Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. The pleasure she was denying herself was too great. Its absence had become pain.
“It was for you,” she whispered.
With a swift movement of his hands, she was shuddering in his arms. She came hard over his fingers, her muscles clenching and unclenching with a power she didn’t even know she possessed. She cried out loudly, she couldn’t help it, and she wondered if anyone would hear her. She found that she couldn’t care. Not when he did such exquisite things to her. In that moment, her pleasure was so much larger than any potential shame.
As she came, he held her, not lowering her skirts, just holding her against him. The solidity of his body gave her the support that she needed. Once she had quieted, he spoke.
“Do you see now, Henrietta, what you’ll get to enjoy if you marry me?”
“You can’t know that you want to marry me.”
She hadn’t meant to speak so honestly but the intense intimacy of the moment made it difficult to obfuscate. She knew that she wanted to marry him—and yet she was still suspicious of his aims. How could he be sure? She had loved him forever, so it was easy for her. As far as she knew, he hadn’t paid her any attention before two nights ago.
“Don’t tell me that I don’t know what I want. All my life, I’ve known exactly what I have wanted. If anything, it’s been my curse. I know what I want and I take it, damn the consequences. And now I want to marry you.”
“There are things about me that you don’t know.”
“I don’t care,” he said, driving his clothed cock against her, and she moaned again—how was it that she wanted him inside her, when she had just been so completely satiated moments before? He drove her to madness. “I don’t care if you’ve had all the men in London. I don’t care if you are with child by another man. I wouldn’t care if you were the daughter of a beggar or a whore. You’re mine.”
His strong hands were on her backside again, kneading her, stroking her. And she heard him undo his falls and she felt the bare flesh of his cock against her. She groaned, wanting him inside of her so badly that she felt faint.
“You said you wanted me to take you like you weren’t a lady,” Trem whispered. “And I’ll do that—because it doesn’t matter, Henrietta. You’re the only woman who could ever be my viscountess.”
The words sent shocks of pleasure through her. How many times had she imagined that she might actually win his heart? How could her most intimate fantasy, the thing that she had wanted the most as a girl and then a debutante and then a young woman, have become real?
“I need you inside me. Now.”
And she did. Her core was pulsing for him, needing him to bring her to climax again.
He pressed her back against the wall. And then she felt him enter her—just the head of him, but enough to have her holding back a moan.
“God, Henrietta, you’re so wet.”
She whimpered at his words. “Please. More.”
He filled her until she was impaled by him. She felt herself stretch over him. And, same as earlier today, she had this deep sense that to be here, with him, like this, was where she was supposed to be.
He began to move in and out of her, roughly. That was what she had wanted and now he gave it to her, each thrust filling her up. He didn’t take care as he had earlier and she relished it.
“Touch yourself,” he commanded, his voice almost indecipherable through the haze of his pleasure. When she paused in response, he clarified, “It will feel better.”
“It feels good now.”
“Trust me,” he said. He moved her hand between her own legs.
When he started moving again, she touched her clit as he did so, and the sensation between her own fingers and his cock brought her to the brink. His harsh breath in her ear told her that he was in a similar place.
But then he stilled.
“You have to marry me, Henrietta,” he said, his voice hoarse and feral. “I mean what I said—whatever I don’t know about you, I don’t care what it is. Please, marry me.”
She tried to move against him again, not wanting to answer his question. She wanted to marry him—of course she did. She had never wanted anyone else. But how could he be sure that he wouldn’t care about her secret? He couldn’t be sure about what he didn’t know. Yes, he had accepted her transgression with Justin, but that was when he thought she was really Lady Henrietta Breminster. Perhaps he wouldn’t be so broad-minded when he realized that she was a counterfeit.
Despite her attempts to move against him, to avoid the question, however, he resisted.
“Henrietta,” he said, “I learned much about you in the past two days. And I know if I asked you to marry me in any other way than when I am inside of you, like this, you would refuse me. I know you would. Because you think I only want to marry you out of obligation. You’re wrong. And I know, like this, you’ll believe me. Because you can’t lie to me when we are like this.”
She let out a sob, not caring now who in the ballroom might hear. He was right. Damn him.
