He’d been dreaming about her for years. Powerful dreams. Sexual dreams. Dreams that left him drenched in sweat and groaning in pain and reaching for the first pair of female legs that passed him.
Yeah, he’d thought if he’d had sex more often, his powerful reactions to her would diminish. But all it did was make him want her more—because none of those women were Molly.
No. No one could ever even compare to that effervescent little bombshell—no one.
Now he just needed to play his game right. Julian might have a long comfortable fuse where his temper was concerned, but when it came to Molly, his fuse had run damn short. If she kept this up he was going to do something reckless and stupid.
And he didn’t want to be reckless and stupid.
He’d been moving his pieces all in the direction of one goal so he could stake his claim on her once and for all.
Now he’d prove to his family that he did not need them, and that he would never hurt a single hair on Molly’s beautiful head. He needed them to see that he was worthy of her, that he wanted her for real and not just for sex—though of course when that happened, it was going to be damned amazing, too. But more importantly, he needed to show them that he would do whatever it took to have her. Even cut his ties with them all.
If Molly was ever going to settle down with a guy, she was settling down with Julian. Whether they liked it or not.
And as for Molly…
He had to make her see that he was the man for her and always had been—and once and for all, he had to finish what he’d started the night he’d kissed her heart out at the masquerade party.
Four
Something about sleeping in Julian’s apartment made Molly restless.
Well past midnight, still tortured by the memory of Garrett’s kiss, she found herself tiptoeing down the hall toward the kitchen in the hopes of finding some sort of sleep aid in his cupboards. She had her heart set on Sleepytime Tea, but valerian root or chamomile would do, too. Hey, at this point, she’d take anything as long as it meant quieting her troubled brain and getting some rest.
But what she found on her way to the cupboards was a beautifully sculpted, seminaked man instead—and the sight of him was sure to give her permanent insomnia.
Wearing only a pair of white cotton briefs that hugged his buttocks perfectly, he leaned against the open refrigerator door, his head stuck inside as he surveyed the food.
Molly stopped in her tracks, her heart flying to her throat.
The warm fridge light silhouetted Julian’s magnificent form, shamelessly caressing every dent, every shadow and every sharp rise of lean, ripped muscle. Her breasts pricked unexpectedly. And suddenly he was not just Julian.
He was every inch…Julian John Gage.
Sexy playboy, dangerous male.
Not a hero, not harmless and definitely not just a friend.
A tremor rushed down her legs as her eyes helplessly drank up what was so blatantly on display, aided by the moonlight that filtered through the windows; she took in the sinewy arm folded above his head as he leaned forward, the broad muscled back, the lean hips and…the rest. His long, muscled calves and hamstrings, his hard buttocks under that snug white cotton.
Her temperature skyrocketed. Not because he was utterly sexy in a way that made her want to swim in ice right now, but because she was here. With him. At midnight. And he was about 90 percent naked. When it should be Garrett here, Garrett almost naked, Garrett in her head.
Her hormones clearly knew nothing of reason. They burst into action until she could feel the hot little pinpricks all over her body, to her utter confusion and despair.
Even her fingers tingled at her sides with a painful itch to trace the muscles on his back, determine the texture, the hardness, paint the thick ropes straining in his forearms. For a wild moment she kidded herself that it was the artist in her; it had to be. For she felt the same fever she did when she was gripped with the need to paint.
Except now she was gripped with the need to trace the length of Julian John.
With finger paint. All of him. She thought wildly that if he were a canvas, she would not leave an inch of him unpainted except his lips. He was just too masculine to wear them any way but bare.
But she could still trace them with her fingertips and find out what sort of power they held when they kissed her. She could explore the thick bottom one and then the top one and she might even kiss them again just to be sure her memory wasn’t failing her…
Molly, you love Garrett, you tramp!
Shocked by the untoward thoughts, she snapped back to the present and swallowed a lump in her throat. An awful guilt surfaced inside her. Had she actually been thinking of accosting Julian in his own kitchen? What was wrong with her?
Ever since that evening at the masquerade, it felt as if her entire life had been flipped over as easily as a pancake.
Now she could not stop thinking about kissing, touching, tasting, wanting. Garrett had awakened the desperate needs of a woman inside her, and Molly felt so hyperaware of her body now, even her reactions to Julian were uncommonly, embarrassingly…unsettling.
See what you’ve done to me, Garrett? Apparently I’m a nymphomaniac now.
“Um. Did you forget you have a guest here?” she blurted out from her spot a few feet away.
Julian’s shoulders stiffened almost imperceptibly. His head dropped an inch or so, that gorgeous mane with sun-streaked strands that were lighter than the others. “Damn—you’re supposed to be asleep, Molls.” He pulled his head out of the fridge, his chin dropping an inch or so as he faced her, his hair catching the light just right.
“People with insomnia don’t sleep, Jules.”
Molly should go back to her bedroom, she supposed, but being squeamish about a man’s near-nakedness did not go with her artistic persona. She had to treat it as a natural state of being, or at least that was what she told herself as she woodenly walked over and opened and shut cabinet doors in search of her tea.
“Here, have some milk, always works for me.” He shoved the carton he’d just drunk from in her direction.
Molly took it and set her lips over the place his mouth had been, trying not to get too hooked on that discomforting detail as she downed a big gulp. Swallowing, she said, “Ah, it’s cold,” and handed it back, all her efforts focused solely on not noticing how velvety smooth and hairless his massive chest was.
She had never felt five feet tall when she was with Julian until today. When he seemed to hulk over her, appearing for the first time in her life almost…threatening. Extremely male.