Page 23 of Duplicity

It’s a dirty grin, carnal and dominating and thrilled.

‘Unfuckingbelievable. Take it off.’

I choose to takeitto mean just the dress, so I leave my thong intact and push the dress over my hips, stepping carefully out of the fabric pooled around my heels. I’m barely done casting it aside when he’s on me, gathering me up in his arms and smushing my breasts to his chest, my pelvis to what is now an obscene-looking erection, so fully fledged that it’s a walking red flag all on its own.

But I’m ignoring that, because the sensation of being almost naked in the arms of a huge beast who smells divine and seems intent on ravaging me is so overwhelmingly unfamiliar and shocking andexcellentthat my cognitive brain withers in defeat.

I’m not prepared for his mouth to find mine, but it does, as soon as he has me in his claws, and he kisses me, hard and hungry and filthy, his lips soft and his tongue insistent as it forces my mouth open while his hands fist my hair and grope my bottom,hard, and roam as though they’re trying to map every available inch of skin.

It’s either self-preservation or good old-fashioned desire that has me hooking my arms around his shoulders as he performs this sensory onslaught. He’s not kissing me so much as fucking my mouth with deep, demanding strokes that feel like a menacing foreshadowing of what he’ll do to me shortly withother body parts. He’s consuming me, milking me, and an actual thought escapes from my cognitive cesspit:

This isn’t him giving me a sales pitch. This is himunleashed.

As if he can read my mind, he releases me from his mouth and his grasp with an anguished pant and walks me backwards until I hit the glass. ‘Stay still,’ he orders, his mouth all swollen and wet and lovely. He shoots my breasts a filthy look before bracketing my hips in a tight grip. By tugging them forward and leaving my shoulders slumped against the glass, he has me reclining slightly, and that’s when he bends and takes one nipple in his mouth, holding it oh-so lightly between his teeth as he rolls his tongue over it.

I moan in spite of myself, and my palms make a small squeak as they slap the glass for purchase.

‘Mmm,’ he groans around my nipple. ‘Delicious.’ His fingers dig more firmly into my hips as his licks become deep pulls on my nipple, and holy, holy shit, this feeling is ridiculously, crazily good. My hips start to jolt, rutting forwards and finding nothing but his grip. That erection of his is too far away from me at this point.

‘Staystill,’ he barks before turning his attention to my other breast. Jesus, this is so, so good. If only the man had two mouths. I want him to never come up for air. I stop rutting, keeping my body still and instead lifting my hands so I can run them through his short dark hair. Its softness is touching, for some reason. With a firm grip, I hold his head to my breast, and he chuckles, jerking his neck backwards and looking up at me, all wet lips and burning eyes.

‘Put your hands back where they are, madam, if you want the full sales pitch.’

We smirk at each other, then I sigh and release his head. I have no idea where thispitchis going, but I don’t intend to derail it.

‘That’s my good girl. Now,’—he gets to his knees surprisingly nimbly for a guy his size—‘let me show you the killer part of my pitch.’

I press my lips together as he gets level with my crotch. With a thumb hooked in each side of my thong’s lace waistband, he slides it down my legs and watches as I step out of it.

I’m now naked, and he’s planning on doingsomethingdown there, and I look down at him as I mentally step up to the highest precipice yet. And as I stare over the edge into the void, Athena’s voice rings in my ears.

Assuming he’s not a lazy bastard in bed, he should beverygood at this shit. So for fuck’s sake, sit back and enjoy it.

She has a point, althoughenjoyingsomething very intimate and very unfamiliar with a total stranger is easier said than done.

‘Put your leg over my shoulder, gorgeous,’ he says, hooking his hand around the back of my knee and shooting me a very sexy grin.

He looks like he does this every bloody day. Like having naked women drape their legs over his hulking great shoulders is second nature to him.

It probably is.

I balance with difficulty on one stiletto heel, fingers scrabbling against the glass, and allow Brendan to position my leg over his shoulder. His eyes are fixed squarely on where my legs are parted, his expression more that of a kid with a new toy than that of a grown man with a woman he’s paying through the nose for.

‘That’s more like it.’ He glances up through eyelashes that are far too thick and pretty for a bloke. ‘You are exceedingly beautiful when you’re nervous, you know. All quivery and… mmm.’ He leans in and uses his finger and thumb to spread me open for him, and oh my—Jesus, that’s?—

I stare down, my breath coming more quickly now, transfixed by how quickly his expression has gone from cheeky to rapt and astounded by how different having a man’s fingers on myfleshfeels from having them on myskin.

He tuts. ‘Oh, Marlowe, Marlowe. All this pretending to be such a good, nervy, innocent little thing, when you’re fuckingsoakedalready.’

I’m not. I can’t be. Except that I can feel how slick it is when he slides his fingers through me, burrowing deeper back until he finds my entrance, and then, God, the ease with which he pushes two fingers in is almost embarrassing. There’s a stretch, a burn, of course, but there is definite, undeniable lubrication going on, and I don’t know if it’s that my brain is in denial about how fun it is having a Very Bad Man do Very Bad Things to me or my body is a traitorous little slut.

It’s probably both.

‘Oh God,’ I say, as mortified that he’s called me out as I am happy about this latest development, because that sensation of fullness is really something else, and I have a horrible feeling that if he?—

Jesus. His thumb finds my clit, stroking over it far too lightly, and I let out a low, shuddering sound that’s downright pitiful.

Brendan tears his gaze from his handiwork and stares up at me. ‘Looks like we’re unravelling the mysteries of what you like pretty fucking quickly. I feel like Miss Marple.’

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