She glanced up, vaguely alarmed. “What are you doing?”
He leaned over her and swiped across the table, sending notebooks and folders clattering to the floor.
“Appreciating you,” he murmured, and urged her back until she rested on her elbows. The next kiss wasn’t gentle; it was carnal and deep, making her feel how well their mouths fit together, how well they would fit together. She was gasping for breath when he released her, her body rosy and shimmering with heat.
His warm lips skated along the curve of her jaw, then his tongue glided down over her neck.
“This is hardly decent,” she stammered, a farce of a protest.
“What part of it?” he breathed against her ear. His warm chest was pressed against her breasts, and it felt delicious and she couldn’t think.
“I’m not a …”
He dragged his hot mouth lower, over the slope of her breast.
“I’m not a … ahh.”
Her tender nipple was clamped between his teeth.
“… banquet,” she said weakly.
He released her and followed the sting with a soothing lick. “And yet I want to relish you,” he said, his voice like smoke. “Devour you, if you let me.”
It sounded dangerous, so naturally, she ached for it.
He brushed a kiss between her breasts. “Will you?” he asked, looking up at her. “Let me?”
The place between her legs ached for it, too. It felt slippery and empty.
His hands were on her hips, his thumbs stroking lightly. He was well in control of himself.
“Yes,” she whispered, uncertain whom she wished to unleash more.
She watched his eyes darken before his lashes lowered.
He grabbed her hips harder as he put his mouth back on her, and she sank onto the table, her limbs loosening and spreading in an erotic surrender that somehow felt like victory. Lush kisses on her belly, strong fingers pressing into her thighs, opening her. A gentle roar filled her ears like the crash of distant waves. Lucian pulled her thigh over his oil-slick shoulder and buried his face in her lap. She stopped breathing. The first hot swipe of his tongue made her see black. He did it again, leisurely and with a hum in his chest, and her nails scraped across wood. She was writhing; he was unhurried, shamelessly relishing her as promised. By the time he was stroking a finger into her, then two, she was dissolving in dizzying heat. The only way to stand it was to moan, and to move against his mouth, his face, and on his sliding hand. She thought she felt him smile. When his fingers curled inside her, she clamped her thighs around his head and screamed.
She came to, trembling and with energy crackling over her flushed skin. She was still on a table. Sitting up. Lucian was leaning back into the chair, looking deceptively idle, with hazy eyes and a smug edge to his mouth. His mouth. She stared at it until it pulled into a faint smile.
“Welcome back, love.”
Golden flecks still danced across her vision. He had propped her left foot onto his knee, she realized, covering it with his warm hand.
“Sir, are you mocking me?” she said. Her voice was pliant like velvet. If she moved, she might float off the table.
“Mock you.” He slowly shook his head. “Did it feel like mockery to you?”
She had felt glorious. Worshipped and taken and set free. The key to Lucian was to feel him, she realized, not to think. Her natural inclination was to feel first, to rationalize second, in any case. Feeling his essence beneath layers of unfavorable appearances had drawn her to him since they had first locked eyes next to a Han vase.
Her gaze fell to the bulge straining against the front of his trousers, and longing stirred and mingled with the last ripples of her release. It was a longing she would carry until she sated it.
She looked her husband in the eye. “I want you,” she said.
He gave a soft huff. “You don’t owe me favors. I’ve wanted to work you over like this for a long time.”
“I want you.”
His gaze became alert. “It would make an annulment more complicated,” he murmured.
“Do you wish for me to beg?” she asked, and leaned forward. His eyes followed the sway of her breasts before he looked back at her face. “Because I won’t,” she said.
His features sharpened. “Well then.”
He extended his hand and helped her off the table.
Now she felt shy, naked in front of him, while he sat there in his trousers.
“We could do it like this.” He gestured at himself on the chair.
It took her a moment to envision the logistics of such a thing. “Why?”