A Facade to Shatter(30)

He let his hand fall to her belly, pressed gently against her there. She uttered a little protest, but he didn’t take his hand away. He knew it bothered her that her belly wasn’t hard and lean. No, she was soft and pliable, womanly. Her body was curvy, not angular and hard from exercise. He liked it just the way it was.

“Maybe we should alter the arrangement,” he said, his tongue suddenly feeling thick in his mouth. As if he didn’t know the right thing to say. As if he were so new at this game of seducing a woman that the outcome could be in doubt.

She turned her head toward him, as if she was going to speak, and he knew the answer wouldn’t be what he wanted to hear from the way she stiffened at his words.

But he wasn’t going to give her a chance to say a thing. He brought his mouth down on hers, trapping her body between him and the wall. His heart was thundering in his chest, the way it did when he’d gotten that adrenaline rush after he’d aimed his jet straight up and climbed the sky like it was a mountain. Once he’d stopped climbing and starting racing toward earth again, only to pull up before it was too late, the g-forces holding him tight to his seat, he’d gotten another huge rush that made him laugh out loud at the sheer joy of flight.

Kissing Lia was similar to that feeling. Her lips were soft beneath his, though he sensed she didn’t want them to be. Her hands curled into fists on his lapels—but she didn’t push him away. He ghosted a thumb over her nipple and she gasped, letting his tongue inside her mouth.

Another shot of unfiltered desire ricocheted into his groin, making him painfully hard. He’d not been with a woman since he’d been with her. And before that, he’d not been with a woman in months. Lia had been the one to break the drought—and, strangely, he still desired her the way a man desired cool water after a hot trek in the desert.

Zach slid his tongue along hers, coaxed her into responding. She made a little noise in her throat—desire, frustration, he didn’t know which—but she stroked him in return. He tightened his grip on her, pulled her in closer to his body.

And then he assaulted her mouth more precisely, more urgently, taking everything she had to give him and demanding yet more. Her arms went around his neck, and then her body was arching into his, her hips pressing ever closer to that hardness at the core of him.

He cupped her ass with both hands, pulled her tightly to him, so tightly there could be no doubt what he wanted from her. He flexed his hips, pressing his hardness into her, finding that precise spot that made her gasp and moan.

He could make her come this way. He would make her come this way. He needed to hear her pleasure, needed to be the one to make her feel it.

Dimly, the click of heels against tile registered in his brain. The sound was coming closer, closer. With a frustrated groan, Zach broke away from the sweet taste of Lia. She looked up at him, blinking dazedly, her eyes slightly unfocused and distant, her lips moist and shiny. By degrees, her features changed, set, hardened into a cool mask.

“I’m sorry,” he said right before the heels clicked to a stop in front of the alcove. Except he didn’t know what he was sorry for.

“Mr. Scott?”

Zach closed his eyes for a brief moment. Then he turned to greet the socialite who stood there. “Yes, Mrs. Cunningham?”

Elizabeth Cunningham’s gaze darted past him to Lia, then back again. He didn’t miss the tightening of Elizabeth’s mouth, or the disapproving gleam in her eye. It pissed him off. Royally. Elizabeth Cunningham was thirty years younger than her husband, and much too judgmental for one who’d reached the pinnacle of society by marrying into it.

Zach reached for Lia’s hand, pulled her to his side. Claimed her. He thought she might move away from him, but she didn’t. She seemed to grasp the importance of appearances, after all.

“It’s time for your speech,” the other woman said, her gaze settling on his face once more.

Zach made a show of looking at his watch. “Ah, yes, so it is. I lose track of time when I’m with my lovely fiancée, I’m afraid.”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened. They darted to Lia. To Lia’s credit, she didn’t flinch or give away by look or gesture that she was anything other than what he’d said she was.

“Come, darling,” he told her, tucking her hand into his arm and leading her back toward the gathered crowd. Another speech, another event to tick off his social calendar.

Afterward, he would take Lia home … and then he’d finish what he’d started here tonight.