A swell of relief filled her. “Did you?”
“No.”
She stared at him in astonishment. “He’s your brother, Brant.”
“I know.”
A shiver skittered under her skin. “Surely that means something?”
“Does it?”
This, more than anything, showed her exactly how he would treat her when the time came. And come it would. When he tired of her.
Dear God, it stunned her to know how much she’d been fooling herself. Just because she’d admitted Brant had more integrity than her father didn’t mean he’d suddenly turned into Mr. Nice Guy. When he wanted her out of his life, he’d take the appropriate measures to do exactly that. No exceptions.
Well, maybe one.
Julia.
“You’re a coldhearted bastard,” she muttered, her heart twisting painfully inside her.
His eyes turned as unreadable as stone. “Feel free to think what you like.”
“Oh, I will,” she said, holding his gaze, determined he knew she didn’t appreciate this side of his character.
For a moment silence hung angrily in the air.
Then he said, “Tell me one thing, Kia. Do you think if you went to your father right now and told him how you feel about him, it would change the way he thinks?”
She frowned. “What’s my father got to do with this?”
“You’re asking me to go to my brother and change his mind. It’s a similar situation. And it won’t work.”
“But how do you know unless you try?”
His eyes bored into her. “Did you try with your father?”
She blinked in surprise. “Yes, I did.”
“And what happened?”
She blanched, remembering. “He wouldn’t listen.”
“Exactly.”
She sighed. Brant had a point.
His eyes softened. “Look, my uncle was an alcoholic. It ruined his family even before he killed himself and my aunt in a car accident while he was driving drunk. So don’t you see? I know I can talk until I’m blue in the face and it won’t change how my brother feels. I know I can get his promise that he’ll get help, and tomorrow he’ll break it. No, he has to want to seek help for himself. Not expect his wife to fix it for him. Or me.”
Kia heard the rough edge of emotion in his voice and knew he wasn’t as cold as he made out. “You’re right.”
He stood and pulled her up into his arms, his eyes darkening. “I don’t want to argue anymore. I want to make love to you. Let’s forget the rest of the world tonight.”
“But—”
“Enough,” he murmured, undoing her belt to slide his hands inside the robe and over the bare skin of her hips.
Hypnotized by his touch, she tingled under his fingertips. Greedily she gave herself up to him and to whatever he wanted to do to her.
“You need another lesson in some loving, Ms. Benton,” he said, nuzzling her neck beneath the collar of her bathrobe.
She gasped with delight as his hands slid up her rib cage and cupped her br**sts.
He leaned back. “Good. That’s lesson number one completed.”
Her breath caught in her throat as he squeezed her ni**les, his touch sending shock waves to every nerve center in her body. “Er…number one?”
“Always respond when I touch you.”
That was easy. “What’s…number two?”
“Always say my name when I’m inside you.”
She moaned as his hands slid up to her shoulders. “And if I don’t?”
“Then we start over until you do,” he murmured, pushing the robe off her shoulders and letting it fall to the carpet.
She licked her lips. “I was always a quick learner.”
His eyes devoured her. “That’s too bad.”
“Why?”
“I was looking forward to teaching you the next lesson,” he said huskily.
Her body was heavy with warmth. “Um…next lesson?”
“Lesson number three. How to get a man to kiss you all over.”
She shuddered. And suddenly she wanted to know what he tasted like. What he would feel like against her tongue. “Do I get to reciprocate?”
His eyes darkened dangerously. “Only if you want to.”
“Oh, I do.”
“Then that’ll be lesson number four,” he murmured, rubbing a thumb across her lips.
“When do we start, teacher?”
“Now is as good a time as any,” he drawled and pulled her closer.
Her mouth parted the instant his lips met hers and he kissed her with a hunger that shocked her. It was as if it had been years since they’d been together instead of a mere half hour.
He kissed a path down to her br**sts, anointing each one with his mouth before going down on his knees and kissing her intimately through the curls at her thighs. His tongue flicked over the hot, moist core of her, and she gasped his name out loud, grasping his head to her as his tongue did marvelous things to her over-sensitized body.
“Come inside me,” she implored, her hands pulling at his head to make him stop before she spilled over the edge. “Please, Brant.”
He paused briefly. “Soon,” he promised and returned to what he was doing, making her legs weaken as she melted around him, shuddering with intensity, suspended in time.
When he swung her up in his arms and carried her into the shower, her brain felt clouded, her body thoroughly seduced. He kissed her back to life and then led her into the bedroom.
“I want to please you like you pleased me, Brant,” she murmured, following him down on the bed.
His eyes smoldered. “Are you sure you’re ready?”
“Absolutely.”
So he told her in explicit terms how a man liked to be made love to. She didn’t need much encouragement as she kissed his chest, letting her mouth move all over him, and downward through the arrow of hair on his taut stomach, until she covered the tip of his erection with her lips.
“Kia,” he growled her name as she began her own lesson in loving that had nothing to do with experience and everything to do with womanly instinct. She wanted him. All of him. And she almost got it.
Until he pulled her head up and away from him with a growl. “No,” he muttered tightly, twisting to reach a condom on the bedside table. A few seconds later he rolled her beneath him and plunged inside her in one swift motion, quickly reigniting the fuse of desire inside her, plunging deeper and deeper until both of them shattered together in a sea of sensual pleasure.