“What we had, Ara, did it ever mean anything to you?” he asked hoarsely.
Part of him hoped her answer would be no. But the other part of him, the part that had not entirely forgotten the young man he’d once been, hoped otherwise.
Say yes.
Say yes.
Please.
Clay did not know where the words emerged from. Or if he spoke them aloud. All he did know was that he was falling into her. Mayhap, in a sense, this had been inevitable. Mayhap she would always be his, and he would always be hers.
Her expression turned stricken. “It meant everything to me.”
Bloody hell, I am lost.
For the truth of it was, it had meant everything to him too. It still did. He had spent eight years trying his damnedest to forget her, only to find her again. With a simple sentence, he was back in the hunting cabin with her, secluded in the ancient woods. The last time he had ever truly been happy had been there, the night she had said she would marry him.
He wanted to stop there, on that memory, and not move forward. Not in this moment. This moment wanted no heaviness, no grief or despair. It wanted only a physical relief. And here was the greatest comprehension of all: perhaps he could finally purge her from his life if he bedded her. If he took her until there was nothing left for either of them to give.
He kissed her, deep and hard and ruthless. His lips melded with hers, his tongue sinking into her mouth, her breath mingling with his. She kissed him back, a soft sound of want emerging from deep in her throat. Her fingers sank into his hair, anchoring him to her, and her tongue boldly slid against his. She wanted him every bit as much as he wanted her. It was the way of things between them. How it had always been—raw and real and powerful.
He went mindless.
The ability to think fled him. His body ached and hungered. Eight years of longing reawakened, just for her. All for her. A hot, pulsing need began in his ballocks and made his prick rise stiff and hard against the placket of his trousers. Just kissing her was enough to make him lose the last of the reins he had upon his control.
Every word he had intended to say was dashed, like a ship upon the rocks of a treacherous harbor in the midst of a storm. He had to be inside her. He was a locomotive, barreling down a track. The years, the pain, the scars, the ache, the worry, the fear, the wonder, the lies and betrayal, all fell away.
They were man and woman.
Need and want.
Hunger and touch.
Clay and Ara, just as they once had been. Before broken hearts and betrayal had torn them apart.
Damn it all, he had never been so hungry in all his life, filled with an ache only she could assuage. He sucked her tongue, bit into her full lower lip. She moaned into his mouth, and he drank it in, savored it as if it were his own. Drew it deep down, all the way to his soul.
As one, they moved.
Providentially, Clay had chosen a bedchamber to enter. And though it had been entirely unintentional, he had forced them both inside what would be his bedchamber when he actually lived at Harlton Hall. There was a bed, large and inviting, occupying the far wall. He had never slept in it. He supposed he would have to now. But she would take the chamber adjoining though she did not know it yet, and that would help him ease to sleep at night.
Their kisses never stopped. His hands tore away her layers—her hat, pelisse, gloves. All the way across the chamber they traveled, kissing and nipping and licking as one. When they finally reached the bed, he planted his hands on her waist, spinning her around. He did not wish to look into the face of the woman he had once loved. He needed her back to him, and he needed to take her from behind.
There would be no question what this was—an exercise in unadulterated lust. Need simmered between them still. A hunger he could not deny. But that was all this was. All it could be.
Just this once,he promised himself.And then never again.
He wanted her. Had never stopped. But this was not eight years ago. He was not a fool. Or at least, he was not as great a fool as he had been then. His fingers tightened on her. He found her ear, licking the shell, biting the whorl. “Tell me what you want.”
She did not speak, but her fists caught in her skirts, raising them. There was no mistaking the gesture. They moved against his trousers, traveled past her knees, and then on to her thighs. “You.”
His cock twitched and his mouth went dry, but he required more from her than that simple admission. He fought the urge to grind himself into her skirts. “More specific, Ara.”
“You inside me,” she murmured. “I want you inside me, Clay.”
Finally, he was no longer Mr. Ludlow, the man she disdained in her frigid duchess tones. But some instinct inside him, depraved and sinful, wanted to prolong her submission. To heighten his own arousal by making her beg.
He needed to hear her full confession. He wanted more. More desperate longing. More signs that what he felt for her was reciprocated. “What part of me inside you?”
