“Yes.” The word slid from her lips on a sigh. “I want you so much I can’t bear it.”
Thank fuck. He caught her bodice in his hand, and ripped the delicate silk cleanly from her. Or at least half of it. With a flick of his wrist, the bodice was gone. He gripped her corset and used his thumb to work the first hook-and-eye closure free. It didn’t take him long to have the red satin, black-lace-trimmed corset open. Her chemise remained, shielding her from him. He rent the fine fabric as well. She was nude from the waist up.
Her breasts were full and high, the sweet pink nipples he’d recalled countless times while secreted in Liverpool hard and inviting, pointing upward. He couldn’t resist lowering his head to take the hardened bud of her left nipple into his mouth. He sucked, relishing the way she writhed against him, arching into his body, squeezing his hips with her thighs. She moaned. He caught her between his teeth, tugged.
She begged. “Please, Sebastian.”
Need roared out of control. Thundered though his veins. Lit a fire that burned just beneath his skin. His ballocks tightened, his cock grinding against her center. Jesus. He had never wanted a woman more. His reaction to her was ludicrous. He knew what she was, what she’d done. Christ, he probably didn’t even know the half of it. And yet there would be no purging her from his blood until he had her this night.
He released her nipple with a loud, wet pop, tilted his head so that their eyes clashed again at last. Deep, intense green pierced him. Her mouth had fallen open, her breath uneven. He blew on her nipple once. Twice. Nipped it again, his gaze never leaving hers.
“What do you want, Daisy?” As he asked the question, he canted his hips, pressing the demanding ridge of his cock against her more fully. “Tell me. What do you want?”
Her breasts rose and fell, her breathing faster. She swallowed, ran her tongue over her lower lip. “I want you to believe me.”
“Make me believe you,” he dared. The challenge was a lie, bold and foolish, for he knew there was no earthly means by which she could persuade him that she wasn’t in fact the treacherous viper he had discovered her to be. All the evidence led to only one conclusion. She was her father’s daughter. She had betrayed him. She was an actress, a manipulator, a faithless liar. And he had fallen prey to her.
Now, he wanted to exact a bit of his own vengeance before she needed to face her inevitable end. Turning her over to Carlisle and League forces would not be easy when the time came, regardless of what she’d done.
But for tonight, she was his and his alone.
“I shouldn’t have to make you,” she countered, stubborn to the last. That was Daisy—bravado and courage and manipulation, a vibrant flower that was too bold and dishonest for her own good. “I’m your wife. I’ve never given you cause to doubt me.”
Everything she’d done gave him cause to doubt her. The reports from the Home Office made him doubt her. Her own actions made him doubt her. The fact that her father was the puppeteer for an ever-growing web of Fenian plotters made him doubt her. But doubt and need were two separate propulsions.
He tongued her nipple, and she arched on a breathy moan, responsive as ever. And then he nipped her again. Not hard enough to bruise, but enough that she gasped and writhed against him in obvious frustration. A liar she might be, but there was no pretense in the way her body wanted his. Nor in the way he wanted her. His desire for her was all-consuming.
“Release my hands,” she said.
He licked the puckered flesh he’d just bit. “No.”
“I want to touch you.”
Fuck. Longing slammed into him at her simple words. He wanted her to touch him. He could overpower her in an instant. What was the danger, the risk?
Only his heart.
Where the hell had that rogue thought come from? He forced it where it belonged, into the dark recesses of his mind. Good and bloody buried. He did as she asked, and then with two free hands, he took his knife from his boot and lowered it to the waistband of her trousers. One quick, careful swipe, and he’d cut straight through the silk and her drawers both. Fabric gaped. He tossed his knife to the floor where it landed with a carpet-muffled thud. And then he caught the rent fabric in his hands and tore it down her body in one, fluid motion.
Her eyes widened. “Sebastian.”
He looked down at their bodies, his poised for entrance despite the barrier of clothing he still wore. Hers… bloody, bloody hell. He took in a curved length of creamy thigh, an impossibly perfect knee, a sweetly turned calf and a trim ankle. But that wasn’t what made his mouth go dry. No. His gaze skimmed back up her body, lingering on the soft flesh at the apex of her thighs. Ah, yes. He had not forgotten the taste of her, the way she’d reacted to him. Here was his prize at last, what he’d longed for each seemingly endless day of the three months he’d spent away from her.
His fingers slid into her folds, finding her so slick that he couldn’t suppress his groan. His cock surged. Wanting. Needing. His heart pounded. “Daisy.” He circled her responsive bundle of flesh once, twice, then traced the seam to her entrance.
He was drawn as tense and still as the strings on a violin awaiting the slide of a bow. He needed to calm himself, to slow down. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, his cock so rigid he had to take a few steadying breaths just to regain his equilibrium.
One, two, three.
Counting again, blast it all. Blasther.
“Sebastian,” she said his name again on a gasp, and it bloody well killed him. “I want you so badly I ache with it. I wanted you every day that you were gone, and I want you now more than I ever did though I hate myself for it.”
Jesus.He knew the feeling. The breath he’d inhaled hissed from his lungs. When he found his voice, it was dark and low with the same suppressed anger that had been guiding him from the moment he’d first caught sight of her, resplendent in her evening finery, trousers and all. “Damn you. How is it that I want you, so badly, Daisy? It makes no bloody sense, but I want you so goddamn much that I burn with it.”
Her right palm caressed down his chest, over the taught plane of his abdomen, before traveling lower. Seeking and bold. Her fingers glanced his trousers directly over his cock. He jerked into her, and her fingers curled around his length.
His mouth descended upon hers, bruising, scalding, possessing. This kiss held no quarter. It was meant to ravish her. Take her. Remind her she was his. That he was her bloody husband, like it or not.
