Hudson froze at once, jerking his mouth away from hers, his expression horrified. “I’m sorry. I’ve never made love to a virgin. I was trying so hard to—”
But already the pain was gone, and just the sense of fullness remained. It wasn’t bad. It might even be… good.
“I’m fine,” she assured him, tilting her hips experimentally. The action caused their groins to press together, rubbing deliciously against her most sensitive area while driving his member even deeper.
He let out a groan of pleasure. “You’re killing me. All I want to do is grab your hips and drive myself inside you again and again like a wild beast.”
She tightened her legs about him. “Do it.”
“You don’t know what you’re—”
“Then show me.”
Chapter 23
Hudson made love to Tabitha, at first slowly, deliberately, then faster and faster. He lost the ability to hold himself back. Nothing had ever felt more right.
This was what he had been born to do. This was the woman he had been placed on this earth to love and to cherish and to pleasure.
He did his best to do so now, making love not just with his cock but also with his mouth on hers, his hand on her breast, his fingers dipping between them to tease her nub as he had done before.
She responded instantly and beautifully, enveloping him in slickness and tightening around him as her kisses became more sporadic and her breath fractured by seductive little pants.
The knowledge that she was close to another orgasm almost brought him to climax himself, but he gritted his teeth and did his best to think of icy river water, mathematical equations, the distinction between parsnips and turnips—anything but the soul-buoying ecstasy of his cock sliding in and out of her like this at last.
“Hudson,” she gasped. “I’m—”
The climax overtook her and whatever she’d meant to say stuttered into unintelligible syllables of wordless pleasure.
How could he defend himself against that?
His own orgasm rocketed through him, and he jerked himself free from her heat seconds before his seed spurted against her inner thigh.
“Now we’ll have to bathe again,” he murmured wryly.
She smiled up at him lazily, her eyes half-closed and passion-drunk. “Worth it.”
Absolutely. Hudson wouldn’t undo a single second of the past hour—a single moment of the past week—a single day of the years he’d spent pining after her from afar—for all the riches in the world.
Nothing had ever felt more meant to be. That it was forbidden changed nothing. Of course he knew that sleeping with his employer’s betrothed was more than grounds for dismissal. Perhaps that was what Hudson wanted. To cut ties with Oldfield. To bind himself to Tabitha instead.
She’d been “compromised” from the moment she ran off without a chaperone and found herself alone with him instead. Pretending to be married was scandalous enough. Acting out this most sacred and personal of rituals was more than mere playacting.
He wanted to make truth of their lie. Wanted the fiction to be real. A week of Mr. and Mrs. Snowfeather wasn’t enough. A single night of love did not quench Hudson’s thirst for her, but rather locked his heart to hers all the more, forging a chain of iron from each heartbeat until he was a willing prisoner of every smile, every touch of her hand, every kiss.
“Don’t marry him,” ripped from his throat.
She winced. “Hudson…”
Rejection flooded through him, cold and slimy and rotten. “I’m sorry. I should not have presumed to—”
“What you should do is to continue making love to me while we still can. The night is long, and we… Oh. You said we could only do it once.”
Already his cock was stirring again. “I might be able to scrounge up a second wind, if you ask me very, very nicely.”
She sank her hands into his hair and pressed her breasts up against his chest. “I’ll do anything you like. Just tell me how to please you.”
Oh, god. He didn’t just have a second wind. He had a third, a fourth, a hundred. He would never sleep again, if it meant spending his every waking moment making love to Tabitha into infinity.
