Jacinda lost control. Lost herself. Her head fell back, her mouth going slack. Pleasure ricocheted from the apex of her thighs to every far reach of her being. She rippled like a still lake that had been hit with a boulder. She shook and cried out. The pleasure was so intense, she could do nothing more than grit her teeth and ride it.
Abruptly, he stood, his gaze hooded as it settled upon her. Jacinda could not help but to notice his lips were swollen and wet, and the sight sent a surge of need through her. He cupped her nape, tilting her head back so he could take her mouth as he wished, and when their lips connected, their kiss was as feral and desperate as it had ever been. She tasted herself on his lips and tongue.
She loved the manner in which he kissed her, as if he could not get close enough, could not feel enough. As if his next breath depended upon it. And she kissed him back with the same fervor, the same unrelenting desire. Their push and pull was a delicious dichotomy that aroused her senses in a way she had never previously imagined possible.
He broke the kiss, his breaths falling harsh and hitched across her lips. His forehead pressed to hers, their noses rubbing like old lovers reunited. “What do you want now, darling? Tell me.”
“You.” This time she did not hesitate. She was too swept away by the passion and pleasure he incited. Too far gone for him. “I want you inside me.”
With a guttural sound, he plucked open the fall of his breeches, and in the next breath, he was inside her. Deep, hard, demanding. He stretched and filled her, and the air left her lungs as she shifted to accustom herself to this new invasion, so different from the last time when he had been atop her. His cock was hard and long, and he felt so very right inside her. So good.
He withdrew almost entirely before sinking inside her again. She was so hungry for him, so wet, that it heightened her every sense. Mindless, she wrapped her legs around his waist, arching into him, meeting him thrust for thrust. They did not even kiss now. Their embrace was a primitive one, arms clasped about one another, his face pressed to her throat as he slammed into her again and again.
His fingers, so cunning, went between them once more to work her. It didn’t take much to send her careening over the precipice. She tightened over his rigid cock as she lost herself, shattering into a thousand shards of delirious pleasure and spending in a flooding release that left her limp and sated atop his desk.
Crispin angled his hips, pounding into her harder and deeper, angling her so he fitted to her perfectly. Steady and hard, he thrust into her until she spent again, crying out and tightening on him. He buried himself inside her, withdrawing at the last moment to come on her skin.
Chapter Fifteen
Beelzebub and hellfire.
Not one blessed part of his day had gone according to plan. As Crispin buttoned the fall of his breeches, sanity intruded. He had meant to woo Jacinda, and instead, he had tupped her atop his desk without even bothering to lock the blasted study door. They could have been interrupted or discovered at any moment.
Discovered.
He winced at the unfortunate word, which somehow lent a tawdry tarnish to what they had just shared. She was not his secret to keep, and he disliked feeling as if she was. His gaze settled back upon her, noting the pretty blush on her cheeks, the marks his mouth had left upon her creamy throat, her gorgeous legs still spread wide, skirts pooled around her waist. His seed was smeared upon the softness of her inner thigh.
The sight made his cock harden again. He wanted to assemble his domestics and announce she was his. Curse it, he wanted to assemble all London and shout it from the roof of Whitley House. He wanted to know everything about her. He wanted to be the source of her smiles. To coddle and protect her. To take care of her. To have her in his bed each night.
He was obsessed with the woman.
Mad for her.
He feared it was far worse than he had admitted to Duncan.
Shaken, he reached into his coat and extracted a monogrammed handkerchief, using it to wipe the evidence of his recklessness from her. Her fingers found his.
“Stop, Your Grace.” Her voice was quiet with an emotion he could not discern. “You need not tend to me. I am perfectly capable of seeing to myself.”
Her reversion to his title stung. His gaze snapped to her lovely, flushed face. “Damn it, Jacinda. My tongue and my cock were both inside you.”
She gasped at his vulgarity. “Crispin, please.”
“Bloody hell.” He knew a spear of shame, for despite the alarming and unprecedented warmth he felt for her, he seemed to be perpetually inept at charm. He finished removing the traces of their lovemaking and balled the handkerchief in his fist, flipping down her skirts with his free hand. “Forgive my coarseness. I am afraid I am not a gentleman but a wild man, and I cannot control myself where you are concerned.”
Wide, sherry eyes searched his. “You have the same effect upon me.”
“What if I wish for more than one night?” he asked solemnly.
“Do not, I beg of you.” The sadness underlying her mellifluous tone pricked him.
Was he the source? He hated to think it. “You cannot deny what is between us. We want each other too badly.”
She drove him to distraction. He found himself haunting the halls of his own home in search of the far-off trill of her laughter. Joining her and his sisters in a chamber so he could smell the faint scent of jasmine and drink his fill of the sight of her. But it wasn’t just the physical connection they shared, undeniable though it was, for something in her called to a primitive part of him that said this woman was his. Would be his. Had to be his in ways no other ever had.
It was also her. She was kind and good. The progress she had made with his sisters was as much a relief as it was warming to the depths of his cold heart. Jacinda glowed from within, radiating warmth and compassion and caring. She was like a lost ship’s treasure the ocean had washed onto the Portuguese sands during his stint on the Peninsula. His to claim from the deep. A prize beyond measure.
But he was losing her. She slipped from his desk. “I ought not to have acted with such a careless disregard for my circumstances once more.”
