“The Beast of Bishop’s Landing, yes.” I feel, rather than see, Leo rolling his eyes. “That doesn’t alter the reality of this book.” It’s propped up on a stand meant to make it easy to open the pages. I bite my lip and reach out to open the front cover. Leo grabs my wrist with a second to spare. It’s an electric, possessive touch, and that lightning is reflected in his eyes. “Hold out your hands first.”
I do it. They’re shaking. He takes a plastic bottle from his pocket, pulls us away from the table, and sprays my hands. Then he follows it up with an actual cloth handkerchief that feels more expensive than his shirts or sheets. Leo dries every one of my fingers individually. “As clean as you’ll get,” he pronounces, and then he lets me go back to the book.
The first page confirms that it’s not, in fact, a trick.
Jane Eyre, it reads.
An Autobiography.
Edited by Currer Bell.
There’s more, but tears in my eyes make it hard to see. This is my favorite book. My favorite.
“A Constantine crying over a book.” Leo’s words have no bite. “Why?”
“I love this book.” It feels overwhelming, the love I have for this book. Or maybe it’s the moment. The pool of light in a dark room. The man at the edge of that light. “The whole story. The nanny, and Mr. Rochester, and his crazy wife in the attic. It’s—” I’m getting choked up. “It’s romantic. I miss it when I’m not reading it.”
The corner of his mouth turns up. “You think he is romantic. And he keeps his wife in the attic.”
“He has a secret that hurts him, and he tries to keep it from hurting Jane for as long as he can. And he gave it all up for her in the end. He was waiting for her. Mourning.”
That’s romantic, I’m going to say, but I can’t say anymore. I can’t explain it, or the rush of feeling and ache and empathy. Can’t begin to explain it. Before I can try, before I can open my mouth, Leo’s fingers are on my jawline. He turns my head. I get one glimpse of his eyes, those gold-shot wells of old pain and lust, and then he kisses me. It’s hot and hard and confident. The way I imagine Mr. Rochester would be when Jane returned to him.
19
Haley
Leo picks me up as easily as I’d pick up a book, but I can’t care about anything but the feel of his mouth on mine. His tongue is skilled and searing and the deepest, most hidden part of me sighs with relief. God, it’s so good. It’s so right, and so forbidden. Villains aren’t supposed to kiss the virtue out of you. Did I ever have any to begin with?
He sets me on a table and knocks my legs apart so he can stand between them, forcing them to stay that way with his body while he drags his mouth down the side of my neck. Nipping. Biting. Every movement makes my core clench tight, then tighter, curling around a burst of embarrassment that I’ve never been kissed this way before. No one has ever come close. Compared to Leo, every man I’ve ever known is a worthless, fumbling boy.
I’m on top of books. Open books.
Leo twists his fingers into my hair and tips my head back so he can lick sensitive skin and I have to steady myself with one hand. It meets pages. There is a project out on this table, someone’s work or someone’s story, and Leo doesn’t care. He ordered them out. He made them bring the book for me. Sixty-thousand-dollar books don’t sit out in rooms like this. He made this happen.
He’s hard between my legs when he breaks the kiss. For a long moment he stares above my head, catching his breath with both hands wrapped around the sides of my face. His eyes—Jesus. His eyes. It’s the way he looked at me when he told me he wasn’t hurt. All of his pain and lust and need are there at the surface, in plain sight. This time there’s no lie on his lips.
I reach for him, and he doesn’t stop me.
He lets me run my fingers down the line of his jaw. He lets me skim the shoulder of his jacket. He lets me brush my fingertips over his lips, his eyes glittering and black. I move to pull my fingers away, but Leo catches the tips between his teeth and bites. It pulls a stifled moan out of me, that sharp, pointed pain. He bites harder, teeth digging into flesh, but then he sucks my fingers into his mouth and soothes the marks. I don’t know how he does it, creating a direct line from my fingertips to my clit, but he does.
Leo turns me over with a low laugh that’s familiar and scary and hot. He presses me facedown into the books and shoves my dress up over my hips. “Oh, no,” I hear myself say. “Oh, no.”
But nothing is wrong except how filthy he’s being. He puts a knee between my thighs and spreads me open with big hands. And then Leo Morelli licks me over the lace of the lingerie. The slick heat of his tongue through cloth is so new it makes my knees buckle. Leo won’t let me fall. He only licks higher, to a far more forbidden spot, and drills his tongue into it. The delicate twists of lace and wet heat have me panting, embarrassed. He licks me again, again, again, and when he takes his tongue away, a tear runs down my cheek.
“Fuck, I love that,” he says from somewhere above me. “A pretty thing like you, crying for more.”
It’s true. I am. I shouldn’t want this, shouldn’t want any part of being fucked over a table by my family’s enemy, but I’ve never wanted anything more.
Leo tears the panties away. The lace doesn’t go without a fight. It burns on its last trip across my skin. Cool air reaches between my legs, lighting up every wet part of me, made wetter because he wanted it. It’s too hot to bear. I squirm into the table, rocking my hips mindlessly. Leo slaps his palm over my pussy and I jolt, the startle descending into more shivers.
“I was wrong about you. I thought I’d tease you with candlelight and gentle hands, but that’s not what you need.” He tests my thighs, then slides his thumbs up higher and higher and higher until he uses them to spread my ass, wider than before. I’d be frozen if it weren’t for the trembling. Exposed like this, bent over in this enormous room, air caressing parts of me that no one has ever seen except the woman who waxes me. One of the only things I’ll let myself waste money on, and god, I’m glad for it now. “Hold yourself open for me. I’m going to make you cry harder.”
It’s awkward as hell, reaching back the way he wants me to, and harder than I would ever have imagined. If I had ever imagined doing this. Once my hands are in place and my nipples are crushed against the pages underneath me, Leo settles himself back between my legs and resumes his own project.
His tongue on bare skin is too much. My hips buck against the table hard enough to bruise. I still can’t stop. Not until he puts his tongue in that place again. “No, no, no,” I chant.
“You gave this to me, too. Did you forget?” A sharp slap on the side of my ass, then another five. “Don’t let your hands slip. My belt works as well as a strap.”
My hips move involuntarily, remembering that strap. Is this what people mean when they say delirious? My vision’s blurred, but I’ll be damned if I don’t follow his orders.
If I let go, he’ll hurt me. Do it, a voice whispers in the back of my mind. Let go. Let him hurt you. He does it so well. That’s the awful, depraved truth. He does it so well, and it makes me so wet, and I know he would make me come after. He would.