When she peeled her eyes open, she saw him regarding her with a tender smile that filled her with warmth.
“Sweetheart…” he said tenderly while his eyes flicked over her. “You look gorgeous.”
Reaching up, she tugged him down for a kiss, then smiled through sultry eyes. “What about you?”
His brows lifted. “What about me?”
“Your pleasure,” she said while her hand drifted south. “I may be a bit naïve, but I know it cannot only be me who feels this bliss. That’s selfish, so I ask again, what about you?”
William drew a ragged breath as she hesitantly grasped his length and began to stroke him. When she rubbed her fingertips over the swollen tip, his entire body jerked in response, making her smile.
Her hand stayed on him. “There must be a way I can please you.”
He kissed her chin, “There is a way we can please both of us. With your hair tumbled about your shoulders, your lips wet and swollen from my kisses, you are torn from my deepest fantasy,” he kissed her ear. “Innocent yet wildly erotic. All mine for the taking.”
A shock of desire flared inside her, and to Rachel’s amazement, she felt no hesitancy anymore. She threaded her fingers into his hair to whisper, “Complete us.”
She could feel his arousal against her thigh, his need scarcely an inch from becoming one with her own. As he reached for her legs, she instinctively canted her hips toward him.
She whimpered softly when his fingers brushed against her wetness, slipping inside her for one tantalizing second before he fitted the velvety steel of his shaft against her opening.
Wrapping a hand through her hair, he kissed her deeply while moving his hips in small, deliberate thrusts pressing forward. Her mouth fell open as the strangest thing happened. She began to expand around him as he merged them into one.
His lips covered her as, with a single thrust, he was inside, deep inside, groaning with the pleasure of being one. Rachel gasped out a little at the rip inside her, but as she breathed through it, she felt filled, stretched, andcompleted.
Her fingers sunk into his shoulder and back. He was large, burning hot and solid as steel, but all she could feel were delicious pulsations of pleasure that came from her body. She held onto William’s shoulders, crying out softly as he began to move.
Little at first, but soon he found a rhythm that thrilled her even more. Sensations sparked through every nerve ending she had while William thrust into her, deeper and harder.
Caught up in a surge of desire she had never even thought existed, Rachel’s gasps and cries told him of her pleasure. Her hands gripped his shoulders as her body raced to completion. On her neck, his breathing came in harsh gasps, but hers had grown just as ragged.
They danced the ancient primal waltz, driving each other higher and higher toward release. A low roar came from William as the control she had sensed that he was keeping under tight tethersnapped. He drove into her, giving himself to her completely, creating one fluid entity.
Rachel’s high cries were contrasted with his fierce, deep groans. Her body tightened, quivered, and suddenly snapped up in an arch. Her body went vice tight around his shaft, sending pure ecstasy ripping through her body. William’s hips snapped hard, and his cry was guttural and harsh.
His damp breath misted across her before he laid a kiss on her skin. He slowly parted from her body and drew her into his arms after lying beside her. Rachel went limp against him, and he held her close, listening to the sweet sighs of her breathing and the thunder of his own heartbeat.
He drew her head down to his, claiming her mouth in another deep kiss. “As soon as we get back to England, we’ll start our lives as husband and wife.”
***
With happiness now a constant feeling in her heart, Rachel stepped into the inn’s lower room with the intention of asking the attendant to send up a pot of fresh coffee to their room that morning when her heart froze within her. Standing there at the empty front table was her mother.
“Mother?” she blurted in disbelief.
When the lady turned, Rachel felt her knees go weak.
“You!” Lady Mary snapped heatedly. “Do you know the embarrassment we suffered because of you running off in the middle of the night! Lord Strathmore has vowed never to speak with us again!”
Rachel nearly shrunk under her mother’s blistering gaze but did not. Instead, she straightened her spine and notched her head up. “So, even with all this, all you care about is your money and getting in with the Regent? You do not care about what I want. You never cared about what I wanted.”
Her mother’s face soured. “You are wrong. We care about you enough to guide you in the right way—”
“No, you mean your way,” Rachel said. “If you came here to try and take me back, go home, Mother. There is no use. I am a married woman now, and you have no hold on me anymore.”
“We will get that sham marriage annulled,” Lady Mary scoffed. “Now pack your bags and come with me.”
“No.” Rachel stepped away. “You cannot touch me! Go away.”
