His left hand remained on her waist while the right found the hemline of her gown, just about over the delectable swells of her rump. He worked his hand higher, taking her ribbon-trimmed hem, finding her curves through the softness of her drawers, absorbing her heat while he held his breath. She was so bloody beautiful, a marvel of femininity and wit and everything a man could ever want.
Except loyalty.
Butfucking hellif that did not matter now, not when his cock was ready to sink inside her. “Ara?”
“I want you, Clay,” was all he could wrangle from her.
For now.
He was determined. He wanted her complete surrender. Today, he was storming her battlements. Destroying every impediment between him and what he wanted so badly he could taste it.
Her.Her capitulation. Her surrender. Her sweet release. Her desperation.Bloody hell, he wanted to make her sorry for making him love her, for turning her back on him, and raising his son with another man. For leaving him with a scarred face and an even more mangled heart. For never trying to find him. For lying to him even when he had come back into her life. For every. Damned. Thing.
He tongued the sweet dip of skin behind her ear, his hands never straying from her waist. “How?”
A soft sound emerged from low in her throat, half purr, half moan. “You know how.”
“No.” He kissed her throat, sucked her flesh. Tomorrow, she would bear a bruise here, and she would have to cover it with pearl powder or a high-necked gown. She would see it and think of his mouth on her skin, of how she had been desperate for him to take her. “I do not know how. Tell me, Ara. Do you want my tongue inside you?”
She inhaled sharply, as if he had shocked her. But she was not a stranger to such loving, and he knew it. Here and now, he could still recall how she had bucked and writhed beneath him, how her fingers had twisted in his hair. How slick and plump her clitoris had been, how she had shuddered against him when she spent on his tongue.
When she did not speak, he grinned, nipping her neck. “Or perhaps my fingers?”
“Please,” she whispered, her head falling back against his shoulder to grant him greater access to her throat as he feasted on her.
He slid his hands from her waist until they settled atop hers, still gripping her skirts. “Higher,” he commanded.
She raised her hem, not hesitating. Her travel gown was not as full and cumbersome as most fashion, and he was grateful for that now as she lifted her skirts to her waist. He stepped back, tearing his lips from her skin, and took her in. Her lustrous copper locks remained perfectly coiffed in a Grecian braid and coil. From the waist up, she looked as composed as ever, her shoulders straight, her gown of black silk with box pleats and lace trimming the bodice and sleeves.
But from the waist down, she was a dream. He drank in the sight of her with her skirts raised for him. Black boots, narrow ankles, red stocking-covered calves, lacy white drawers. Her bottom was round and full, despite her small frame.
A fresh bolt of need spurred him on. He caressed her hips, running his palms down her curves, relearning her. Her warmth permeated the fine fabric of her undergarments, burning into him. Breath hissing from his lungs, desire burning like a fire straight through him, he stepped closer. He kissed her bare nape.
“Clay,” she said his name again, a plea, a prayer.
“You never answered me, Ara.” He grazed her soft skin with his teeth. Then, he cupped her arse, his fingers trailing where they wanted in lieu of her answer. He found the slit in her drawers and dipped inside, skimmed over her hot, slick seam.
Damn.She was drenched.
Ara moaned.
Lord God.His erection swelled. His ballocks pulsed. It had been a long time since he’d had a woman, but it had been eight godforsaken years since he’d hadAra, and he could not restrain the ferocity of his hunger for her now.
He sank a finger inside her. So warm and delicious. She gripped him.
“Are you always this wet, or is it just for me?” he growled, making his way, kiss by kiss, to her ear.
What he wanted to know—and what hedidn’twant to know—was if she had ever been such a conflagration in another man’s arms. For him, it had never been the same. The passion had never been so desperate, so all-consuming. For Ara, he would fight an entire army just to claim her as his. Nothing else—no one before or after her—had ever come close.
“Only for you,” she admitted then, her voice throaty with want.
He bit the shell of her ear. A second finger joined the first, sinking deep. In and out, he moved them, her cunny so soaked the erotic sounds of him thrusting into her mingled in the chamber with the sounds of their mutually labored breaths.
“You are mine, Ara.” He did not mean to say the words, but once they fell from his lips, there was no rescinding them. He’d lost control over himself. Lust and desire, resentment and rage: everything in him that had built for years coalesced then and there, with his fingers buried inside her, the dew of her desire running down his hand. He wished she had only ever been his. That she had never betrayed him to her father, that she had run away with him as she had promised.
“Yes,” she said weakly, bending forward and planting her hands on the bed as if she had lost control of her body as well. Her skirts remained pinned between their bodies, anchored even without her grip.
But her acquiescence was not enough. He hated the mourning weeds she wore. Hated the brooch pinned over her heart. Hated she had married another man. Hated she was the Duchess of Bloody Burghly. Hated she had ever been another man’s wife, even if that man had been moldering in the grave for the last four months.
