“I broke things off with Felicity,” he blurted out, leaning closer to her. “We’re not—we’re not getting together anymore. It’s over.”
She’d been holding her breath, but now she exhaled sharply in surprise, overwhelmed by his declaration and the implied meaning behind it. She sucked in a shallow breath, her fingers tightening around his, but that chaste contact wasn’t nearly enough. She needed more. She wanted more.
“Can we—Can we go somewhere?” she asked.
He nodded slowly, glancing back toward the house. “Your room?”
She tugged her hand from his. “Meet me there in five.”
“You go in through the kitchen. I’ll go around to the front,” he said, giving her a hot look before standing up and striding away from her, toward the side of the house.
Libitz waited a few minutes, pretending to look at her phone while her heart pounded out of her chest. When she could wait no more, she stood up and slipped her phone in her back pocket, heading for the kitchen with her head down.
“Lib!” said Kate.
She looked up at her best friend, who was standing on the patio talking to Mad, Jax, and Gard.
“Lib, is everything okay? Your cheeks are flushed.”
“I’m fine,” said Libitz, smiling at them. “I was just sitting in the sun. In fact, I was going upstairs for some sunblock.”
Kate grinned, looking at Lib’s cream-colored satin tank top and sailor-front dark-blue linen pants. “I forgot to tell you how cute you look.”
“Quit it,” said Libitz. “You’ll give me a big head.”
“See you in a bit,” said Kate, turning back to her in-laws.
Darting around the catering staff, Libitz hustled through the kitchen and into the dining room, her heeled sandals click-clacking over the slick parquet floor that led to the front vestibule. Glancing around the foyer to be sure that no one was around to put two and two together, she took the stairs two at a time, breathless by the time she reached the safety of the top. Racing down the hall, she stopped in front of her bedroom door, running a hand through her hair before opening it.
“Behind you, Elsa.”
Turning around, her breasts brushed against Jean-Christian’s chest as he backed her into the guest room and kicked the door shut behind them.
“You have cat skills,” she said, “I never heard you coming!”
“Fair is fair, baby.” Grabbing her around the waist, he jerked her against his hard body, his eyes onyx as he stared down at her. “I never saw you coming.”
He leaned down, and his lips claimed hers with an intensity that stole her thoughts and her words and the ability to speak or think. Sliding his hands down her back, he smoothed them back up under her blouse, unlatching her bra so he could splay his hands over the skin of her shoulder blades as she reached for the hem of her top and pulled it, with her bra, over her head.
In the split second it took for her to bare her breasts to him, he reached behind his neck to tug his polo shirt over his head. Chest to chest, warm and wonderfully naked, they collided again.
Jean-Christian’s hands skimmed down to her ass, pushing her firmly against his massive erection, and she gasped with pleasure, imagining how it would feel to have it lodged between her legs. She toed off her sandals and stepped on his shoes, letting him walk them back to the bed as he kissed her. When she felt the mattress behind her knees, she fell back, and he grinned down at her, lowering himself to his side, right next to her, where his view and access to her breasts was unimpeded.
As he dipped his head and took one dusky bud between his lips, she gasped, arching her back and saying, “The g-gallery in Marseille has five other, um, Montferrats.”
One hand held the breast he was suckling while the other plumped its twin, caressing the stiff, straining skin of her nipple.
“Fuck, that’s hot,” he murmured, nuzzling the damp flesh with his nose before sucking it between his lips again. “Keep talking.”
“Anh!” She whimpered, burying her head in the comforter as darts of pleasure unfurled all over her body, stealing her breath. “Di—different…models.”
His lips skimmed from the breast he’d laved to the other, and his tongue circled her other nipple, playing with it like a cat stalking prey. “I called a friend at the Met.”
“In…New York?” she asked, breathless as he dragged his teeth over her throbbing flesh.
“Is there another?”
“N-no,” she panted, closing her eyes as he sucked the distended bud between his lips.
When she couldn’t bear the sharpness of the sensation anymore, she plunged her hands into his hair and dragged his face to hers, demanding his lips, reveling in the feel of his chest pressed against hers as he rolled on top of her body and kissed her, bracing his weight on elbows planted by her head.
Reaching between them, she slipped her hand into his shorts, finding the velvet steel of his throbbing cock and wrapping her fingers around it as he groaned into her mouth, as his tongue tangled with hers.