“Yes!”
He slid almost all the way out, then slammed home again, tearing a scream of pleasure from her.
“More,” she begged.
He grabbed her hips, holding her steady while he did it again, and again, until she was sobbing with need.
“Please, Liam.”
“Tell me what you want, my muse.”
“I want...I need...the release. Give me the release.” Her voice was a whimper of need, her eyes scrunched shut, her head thrown back as she strained against him. Shame, embarrassment, and fears forgotten in the face of this unrelenting need.
“I will, darling. I’ll give it to you.”
One of his hands sneaked around her waist and dipped between her legs, to caress the place where all sensation coalesced. She hid her face in the crook of her arm, drowning a scream as waves after waves of white-hot pleasure pulsed through her. Her flesh spasmed rhythmically around his rod as she extracted every drop of ecstasy from his hardness.
A moment later, his hands clutched her hips as he let out a roar of pleasure, and he exploded inside her. The pulses of his flesh echoing the cataclysm she had experienced.
In the aftermath of satisfaction, he yanked at the ties of her corset, massaged her breasts as he removed her chemise, rolled down her stockings until she was completely naked. All the while, his gaze devoured her with frank admiration as he uncovered her body.
She had no more will to protest. Couldn’t even remember why she wanted to protest. Being naked in his presence felt...right. For the first time in her life, her body was not something to be ashamed of. To be covered, hidden, or constrained with stiff corsets. Every curve she had ever hated, he seemed to adore. The feelings that engendered were empowering, liberating.
When her hair tumbled like a waterfall of fire down her back, she realized he had removed the pins. His long, dexterous fingers tunneled through her tresses, massaging her scalp. If she were a cat, she would have purred under his caresses.
“There. Now I have you the way I want. All soft, pliant, and well pleasured, radiating sensuality, with your hair down and your lips swollen from my kisses. Tell me, my muse, am I going to have to seduce you before every session to get you to relax? Because I’d be more than happy to oblige.”
She chuckled at that. “Absolutely. I insist upon it.”
“There you go. Keep smiling at me like that,” he said as he went to his workbench, grabbed a sketchbook and pencil, and proceeded to draw with fast strokes.
CHAPTER 19
HE SHOULD HAVE KNOWNthe attacks would not cease. As Liam sat down for breakfast, he glanced through the pile of newspapers set beside his place at the table. An action he had performed every day for the past two weeks, ever since he had returned from his trip and started sculpting Thalia.
Five long years had passed since his wife’s death. Yet as soon as he set foot on English soil again, and the scandal rags had wasted no time to start publishing ghastly caricatures of him and rekindle the old scandal.
Didn’t they have something new to latch on to? He would have thought nobody would be interested in his tragedies anymore. But he had been wrong.
He should not care. In fact, he had ignored the poisonous darts five years ago. Why did it bother him so now? Because ofher. He didn’t want her to see the horrible depictions and read the false descriptions of events.
It didn’t matter. He had already told her the truth. She would not care for these falsehoods. She probably wasn’t even reading this rubbish. But they still bothered and humiliated him. His dark musings were interrupted when his butler announced.
“Lady Renier is here to see you, my lord,” he intoned, guiding Thalia into the breakfast parlor.
He immediately shot to his feet, more out of surprise than polite manners, if truth be told.
“Thalia, you are here earlier today.”
“Well, there’s really no pleasing you, is there?” she chided. “If I come in the afternoons, I’m too late. If I come in the mornings, I’m too early. As it happens, I have another commitment this afternoon, so I came earlier.”
“What commitment?” he snapped without thinking, more provoked by the minute.
What the fuck was he doing questioning her life? But it bothered him in the extreme that she had somewhere to be that did not include him.
“You may not be aware of this, my lord. But I have a life and obligations beyondposingfor you.” She took a seat, and one of the footmen immediately filled her cup with tea.
“Out, the lot of you,” he snapped to the servants. “We’ll serve ourselves.”
