Beauty and the Bachelor(20)

"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.