and too starved for touch.
“More.” I grab his wrist and grind my pelvis against his palm without a shred of decorum. I can hear my wetness sucking against his rough skin and don’t recognize this woman, wild and roused, filled with savage yearning. I’ve touched myself before. A couple awkward fumbles beneath my quilt in the dead of night, but I never knew exactly what I was doing.
It’s humbling that Damien seems to know my body’s responses better than I do.
“Shit,” he snarls, slamming the brakes. We skid to a stop in the middle of the road. I turn around, tensing at the anticipated impact of another car, but the hour is late. No other vehicle is in sight.
“Climb aboard, love. But be a good girl and grab the bottle of lube in the glove box.”
“Excuse me?” Climb aboard? Lube?
“Time to get your sweet ass out of that seat and straddle me. You want to fuck? Fine, but we’re going to do it my way, Princess. And behind the wheel is my favorite position.”
I blink once. Twice. But he says nothing, just regards me with those magnetic steely eyes.
Oh my god. He’s not joking. I try to swallow. “Let me get this straight. You’re planning to drive while having intercourse with me?” I grew up riding horses, but something tells me that losing my virginity to a man behind the wheel of an Italian sports car is nothing I could have possibly prepared for.
“Are you up for the challenge or not, Princess?” His eyes are dark as sin. “Because if the answer is no, I can turn this car around and take you back to the club.”
“No! Wait!” I cry. “Don’t do that.” My hand trembles as I move to unbuckle my seat belt, nerves churning my stomach. But despite my unease, I want this; I want him—badly.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
“Hold up. One final thing.” His voice is a warning, silk sliding over gravel. “Have you heard everything the maids said about my...prowess?”
“Just that you are an expert in the arts of lovemaking.”
There is no humor in his chuckle. “And what do you think of my nickname?”
“Nickname?” I frown.
“The Backdoor Baron?” He sounds exasperated. “Ring any bells?”
My frown deepens. “I do not understand. You are a baron? Weren’t you stripped of all titles? And what’s all this about a back door?”
His intense gaze threatens to undo me. “You really are a sheltered innocent, aren’t you? The nickname is a joke, but not without an element of truth. I give women pleasure, but when I’m inside them, I only enter one way. Through the back door.”
I wait for him to elaborate, but nothing is forthcoming. “You speak in riddles.”
“Are you joking?” Two lines crease between his brows. “Isn’t this why you sought me out? To have me give you pleasure while keeping your technical virginity intact for your husband?”
Confusion presses against my skull. Silently I curse my parents for keeping me so cloistered and ignorant of the world. And I curse myself for letting them.
He huffs a curt sigh. “All right, look. When I fuck, I don’t do it here.” He reaches under my dress and enfolds my sex. “I do it here.” He slides his hand away and squeezes my backside.
Clarity hits me like a bolt of lightening.
Backside. Back door. Like...butt.
Oh!
My cheeks are surely turning the color of rubies. “People do that?”
“Sure.” He winks. “They do with me.”
“I...no...no... I do not want to try such a thing. I wanted... I mean... I expected...the front door?” I grimace. This conversation is by far and away the most awkward dialogue I’ve ever endured.
Beep! A loud horn breaks the quiet night, and a Porsche swivels around us, the driver making a vulgar gesture as he passes.
“Right back at you, buddy.” Damien hits the accelerator, resuming our journey. He quickly glances in my direction before looking back to the road. “I’ve met your betrothed, you know. The Duke of Wartson. We’ve played poker together once or twice.”
“Oh?” The sudden change of topic confuses me.
“You really have to marry that horny old goat?”
Tears prickle in my eyes. “Indeed.”
He’s quiet a moment before breathing out a rough sigh. “Fine. I’ll give you what you ask for. But not here. Not while I’m driving, and not in the back door. For you, I’m going to make an exception.” His smile is rueful. “Consider it an early wedding present.”
He drives slower, but just as masterfully. The perfect, chiseled lines of his face are made for brooding. I find myself hypnotized.
“Damien?” I ask at last. It’s strange how his name tastes so familiar on my tongue. “Why do you only ever take women in the...back door? Have you never tried the, uh, front door either?” A mad sort of hope flickers in me. Perhaps I’m not so stupidly naive and innocent. Perhaps he is like me, a virgin.
That faint glimmer of hope is doused by his bitter chuckle.
“Yes, Princess. I’ve tried the front door. But only ever with one woman.” His knuckles go bloodless on the steering wheel. “A woman who is now dead.”
Realization dawns on me. “Your brother’s fiancée. Your once future queen. You seduced her, didn’t you?”
“Technically, Victoria seduced me,” he rasped. “But I suppose I should be proud of my notoriety.”
“She was your lover?”
“I had rather thought that she was my one true love.” A shadow falls across his face. “But I was nothing but a boy, and it was all a lie. Yet when it came to our lovemaking...sex meant something with her. And I’ve never felt that way about another woman. So I still fuck. I just do it on terms that make it bearable.”
My heart aches at the pain lacing his words.
We arrive at an exquisite hotel, and he pulls past the main entrance. Instead, we approach a gated drive from a side street. He punches a pass code into a keypad, and the great brass doors swing wide open. He pulls forward.
“So what makes me different?” I don’t look at him. I focus my gaze on the ten-story hotel before us. I breathe a small sigh of relief that although we are in a public place, no one will see me enter. I don’t want to be found out before I get what I came here for.
“I’ve been asking myself the same question,” he mutters. “And I don’t have a good reply. At least not an easy one. So why don’t we go inside and see if the answer is hiding in your perfect pussy?”
Damien
WE RIDE THE elevator in silence. With any other woman, I’d have made her come at least twice before we reached the top. But something about Juliet is different, and it’s more than knowing she is Nightgardin’s virgin heir. I can’t place my finger on it, but I want to take my time with her.
When we reach the hotel’s penthouse, the doors slide open, and Juliet sucks in a breath.
Rich mahogany wood covers the floor that leads us to the main living space where the sofa—the color of the deepest ocean—sits before a roaring fire.
“How did you...?” she asks, and I grin.
“I tip well,” I tease. “And in return, I get special—favors.”