The Deceptive Kiss

Lily ground her teeth in impotent fury, but dared not recklessly provoke him further.

As her blouse parted, it revealed a fitted white camisole clinging tightly to the curves of her bosom.

Ethan's eyes narrowed with a rakish glint of amusement, "So very...prepared, aren't we? It would be terribly rude of me not to oblige such evident effort."

His mouth descended on hers in a savage, possessive kiss before she could protest. His lips scorched like brands, sending an electric jolt arrowing through her body. As if savoring her visceral recoil, he eased the brutality of his assault into something lazier, more luridly intimate – his tongue slicking languidly along the seam of her clenched lips in a crude mimicry of tenderness.

One calloused palm drifted lower, giving an insouciant tug that stripped the lacy camisole down to her waist, leaving the swells of her constrained cleavage shamelessly exposed.

This couldn't be happening – he'd promised to leave her unmolested so long as she remained quiescent! Cold dread trickled from her hairline as his questing hands roamed freely across her trussed form.

"Stop this instant, you degenerate bastard!" she cried, twisting her head aside to avoid his plundering lips. "You said you'd leave me be if I didn't insult you!"

"Did I?" he broke off with a dark, mocking chuckle that skated along her nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. "Naïve girl - I said no such thing."

Of course she would be so painfully, laughably innocent to the primal urgings of the male species, swaddled from birth in the cosseting embrace of wealth and privilege. But he would be more than happy to educate the pampered debutante on the savage realities..

His grasp seized her wildly thrashing head in an iron grip, forcing it immobile as he sealed her parted lips in another scorching, devouring kiss. His wicked tongue delved past her gasping protests to plunder the dewy sweetness of her mouth in long, obscene strokes that left her gulping for air.

Exquisite innocence, like candy on his tongue - sometimes the simplest indulgences proved the most satisfying, didn't they? Or at the very least, whetting one's appetite for more substantial fare to come...

Because in his eyes, Lily was far more than just a palate-cleanser. The very same haughty debutante who'd dismissed him as some nameless, faceless nobody - a formerly contemptuous blueblood who wouldn't deign to spare him a single glance. A pompous, preening aristocrat who'd taught him the full, crushing divide separating their worlds, the insurmountable chasm between their differing ilk...

Releasing her at last, Lily sagged back with lips plump and glistening from his ravenous assault, drawing harsh, desperate pants. Her unfocused, dazed expression betrayed how utterly he'd addled her senses.

"I wonder," he mused with sardonic derision, deftly repositioning her pliant form until she knelt facing away from him, "Do you think a rape will still feel good?"

With her wrists still bound overhead, Lily could only submissively brace herself against the footboard, her heart thundering in dawning panic at the crude intimation of his depravedly suggestive words.

"You sick, perverted piece of - agh!"