Page 53 of Their Diamond Ring Ruse

A feline smirk curved her lips. She controlled him. Controlled his very pleasure. Her eyes sparkled with an excitement that made his pulse hammer even harder. She pushed up on her elbows, a look of challenge in her eyes, and it was the sexiest thing he had ever witnessed to see Lily come into her power.

She’d taken a wrecking ball to his high walls, exposing him. All of him. Raw and unguarded. She saw his smiles and laughter. His ability to joke and be playful. Not because he’d let her, but because there was no other way he could exist around her.

Lily had become his safe space. And, to his immense surprise, he didn’t hate it. There was a settling in him almost like peace, knowing she saw him. Maybe not the brutal truth of him—not yet—but he would hide nothing from her now.

Nothing except those three words he would never utter.

Julian’s muscles tensed and bunched. His shoulders chorded as she toyed with that control. Her breasts were heaving just as much as he struggled for his next breath. But he would say nothing. He would revel in all that she did to him.

He could tell the game was becoming too much for her, that she was on the verge of losing control, and she closed her eyes, throwing her head back on the soft down pillow.

‘No, keep your eyes open,’ Julian instructed in a low, tight voice. ‘See what you do to me.’

And she did. That obsidian gaze never wavered as her fingers slipped between her folds, faster and faster. Julian could feel the coiling beginning at the base of his spine. And then Lily was calling out his name as she shattered on the bed.

Her fingers stilled.

‘Keep going. Don’t stop.’

Despite her writhing and mewling she listened to him. He knew how sensitive she would be, but she listened because he had power over her too. Her fingers moved as quickly as his hand, and then he felt his entire body go taut as his release burst from him, clouding his vision and stealing his breath...his strength.

Julian dropped his head against the wall, needing a moment before he was able to prowl to the bed, climb over her. One hand held him up while the other slid over her smooth skin. Over her thighs and her ribs and her breast.

His fingers wrapped around her neck as he indulged them in a firm but gentle kiss. His lips blazed a trail to the base of her throat. Slowly, so slowly, kissing their way up her neck, his lips brushing her ear.

‘Now do you see what you do to me?’ he whispered. ‘You hold me in the palm of your hand, Sunshine.’

‘Julian...’

She breathed hard against his neck. A tremor went through him.

‘You do that to me too.’

He scooped her against him, rolling onto his back and holding her tightly. She settled with her head on his chest. There was an end point looming, so Julian was determined to savour this with Lily while he could—because he was certain he would never experience it again.

* * *

Legs entwined with his, her arm draped over his rippling stomach, Lily trailed her fingers over the pattern of the tree inked into his side. She smiled as his skin pebbled from her light touch, but he made no move to stop her.

She drew over the black lines. ‘Was it painful?’

‘Yes.’ His voice was soft.

‘When did you get it done?’

Her voice was as soft as his as her finger followed the line of a dead branch reaching towards his nipple.

‘While I was at college.’

After he’d left his stepfather’s house.

‘After I met Henry and he showed me what it meant to own a company. Understanding the dynamics was easy, and I let myself believe in a future where I had all the power.’

Despite his quiet, even voice, Lily could feel how his heart sped up. Hazarding a look at his face, she saw that he was looking out of the window. Who knew what he saw? But that sadness she often caught a glimpse of seemed to be leaking out of him now, and she had to turn away lest she dissolve into tears and this wasn’t about her needing comfort.

‘Before that I was still convinced I just had to survive. It was all I was used to...’

Lily had to shove aside the burning anger clawing at her throat. He shouldn’t have had to be used to that. How was it fair that Julian had had to deal with the aftermath of abuse and his stepfather had paid no price?

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