Her fingernails curled against his shoulders. “I… I want this,” she whispered.
Seth smiled against her throat. His hand slid down to her hip, fingers splayed, anchoring her as he shifted just slightly. The head of his manhood nudged into her entrance, and the air left her lungs.
He stilled. “Too much?”
“No,” she breathed, the word unsteady. “Just… slow…”
His lips brushed her jaw. “Always.”
He pressed forward again. Her body stretched around him as he eased inside. Inch by delicious inch, he began filling her, and the pressure built until her fingernails were scraping his back. Her eyes clenched shut. She couldn’t speak, not with the way it felt—foreign and thick and somehow perfect. The breath stalled in her lungs.
“Look at me, sweetheart.”
Her eyelids fluttered open. Charlotte had no words. The ache of the stretch melted beneath something far more dangerous—pleasure. Not bright and sharp, but slow and molten. Her hips lifted, needing more of him. He groaned as her body welcomed him fully.
His lips consumed hers again, this time with no gentleness at all.
The first thrust had her crying out against his mouth.
The second left her clinging to him, her body strung tight as silk thread. He found a rhythm that unraveled her. Each time he sank into her, it knocked her further from the edge of thought, pulling her into nothing but heat and sound and sensation. Her name left his lips in a whisper, like a prayer lost to the dark.
Soon, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and turned her mouth to his ear. “I want more...”
He pulled back, a breathless laugh caught in his throat. “More?”
“I… I mean, don’t be careful.”
His gaze locked with hers in understanding, and for a moment, everything stilled, so much so that she almost regretted speaking at all.
Then he hooked an arm beneath her back and rolled them. Charlotte found herself astride him, seated fully on his length. She let out a low gasp. Her hands splayed across his chest for balance.
The angle changedeverything. He filled her in a way that made her vision swim. She rocked forward instinctively, chasing that heat. He groaned, hands sliding up her waist to her breasts, thumbs grazing the dusky tips.
She moved again, rolling her hips in a slow, needy circle. His hands gripped her tighter.
“Just like that,” he said roughly.
Charlotte sat up straighter, her hair tumbling down her back as she rode him with growing confidence. Her thighs trembled with effort, but the building pressure between them was worth every ache. He reached up, caught her by the nape, and pulled her back down to him, capturing her mouth with his.
The kiss was hot and open, messy and perfect.
His hands slid down to her backside, guiding her rhythm as they moved together. The sound of their bodies filled the small room—flesh meeting flesh, breath and need and the soft creak of the bed beneath them.
She lost track of everything but the man beneath her. Her husband. The way he felt. The way he looked at her like shewas the only woman in the world. The way he made her feel—desired, known, and completely, utterly his.
And Charlotte, flushed and bare, riding her duke in the heart of nowhere, had never felt more like a duchess.
CHAPTER 30
“You’ll be wantin’ to set off early,” Mr. Campbell said from across the kitchen table. “Weather’s turnin’ foul from the south, and ye won’t want yer lass takin’ another chill. Best either wait it out here—or outrun it north to Strathclyde.”
Seth nodded, glancing out of the window at a sky that was bruising quickly with dark clouds gathering on the southern horizon. Charlotte sat next to him.
My wife. She is my wife. I am a married man…
It was still amazing to him—an alien concept but one that he loved. She caught his eye and blushed, smiling. Seth smiled too, and then realized that Mrs. Campbell, still adding to the food that was already making the sturdy table groan, was watching them.
“Och, it’s always a joy seein’ a young couple, just wed and still wearin’ the first blush o’ it,” she declared with a smile.
