Varen pressed a calloused finger to the fluttering pulse point at my throat. It was just the tip of his finger stroking down my neck but it was a searing line of fire scorching my skin as he drew it languidly down and into the dip at the base of my throat. He circled the hollow slowly, twice, staring at me in challenge as he did so. "Just tell me no."

No.

Yes.

I should say no. I really, really should.

But my body cried—Yes, yes, yes!

Craving smoldered within his deep violet eyes as he briefly darted a glance at my chest, rising and falling with fast shallow breaths. "I love a girl in uniform." His finger drifted south, running across the white collar of my uniform and to the top button, toying with it while he spoke. "I fucking love her out of it more."

The storm he'd woven turned hotter and hotter. A sultry breeze coiled around my bare legs, skimming my sides to caress my throat and the nape of my neck. The seductive breeze sweeping across my skin felt as if it were his own broad hands worshipping my body. Droplets of sweat and want and lust beaded in between my breasts and rolled between their valley. I was hot and flushed and so freaking turned on, I could barely think straight, let alone hold the tray aloft. It danced on my fingertips and I prayed to Zrenyth it wouldn't topple over.

Varen tapped the button with his fingernail. My clit eagerly pulsed in reply and my legs trembled with an oncoming climax. "I'd slide all these pretty white buttons undone." He slowly circled the button below. The next one, which swelled out with the curve of my breasts, he thumbed as if readying to pop it open. "Reveal your flushed body, inch by inch, laid bare for me to kiss and lick."

Oh gods.

My panties were so freaking wet with anticipation.

And my arm muscles were burning from holding the tray above my head.

But most of me was focused on trying to not arch my spine and push my breasts into his touch. Because I wanted it so very badly, but this was a battlefield in a war of wills. There was no way I was going to let him win.

"I'd peel that uniform from you to leave you in only your underwear." He gave me a considering look. "What would I find beneath all this dull and dreary material?"

"Basic boring underwear." From the Dollar Shop. A $1 bra and a discounted pair of panties. Worn so thin they were almost translucent.

From the way exhilaration vibrated through his entire body, I'd have thought I'd told him I was wearing a lacy teddy beneath my uniform.

He groaned, knees bending slightly. "Fuck yes, I am going to have so much fun with you, Miss Catt. All that gold-spun hair will look beautiful wrapped around my wrist." His hand drifted behind me and I felt my hair being lifted and the brush of his forearm against my shoulder as the length of my ponytail flicked around and wound like a bobbin.

He smiled slyly. "Well, would you look at that—beautiful."

I gasped as my head arched slowly back. A chinking rang out through the room as the goblets wobbled. A press of his mouth at the base of my throat, delicious tongue dipping into the hollow, and then he licked upward to gently bite my chin.

A ragged moan burst from me. My knees buckled.

My free hand lurched upward to grab hold of his bicep and my fingers dug into his bulging arm to brace my stance as my lust-addled gaze whipped to the burnished bottom of the tray as it swayed perilously back and forth. I hastened to adjust my wrist to keep it level.

Varen released my hair and it fell down my back in a spiral of gold. I dropped my head forward and found him looking down at me. His gaze hardened and he growled low with menace, "Let's see if I can make you drop those goblets."

My mouth hissed, "Don't..." But my mind cried—Do it!

Do it!

Freaking do it!

He kept his sharp gaze locked on mine as he drifted his calloused fingertip sideways to follow the valley and slowly climb the soft swell of my breast.

I inhaled sharply.

No one had ever touched me like this. My entire being was focused on the small point of contact. It was the barest of touches, featherlight and barely there, yet it burned through my uniform and thin bra, incinerating them.

My heart thudded manically as I wondered what he was going to do. Cup a breast? Flick and pinch a nipple? Except all he did was circle in languid strokes of fire, never coming into contact, around and around and around, driving my frustration higher.

It felt so good.

So, so good.

Yet, I was desperate for more pressure, more fingers, a whole hand spread wide to cup and knead and squeeze.

He bowed his forehead to press against mine, his nose sliding along mine, warm breath fanning across my lower cheek. Those cruel lips were tantalizingly close. Rosy and full and slightly glistening from the teeth he'd raked across them. In all of this, he hadn't kissed me. Those sinful lips had brushed along mine in feathering sweeps, but he'd never pressed them with firmness to my own. He hadn't claimed me with a kiss.

I wanted to lean forward and lick them. Nip them. Bite them.

I wanted a savage and punishing kiss.

My intimate walls clenched in time with our mingling breath, faster as he continued to tease his fingertip around the shell of my breast, slowly drawing nearer and nearer to my peaked nipple, winding my body tight. The impending climax was crawling all over my body, hunting me down. I was desperate to shatter into a mind-obliterating orgasm. Everything, every single part of my body cried out in sexual frustration. I was standing on the edge of a cliff, hot wild wind rushing against my face, tearing at my hair, ripping at my clothes.

I wanted him to keep whispering to me with his filthy mouth.

I wanted him to try his godsdamned hardest to make me drop the tray of pewter goblets.

Holy hells, what is wrong with me?

I was clutching the cliff's edge as hard as I was clutching his arm. I wanted to let go, but I feared it too. I couldn't let him win. I needed to be the victor of this game he'd set in motion.

"What would I find beneath your basic, boring underwear?" he asked. His low rough voice reverberated against my lips and I almost whimpered.

Internally I loosened a silent tortured moan, as the idea of what he suggested bloomed within my mind, how it would feel as his fingers roughly tugged the bra down so my breast would pop above the line of practical stitching and worn beige fabric. My breast would be completely covered by his hand, his golden skin against my own, faint hair dusting his knuckles and those blunt-tipped fingers curving around the swell. It spilled from my mouth unheeded. "You'd have to slip them off to find out."

I blinked rapidly in surprise, unsure of where the hells that had come from.

He jerked back. His mouth fell open, shocked I'd been so bold.

Both of us stared at one another, and it felt as if the world had stopped spinning on its axis and paused.

Holy. Freaking. Hellsgate.

And there was the Varen I knew—a flash of white teeth in a broad beaming smile. But this time it was breathtaking and utterly devastating without the beard and masses of hair he'd hidden behind.

Slowly. So slowly, realization filtered through my mind, like dawn exhaling sunlight, that my words held power too.

My chest swelled with elation as a fearsome thrill coursed through my body.

I was the mistress of steamy books.

I held a wealth of knowledge stored in my head. It wasn't a physical blade that I could wield, the cold feel of steel or adamere gripped within my hand, but it was a weapon. This wasn't just going to be about me. He might be the ringmaster in this depraved situation but I held my own whip in this fight too.

I was going to make Varen Crowther fall to his knees despite the fact that I was untouched and virginal. That my world of romance had only ever been lived between the leaves of paper and ink, tales written in serif and hope scrawled across my heart in cursive script.

The only knowledge I possessed of things I'd yet to experience was found within the worn covers of books I only dared read in the Hemmlok forest.

Those were my favorite stories—darker with a sprinkling of sweetness.

The kind of romances that were downright explicit girl porn to put it politely.

Varen held himself still, so still. His broad body blocked most of the feeble light and in the gloom, his eyes were narrowed like an animal stalking through the dense undergrowth of a humid jungle. I had my very own panther staring down at me, readying to pounce if I flinched or moved a single inch.

He watched and waited for what I was going to do, for what perhaps he'd hoped I'd offered. To let him undo all those tiny white buttons down the length of my uniform and split it in half, slide it from my shoulders, and let him discover the softness of what was hidden behind my basic and boring underwear. Let him taste the salt on my flushed skin with a flick of his tongue.

Time stretched out between us as I held his unblinking gaze.

A notch began to form between his eyebrows, and beneath my hand wrapped around his bicep, muscles tightened as he readied to move—as if he'd done enough waiting.

But I moved first.

I tossed my head, shimmying my shoulders to invigorate my confidence. A swirl of blond whipped out and my ponytail flicked over my shoulder and swished across Varen's hand hovering over my breast.

I sweetly smiled at him.

I. Can. Do. This.

I spoke to him as if I were sharing something in confidence. "I've heard that the color of your top lip is the exact shade as your nipple."

Varen's gaze instantly slashed to my mouth.

There were rose freckles scattered across my left breast too. Splendidly perky in case he was wondering.

His hungry eyes were solely focused right there, right where I wanted him to be. I tilted my chin upward and skimmed the tip of my tongue ever so slowly across the top lip's plump underside. "A dusky-pink rose at the height of summer. Don't you think?" I whispered.

The image conjured up dusky pink petals, blooms of roses open at the peak of a blazing summer day, unmindful of how hot it was—they only wanted to soak up the sun. Much like I was doing now, wanting to soak in the rays of Varen Crowther. But it wasn't sunlight, it was the silvery rays of moonlight illuminating rumpled silk sheets, warm beneath my sweat-slick body.

When he finally peeled his gaze from my lips, his eyes were lust-drunk and heavily hooded. "Fuck yes."

"Right now, they're so very, very hard it hurts," I sighed, lowering my gaze to the fob watch's chain dangling from a low button in his waistcoat. I heard the sharp inhale of breath before I forged on. "Would you want me splayed upon your bed, my hair fanned across the pillows?" Looking back up, I angled my head and blinked innocently. "Or perhaps you'd prefer me kneeling?"

Exhilaration vibrated through his body. The temperature rose another degree, and perspiration trickled down my spine and stuck my breasts to beige cotton. The natural urge for dominance turned the streaks of gold flaring from his pupils to bronze and copper.

I released my hold on his upper arm to lay my hand on his chest, right over his heart, which pounded a manic beat beneath my palm. My lips twitched with a smile. No, he wouldn't want a sacrificial lamb lying on the bed, passive and waiting. Though he desired my surrender he wanted my fight more. "Yes..." I replied, with a small, knowing smile. "I'd be kneeling on silk sheets with my hands pinned behind my back with lace. Cinched tight in a pretty pink bow, wondering what you were going to do. Wondering if I could run. Could I make it to the bedroom door before you'd catch me?"

"You know I'd catch you," he growled, inching closer. I was pinned beneath a half-feral glare. A thrill shivered across my skin, sweet and dangerous, making my heart skip faster. I couldn't say I didn't want him to try taking a bite out of me.

His chest rose and fell with quick shallow breaths as I lazily skimmed my fingertips downward. The gold links in the fob watch's chain warmed beneath my touch as I twisted it this way and that. I glanced up beneath my eyelashes and pitched my voice low and sultry. "Would you lead me back to your bed or would you keep me trapped against the wooden door?"

On the latter, excitement scored across his eyes like a meteor, bright and fierce and swift.

"The door," I whispered.

It wasn't a question, but he answered it as if it were. His voice cracked on the word, "Yes." He cleared his throat and nodded once.

I chanced a swift glance downward.

His pants strained with an erection.

Hard. Implacable. An iron length angrily pushed at the placket.

Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.

Stepping back, I leaned against the tall cupboard and he followed, drawn forward as if we danced to silent music. There was barely any space between us, just his hard body and mine lusting after his touch if he only pressed closer. There was a tempest inside me, hot and wild and unpredictable. I could so easily give in to the craving raging beneath my skin, blustering inside my chest, melting my sex to liquid, and take, take, take...

I left the golden chain to play with the buttons on his waistcoat—so debonaire and charming—delighting in the feel of marbled muscle twitching beneath my fingertips. His waistcoat was luxurious and warm from his body heat as I languidly drew my own fingertip along the buttonholes. He stretched into my touch as he straightened fully, and I lowered the tray of goblets to waist height and moved it outward and out of our way. He didn't seem to notice, he was too fixated on me.

The ends of his tie were tucked beneath the vest, and the dark navy of his suit seemed to be black in the dull light of the glassware room. "Where would you start first?" I asked, carrying on in a light, musing tone as I toyed with the loose folds of his silky tie. His bristle-free neck was delightfully smooth as I traced a whorl of inked flames and corded veins, the knot in his throat moving beneath my featherlight touch as he swallowed thickly.

I studied his face. Shadows deepened the sweeping cheekbones and illuminated his beauty. Devilishly handsome. He was so tense, unblinking. Everything was focused on what I was doing. He held himself rigid as if he were afraid to break the bewitchment I'd cast upon him. The back of my curled hand brushed along his sharp jawline, and I wished I could run my cheek against it, greedily inhale his scent, and kiss his smooth skin. The swirl of his quickened breath tingled my forefinger as I stroked across those rosy lips.

Gorgeous, gorgeous lips.

Full and pouty and wickedly dirty when they wanted to be.

"Would you kiss me first? A chaste innocent kiss? Or would you kiss me deeper to claim every part of my mouth?" I asked, meeting those penetrating violet eyes. Nervous energy blended with a potent thrill of power, spiking my blood with its sweet poison. He hadn't blinked. He was barely breathing. He hung on to every single delicious and tormenting word as I continued on. "Would you unhook my bra? Peel my panties from my body completely or simply tug them down and use them to trap my ankles?"

He finally cracked. "What are you doing?" he implored. And there was something oddly vulnerable in his expression.

I thought it was fairly obvious.

He'd made his move. Now it was time I made mine.