“I do not want to be your goddess,” she said quietly as she seemed to float toward him. She rested her hands on his shoulders and kept a frustrating amount of space between their naked bodies. “I want to be the woman you cannot live without.” She smiled as she traced the outline of his ear, then combed her fingers through his hair. “Even though I have a terrible temper, no patience whatsoever, and make my knuckles pop at the most inopportune time…” Her smile faded. “Can you please try to love me as much as I love you?”
“I love you more.” He pulled her into his arms and covered his mouth with hers while pressing her tight against him. Her warm, satiny softness drove him mad with more desire than he had ever possessed before.
She clung to him, opening her mouth and inviting him to deepen the kiss by tangling her tongue with his. She wrapped a silky leg around him as she raked her hands down his back, then clutched his buttocks and squeezed.
The smoothness of her belly rubbing against the hardness of his length made him groan. “I need you, my love,” he rasped. “I fear I cannot go slow this time. I have longed for this for too long, feared I would never know the treasure of your embrace ever again.”
“Then take me, my love. On the lounge, on the floor, on the sofa, or in the bedroom.” She squeezed his buttocks again, harder this time, the same desperate need echoing in her tone. “Ido not care where you take me. Just take me. Make me forget my sorrows for a little while.”
“We shall start with the floor,” he said as he lowered her onto the Persian carpet in the middle of their discarded clothes.
She smiled as she wrapped her legs around him and arched to meet him. “A promising start, but mind your elbows, my love.”
He sank into her with a rumbling groan, burying himself completely. “Elbows?” he rasped as he slid back out, then drove in deep again.
“Rug burns,” she said with a gasp as he pounded into her faster.
“To hell with the rug burns,” he growled, then set into a rhythm that made further conversation not only impossible but unnecessary.
Chapter Seventeen
Nash kissed eachof the dimples centered above her fine, round buttocks, then licked his way up her spine, smiling as Sophie wiggled beneath him. “Be still, my lady. I have not finished tasting every bit of you.”
“Are you quite certain, my ravenous lord?” she asked with a lazy giggle as she rolled to her back and guided him to her breasts. Arching into him with a satisfied moan as he tongued her nipple, she wrapped her legs tighter around his hips. “I feel as if I have been thoroughly worshiped by that wonderful mouth of yours.”
After sprinkling a trail of kisses across the swell of each of her breasts, he raised his head and smiled. “I will never finish worshiping you, my love. Never.”
A quiet pecking on the private servants’ door made him bellow, “Enter and die!”
“Nash!” She shook beneath him with a laughing snort, then cleared her throat and called out, “I shall ring when I need you, Marie.”
A subdued “Yes, my lady” came through the closed door.
“It is hours and hours past dawn, you know.” Sophie treated him to a long, slow kiss that encouraged him to settle back between her legs with a satisfied growl.
“Alas, my wife tires of me,” he said, jutting his hips and rocking into her hot wetness with insatiable greed.
“Never,” she groaned, matching him thrust for thrust. “Oh, never!”
He rode harder, feeling her bliss building and clutching to reach its pinnacle. “Take it, my love, take your pleasure.”
She cried out and bucked with a wildness he couldn’t resist.
A triumphant roar tore from his throat as he pumped harder, then poured into her until he was left shuddering. He collapsed, barely saving her from being crushed by catching himself on his forearms. With his forehead pressed to hers, he kissed her nose between gasping breaths. “My precious love,” he whispered.
She hummed a pleased sound, reminding him of a purring kitten. “We do have a precious love between us.”
“We do indeed.”
A strained growl rumbled up between them and made Sophie gasp. “Oh dear. I am mortified.”
Nash chuckled. “Why? Because you are hungry and need food?” His stomach chose that moment to make its wishes known with an even louder grumble than hers. “We did miss our dinner last night.”
She eyed him with a wicked arch of her brow. “Do you resent the sacrifice?”
“Not in the least, my love.” He nibbled a lingering kiss across the sweetness of her ruby lips. A heavy sigh escaped him as he lifted his head. “I suppose we must eat though to keep up our strength.”
“Yes, my lord, we would not wish to become weak and listless.”
