Beelzebub and hellfire.She did not need to say a single word more. He withdrew from her almost entirely before sliding home again in a hard, steady thrust. He kissed her. “How about this?”
“Yes.”
He did it again. “And this?”
“Oh, yes.” She sighed and her channel clenched, tightening on him, drawing him deeper still.
He was mindless now. Mindless in his need to satisfy the raging fires in the both of them. Mindless to take her. Mindless to possess her. Mindless to fill her with his cock so deep and so hard she would never want another man. That she would want to stay with him, in his bed, and at his side forever.
He sank home inside her again and again. Damn, but she felt so warm and so tight and so wet. He could not deny the rightness of it. The rightness of her. He knew to his bones he could have her beneath him, that he could lose himself inside her, a thousand times or more, and it would not be enough. It would never be enough. She was the only woman he wanted. She was the reason he could not even summon half an interest in the whores at The Duke’s Bastard.
She was the only woman he wanted in his bed, in his life. Now and forever.
Now and forever?
Good God.
He could not possibly be thinking of…
There was no way…
Marriage was out of the question.
He was not the sort to make a proper husband.Damnation, he was too jaded, too broken, too haunted by the past. Why, he could not even sleep through the night without going mad. He would never inflict himself upon another.
Why then did the thought of marrying Jacinda and having her in his bed each night make him so hard that he almost spent deep inside her womb when he knew better than to leave his seed where it could grow? Furious at himself, confused, hungrier for her than ever, he kissed her with the fires of passion raging within. Kissed her and kissed her. Reached between them once more to stimulate her pearl, listening to her throaty moans and taking note of each jerk of her hips as he learned how hard and how fast she wanted his touch.
Suddenly, she tightened on his cock, crying out, her body stiffening beneath him as she reached her pinnacle. He pounded deeper, finding her leg and hooking it over his shoulder so he could angle himself to advantage inside her. She came again, shaking and shuddering and crying out with her release. It was all he needed. The tightening of her channel, the wet rush of her spend on his cock, compounded. One more thrust, and he pulled out, holding his prick in a tight grip as he came all over her, painting her belly and the valley between her breasts with his seed.
He kissed her again, and it was done.
But Jacinda and Crispin were far, far from being done. He had been lying to them both when he had said all he wanted from her was one night. One night was not enough. As he collapsed against her, his heart pounding, he knew it as surely as he knew his own reflection in the glass. They had only just begun.
Chapter Thirteen
She woke tothe strange, buoyant sensation of floating through the air in the fashion of a bird. Strong arms banded around her, holding her as if she were as fragile as the finest piece of china. Her heart gave a pang at that, for she did not deserve his tenderness. Nor did she deserve him.
Misgiving rushed through her, chasing the sleep from her body. She had made a foolish lapse in judgment last night, going to his bed. For with each day, each hour, each minute, each breath, she lied to him. She was not who he thought she was, and though that deception was bad enough on its own, she was also here to find evidence against him that could well send him to prison or even the gallows.
She stirred in his arms, needing to be released, to feel the firmness of the floor beneath her feet, to put some distance between them. But then he did something so very unlike the Duke of Whitley.
He kissed her temple. “Hush. I have you. Be still.”
That simple whisper on her skin affected her in ways she could not comprehend. So did his words.I have you.As if in that one, succinct sentence, he could allay all her worries and fears. How she wished he could.
But he did not have her. He could never have her. Nor could she have him. She was a fiction. A pawn in the Earl of Kilross’s game. He was a duke, far above the reach of a common soldier’s widow and the daughter of a knight. Their paths should never have intertwined.
“Please,” she whispered. “Let me go.”
She meant it literally as well as figuratively. This madness could never be repeated. She would not be his mistress, and she needed to find evidence of his guilt. The two were insurmountable obstacles.
“Do not be so stubborn,” he ordered without heat. “I am taking you to your chamber, and that is that.”
Indeed, unless she was mistaken, there was a note of something else underlying his tone. Something warm and affectionate. Something that spoke to her heart. Sent a molten trill straight through her.
She told herself it was because she wished to avoid detection that she remained silent as he carried her down the hall through the darkness. That it was why her arms linked around his neck, why she nestled her face into the heated skin of his chest. Here, he smelled like him, musk, and citrus and so very good, she could not help but to press her nose close and inhale.
The hitch in his breath told her he noticed her sudden interest. “You would be wise to cease, madam, if you do not wish me to take you back to my chamber and keep you there for the next sennight at least.”
