J.C. and the Bijoux Jolis (Blueberry Lane 3 - The Rousseaus #3)(9)

Ring.

His hand slipped boldly into the bodice of her dress, the heat of his palm covering the flesh of her breast as his thumb and forefinger found her painfully erect nipple and rolled it. Fire spread like lava, red-hot liquid heat, deep inside her body, invading her core and saturating her sex. She moaned into his mouth, returning his thrust as he clutched her ass and pushed her forward into his cock again.

Ring.

“Fuck!” he bellowed, ripping his mouth away from hers.

Panting with need as she opened her eyes, she felt his hand slip quickly from her breast as he reached into his back pocket for his phone. With one hand, he pressed a button on the screen and held it to his ear, while the other held her to him, an uncompromising band around her waist.

“What?” he roared, his eyes fierce as they stared into hers from an inch away, his massive erection still straining against her pelvis.

“This better be good, Jax,” he grated out. “I’m with someone.”

She couldn’t hear his sister through the line because her blood was rushing so fast in her ears, she could only hear its whooshing, accompanied by the wild beating of her heart.

“Walk,” he growled, tightening his arm around Libitz, his breath hot where it landed in jagged pants on her cheek and nose.

Libitz’s hands were trapped between them, still flattened on his chest, but now, as she realized what had just happened between them—how far from a single kiss in the moonlight they’d wandered—she pushed against him, trying to shove him away.

His eyes narrowed and he tightened his arm again, refusing to yield.

“Moi? I’m the *?” he said into the phone, though his eyes nailed her, and Libitz wondered if he was speaking to her as well. She pushed at the muscles of his chest again, but his arm flexed around her, trapping her against him. “Try again.”

“Release me,” she hissed.

He looked angry, his eyes boring into hers as his slick lips tightened into an unhappy slit. Struggling to back out of his arms, she mashed her heel into his shoes, and he finally loosened her, covering the phone with his palm.

“What’s the problem?”

“No problem.”

“We don’t have to stop.”

“Yes,” she said firmly, “we do.”

“Why?”

Because you’re my best friend’s brother-in-law, and I want to be in her life forever, and f*cking you on day one isn’t going to do either of us any favors. Besides, she hadn’t expected to lose herself so completely in his kiss. Her brain was still swimming. Her body was still pulsating. She’d barely escaped, and now that her eyes were open again, she needed to get away from him.

“We agreed on one kiss,” she said. “We kissed. It’s over.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

Her body throbbed with need, but her mind was more and more in control and issued a final warning that she couldn’t ignore: He is the worst possible candidate for a fling. Stop this. Now. With big guns, if that’s what it takes.

“I only kissed you to get you off my back.” She smirked at him. “I don’t want you.”

“Yes, you do. It’s obvious,” he said, but he flinched before he said it like maybe he wasn’t sure, and it gave her just enough doubt to straighten her back, aim, and fire.

“If you touch me again, it will be without my permission,” she said, every word precise and meaningful. “Obvious enough for you, Romeo?”

Recognizing her words for the warning and threat they were, he flinched again, his whole body stiffening at her words, his eyes growing icy as he stared down at her, searching her face to ascertain the severity of her meaning, ugly words like assault and rape passing invisibly between them and souring the sweet night air.

Her conscience pinched a little, but she remained firm in her refusal of him, even as he raked his eyes down her body, stopping at the breast he’d caressed so intimately and eyeing it with disdain.

Finally, he eased his palm away from the phone, staring into her eyes and purring, “It was a slice of heaven, petite. I’ll call you sometime.”

Sarcasm was thick and mean in his tone, and he licked his lips provocatively, a premediated gesture meant to make her feel slutty and small. A debonair dismissal. A line he’d told a thousand women a thousand times, meant to remind Libitz that she was a tiny blip on the landscape of his conquests. And a kiss that had momentarily rocked her landscape was actually just…nothing. She knew that’s what his words and gestures were trying to convey.

And yet…his eyes were intense, despite his efforts to relax them. With a man who had a modicum of respect for women, she might have wondered if it was a defensive move—if maybe a kiss that had been utterly intoxicating to her had unexpectedly been the same for him. But with a predator like J.C., who, according to people she trusted implicitly, cared about his own pleasure and nothing else? These were words and gestures purely meant to one-up her refusal of him and make her feel dirty. It was a good strategy on his part. It worked.

“I hope not,” she murmured, ignoring the flush of heat in her cheeks as she adjusted the bodice of her dress and took another step away from him. “I hope never.”

His eyes flashed with anger.

“Tu vas fermer ta putain de gueule,” he growled softly into the phone.