mother sat in the front row. She hadn't spoken to either of them since she'd left home, but they'd come.
Oh, Jesus. Moisture fled from her mouth, and butterflies evacuated her stomach to make room for raptors. What am I doing? I can't go through …
She lifted her head and spotted him for the first time.
The birds in her stomach settled. The room and people disappeared, her world falling into an expectant hush.
His turquoise gaze locked with hers-and refused to let go. A curious melting started in her chest and wound its way through her. She should be angry, resentful, terrified-any range of emotions. Instead, as she put one foot in front of the other and started down the aisle toward this impossibly handsome, scarred man who waited for her with quiet intensity, an emotion she couldn't identify-was too scared to identify-filled her.