“Show me the rest,” she managed to murmur past her madly thudding heart and the frenzy of emotions.
Lust, she reminded herself.This is mere lust.
A sating of curiosity and needs both.
But when he began moving deeper, thrusting until he reached a place of acute, intense ache, and he took her mouth in a kiss that was both sweet and erotic, she forgot to care about the reason. He withdrew the hand that had guided him to her, and used it instead to hook her hip around his. The motion heightened his penetration and made her gasp.
He feathered kisses over the corner of her lips. “Have I hurt you?”
“No,” she managed, her nails likely biting into his muscles through his shirtsleeves. “You feel wondrous. Do not stop.”
Do not ever stop.
But that was a silly thing to say, and so she kept the last to herself. Of course this would end. This would never happen again. It could not! She did not dare. Best to give herself over to the bliss of the moment and the man. To cling to these glorious sensations while they lasted.
He hummed in appreciation and moved again, beginning a rhythm. The wetness of her dew likely should have been a cause of embarrassment as he glided in and out of her, prolonging and intensifying the almost excruciating ecstasy of the coupling.
This was more than she had read about. The stories could not do justice to the reality of Neville in her bed. She ceased to care that he was still nearly fully dressed while she was naked beneath him. If anything, the disparity in their circumstances served to make her wilder for him. There was something unbearably carnal about being completely nude whilst the proper lord was inside her, still wearing his fine waistcoat and tweed. If they were caught…
Oh.
It was wicked of her, but the notion of how forbidden this was, how dangerous to their reputations, how at any moment, someone could knock at the door…
She cried out and he swallowed her moan with more potent, drugging kisses as their tongues tangled. She clamped on him, the intensity of her crisis stunning her. A hundred thousand white-hot sparks seemed to charge through her. Thoughts ceased to exist. She was nothing but pleasure.
Neville’s reaction brought a fresh wave of convulsions through her core as his control fled even further. His well-modulated thrusts became faster and faster, until he was losing himself as well. A strange stiffness came over him, and in the next moment, the bloom of wet heat flooded her.
He collapsed against her, heart beating so fast she could feel it against her breasts, and she held him there, reluctant to let go.
And for some reason, the words she had uttered to her dear friend Olive, words Olive had returned to her just yesterday, stirred in her mind.
Love is worth fighting for.
Chapter 8
Neville had come to Fangfoss Manor in the hopes of securing his future viscountess. Indeed, his every action over the opening course of the house party had been with that intent in mind.
He had dined. He had danced and made small talk. He had played charades and the piano and he had done his due diligence in trying to choose a bride who would most suit his expectations. A bride who was calm and quiet and polite and who would not make demands of him. One who was perfectly agreeable to his need for solitude, order, and reason.
One who was nothing at all like Lady Charity Manners.
And then, in one moment of raw passion unlike anything he had ever experienced, he had tossed every good intention and action he had committed to flame. To roaring, burning, passionate, decadent flame.
He would say he had nary a regret, but as he faced Lady Louise Manners, he could not deny that he did have some. That he was not asking for Charity’s hand in the proper order, and that he could not come to her aunt with a clean conscience.
Instead, it was the next morning following breakfast, and the bacon and eggs he had unenthusiastically consumed earlier were cramping his ordinarily indefatigable gut in knots. His had always been a hearty constitution, but he had certainly never had to endure an awkward interview with the maiden aunt of a lady he had thoroughly debauched before.
Because he did not make a habit of debauching ladies.
Just the one.
Damnation.
His ears went hot and he shifted in his chair.
“Is something amiss, Lord Wilton?” Lady Louise asked, her sharp gaze landing on his in searching fashion. “You asked for a word with me, and yet you have scarcely spoken.”
“Er, no.” He paused, reminding himself that he had practiced his speech for the span of an entire hour earlier that morning. “Forgive me my silence. I am merely attempting to summon the proper words.”
