This Perfect Kiss (23 page)

With nothing covering her curves, he could finally, fully, appreciate her luscious body. Delicate shoulders led to her full, pink-tipped breasts. A tiny waist, curvy hips, a triangle of dark hair at the vee of her thighs.

He crooked two fingers, hoping she didn’t know they were trembling. “Come here, honey.”

She walked toward him slowly, the fire’s yellow-and-orange light flickering over her pale skin. He wanted to feel the fever of her nakedness, taste the burn.

When she stood in front of him, he snagged her gaze and, holding it, deliberately licked the pads of his thumbs. Then he brushed them against her tightly ruched nipples, once, twice.

Her back flexed and her eyes closed.

He palmed the weight of her breasts, using his still-damp thumbs to circle the points, not touching now, but teasing her, teasing him. Her spine flexed again, a kitten stretching toward the sun, and he bent his head and took one nipple into his mouth.

He groaned at the sweet taste and the aroused tightness. Grabbing her hips, he jerked her against him, taking her breast in deeper, sucking as if he could fill himself up with her.

Her fingers speared his hair, holding him to her, and she protested when he lifted his head. “Easy,” he whispered against her smooth, hot skin. He moved to her other breast, licking the point and then taking it into his mouth, toying with her nipple until she squirmed.

He bit down.

She gasped, her body slamming against his,
her fingers digging into his scalp. He soothed her with warm laps of his tongue, and moved his hands from her hips to the sleek, smooth roundness of her bottom.

“Kiss me,” she whispered.

But he didn’t want to. He only wanted her body, he only wanted to bury himself in her heat, to ease the ache he’d been forced to live with since he’d met her. Kissing her would give her something of himself, and he wasn’t going to let her get that close again.

He licked up her neck, followed the curve of her ear, bit again, this time on her earlobe. Her skin heated with each pass of his tongue, each nip of her skin, even though he’d turned to protect her smooth flesh from the brunt of the fire’s warmth.

She grasped his face, trying to bring their lips together, but he eluded her mouth. Instead, he lifted her hair again and bent over her shoulder to circle his tongue around her nape, circling his hands on her soft buttocks in the same pattern.

His breath rasped in and out. The flames and the shadows were like the two of them, heat and darkness rubbing against each other. His fingertips traced the back crease of her thighs and moved between her legs.

“Jilly.”
He groaned her name because she was slick and wet and her inner heat was just inches away from his touch.

Now. He stepped back from her to throw off his clothes, his gaze drinking in her dreamy eyes, the new darkness of her nipples, and the fine
trembling of her body. Her mouth was wet and parted and he wrenched his gaze away from it. Her body, he wanted her body.

“Ahhh.” He pulled her against his nakedness. She twined her arms around him and lifted her face to his. The reflection of the fire lit her eyes. Everything about her was warmth and arousal. He could smell the perfume of her hair and, even headier, the scent of her skin. Grasping one of her thighs, he pulled up her leg so he could push himself against her, hard.

She moaned.

He smiled and bent to kiss her neck, then found her hand so he could press into it the foil-wrapped condom he’d taken from his pocket. She drew back, stared at it, stared at him, and licked her lips.

He wasn’t going to kiss her.

Not even when her fingers fumbled so awkwardly to open the package. Finally, impatient, he took it from her, ripped it open with his teeth, and handed it back. His heart slammed against his chest as she slowly drew out the latex sheath.

God, it was almost as if she didn’t know what to do with it. But he knew her virgin act was just that…an act. She looked at the condom, looked at his erection, and took another step back. Her breasts quivered as she drew in a long breath.

His life wasn’t long enough to wait. He grabbed the condom out of her hand, slipped it over his throbbing erection, then grasped her wrist to draw her to the bed…

But the fire was here, its light jumping against her breasts, her belly. Bending his head, he traced
the colors down her body, licking nipple, ribs, swirling his tongue in her belly button as he sank to his knees.

“Rory…”

He pressed his mouth right above the triangle of curls, then rubbed his cheek against the sleek give of her belly. Her knees buckled and he caught her hips to ease her down to the carpet. The dark curling ribbons of her hair spread out around face and her mouth was dark, too, an almost bruised-looking pink, though he hadn’t allowed himself to touch it, taste it.

He pushed her knees up and apart and came between them, teasing himself with the wet curls at the apex of her legs. Closing his eyes, he fought for control, forcing himself away from the slick softness.

“Please, Rory,” she whispered.

“I will,” he promised. “But first, first let me—” He stopped. No, not
let me
. She was his for the taking. The way he wanted to.

He traced her soft folds and watched his thumb disappear between them. He pressed.

She gasped, but her body gave, and her eyes closed as he pushed deeper.

Her hips rose off the carpet. “Rory, kiss me,” she pleaded.

But he wouldn’t. Not when the inner muscles of her body squeezed down on his thumb so tightly. He drew it out, pushed it in again. Her hips lifted again, too.
“Rory.”

He glanced at her face. Her eyes were closed and she bit down on her lower lip, hard. He drew his thumb out, and painted her folds with the wet
ness, finding and circling the small, hard nub. Her thighs opened and he looked at her pretty, pretty body, revealing and softening and glistening in the firelight.

For him.

Holding himself in check, he continued playing with her prettiness, stroking, circling, dipping into her ever-opening body to test the wetness, until finally her hips lifted, her back bowed, and she cried out.

Tremor after tremor shook her, but he held fast, his thumb firm against the pulsing nub.

And then her body quieted and he positioned himself against her wet, open place, and drove inside her body.

She cried out again.

Hell
. Rory froze, her body pulsing hotly against his erection. Tightly. Too tightly.

He looked at her face, locking his jaw against his need to keep pushing into that exquisite heat. She was biting down on her lower lip again, her entire body fighting against the pain of his intrusion.

Pain
. Oh, God. She
had
been a virgin.

She’d tricked him yet again.

Then, suddenly, her body relaxed. Her inside muscles still clung to him firmly, but her thighs opened and then came around his waist. He slid deeper. “Jilly—”

“Yes,” she whispered, her voice husky with new satisfaction and renewed desire. Her hands clutched his shoulders. Her hips lifted and he slipped deeper still.

Nothing could stop him now from driving
inside her again. From closing his eyes and finding the rhythm that stoked the heat and teased higher the fire in his blood. Her hips rose to meet him with each thrust, taking him in, in, in.

At the very last instant, he opened his eyes. The firelight had turned Jilly’s cheeks to gold and she glowed like a tempting, sexy angel. Pleasure gathered in his body, coiling for its final leap. As it took off, Rory fused his mouth to hers and tasted heaven.

When it was over, he rolled off her small body, sucking in harsh, rapid breaths. “Why, Jilly?” he asked hoarsely.

She shook her head, staring at the ceiling. With a sigh, he stood and picked her up in his arms, struggling to control a dangerous mix of tenderness and anger. Once beside the bed, he drew back the covers and set her on the sheets.

She was trembling again, so he pulled the blankets around her. He raked his fingers through his hair, studying her face. “Why, Jilly?” he asked again, his voice harsh. “Why the hell now? Why me?”

She just shook her head. Rory wanted to pound the walls in frustration. Was nothing the way it should be in this cursed place? Winter was as warm as summer. Grown men had four-year-old aunts.

A conniving, deceptive little kitten turned out to be a virgin. The convent school, the nuns, the celibacy vow had all been true.

“I want to go home,” she said.

And because Rory suspected it was the only thing she
would
say, he let her go.

Jilly held onto the truth of why she’d agreed to Rory’s bargain as tightly as she held onto her tears. Letting herself think only of the beauty of his lean strength in the firelight, of the heated glide of his touch, of the erotic sting of his bites, she made it home, made it through the night, made it through the entire next day at Caidwater.

She made it back to Rory’s bedroom, too. That evening, and four more after, she promptly knocked on his door when she was done for the day. They never spoke, not beyond his low groans and her soft moans. But each session of lovemaking was sweeter and wilder, and each time he made her body shudder, she bit her bottom lip to make sure the words “I love you” would not escape.

Rory liked control and power and she knew he’d sap hers if he suspected she loved him. Domineering people did that. They could use your feelings to manipulate your actions. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, let him. She could let him use her body so beautifully, but she dared not let him have her heart. Her grandmother had taught her never to give that up.

On the fifth day, she was approaching Rory’s door when Greg came out, shutting it behind him. He paused, staring at her.

Jilly self-consciously ran her fingers through her tangled hair. It was dusty, her skin was gritty, and she was so tired she couldn’t think of an excuse to explain why she was obviously heading for Rory’s bedroom. That morning, Mrs. Mack had directed her to a small attic previously
overlooked, and Jilly had spent the day foraging through old boxes and trunks.

Greg seemed to grasp the situation in one look. “He’s going to hurt you,” he said quietly. “Maybe he won’t want to, but what happened before has hardened him.”

Jilly rolled one shoulder as if she didn’t care and refused to see if there was pity in his eyes.

“Jilly, you can’t know what it was like for us growing up. Photographers everywhere. Parties, drunks, drugs. Kids would talk about it at school. Hell, some of them were constantly angling for invitations to the next Kincaid orgy.”

Her heart clenched. “Rory hated it.”

Greg nodded. “It was so damn sleazy. And he always tried to protect me from the worst of it. But there was no one to protect him.”

“So he…” Jilly swallowed. “He was hurt.” By what people said, by what people thought about his family, by that woman who had pretended to want to marry him. By his father.

Greg met her gaze. “So now he protects himself. He won’t let himself care for you.”

She checked out the grimy toes of her pink, high-top sneakers. “What makes you think I want that from him?”

“Takes one to know one,” she thought he murmured, but then his voice sounded louder. “Do you understand? Rory’s stubborn and Rory’s cynical.”

Jilly sighed, suddenly so darn weary. She couldn’t think now of what she’d pay later for loving Rory. “I know what he’s like,” she said. “I
just want this time for…myself. Can’t I have that?”

Avoiding Greg’s gaze, she started to take the remaining few steps toward Rory’s door.

But Greg wouldn’t let her go. He touched her shoulder. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

She smiled faintly and held out her hand, palm up. Then she slowly made a fist. “I’m closing it Greg, and holding on for as long as I can.”

He didn’t stop her this time, and when she knocked on Rory’s door, Greg had disappeared from the hall. Then her pulse leaped as she saw the knob turn and the door ease open.

Rory leaned one shoulder against the jamb, his casual pose at odds with his intense expression. She recognized what she saw on his face now, its stark planes made even starker by desire. Despite her tiredness, heaviness and heat pooled between her legs. Her breasts ached.

Last night they’d barely had the door shut before he was pulling off her clothes and taking her against it. The memory made her shiver, made her sensual aches sharpen. Like always, just one look, and he brought out the bad in her. She swallowed.

With his knuckle he slowly rubbed at a spot on her cheek. “You have smudges all over your face,” he said softly.

Her eyelashes drifted down in response to the unexpectedly tender touch. She swayed.

He caught her upper arms with his big, hard hands. “Let’s get you in a bath,” he said.

“No, I can—”

“Shh.” He half carried her into the bathroom. The mosaic-tiled room was as decadent as he made her feel, and as he filled the huge sunken tub, he slowly undressed her.

Jilly trembled and licked her lips. His touch was so gentle that each stroke of his hands felt like a caress. “Rory.” She tried to put her arms around him, but he forced her hands away and lifted her into the tub full of deliciously warm water.

Then he knelt on the floor beside her and rolled up his shirtsleeves. He washed her skin, drawing a thick bar of Rory-scented soap over and over her.

Tears pricked the corners of her eyes. He continued stroking and caressing, his fingers slipping and sliding everywhere: between each one of her fingers, over her ticklish toes, around each breast.

This was worse than making love—more intimate, more dangerous, she thought. This sweetness, this gentle solicitude, was going to be her undoing. He lifted the coiled hand nozzle and thoroughly doused her hair. Then he washed that, too, massaging her scalp with his strong fingers until she wanted to purr.

He pulled her from the water just moments before she fell asleep and gently dried her with a towel. Then he carried her, nearly boneless, back into the bedroom and laid her across Quasimodo’s sheets. When she languidly reached for Rory, he ignored her, tucking the covers around her.