She giggled. “Do you need a bigger chair to sit on?”
“No, I’m fine.” He unbuttoned his vest and pulled it off his shoulders. Next was the cravat pulled lazily from around his neck.
Lucy approached him and ran her fingers through his dark hair. She tugged until his gaze rose to meet hers. “It would be better if you removed your shirt as well. Then I could really see what I was doing.”
He stiffened, and she could see the denial in his eyes. She tugged again at his hair. “I do not care about your scars, Hart. I care about you, the man you are inside. Nothing on the outside can change that. Can you trust me?” She held her breath.
*
Hart stared upinto Lucy’s eyes and felt the truth in her words. Her fingers threaded through his hair, holding him in place, and her grip tightened as she asked her question. Lucy was the first woman he’d ever been with who cared not a whit about his title, his reputation, or his money. What she asked for was much harder to give. She wanted him to bare himself. She wanted the whole of him, not just the shiny, pretty bits.
He had never considered himself a coward, so he reached down and tugged his shirt from his waistband. Slowly, without breaking eye contact, he pulled the shirt over his torso and then up over his head. He braced for her gasp.
But it never came. Lucy stood before him, her eyes still locked on his face. She reached out and traced his cheek with the back of her fingers. Then her gaze drifted down, and her fingers followed their path. Over his red, mottled skin and puckered scars. Her fingertips fluttered down his neck, curved across his shoulder, and then down his chest.
“Oh, Hart.” She sighed. “I can’t imagine the pain that you endured.”
He sucked in a ragged breath as her palms smoothed over his chest. Her touch unlocking a part of him he thought he had firmly suppressed. The part of him that needed. Needed to be touched, needed to be seen. She leaned down and kissed him, her lips sliding against his slowly. But he didn’t want gentle kisses; he wanted to let loose the deluge of emotions her touch unlocked.
Grasping the back of her neck, he changed the angle of their kiss and, with a deep moan, took control. She responded immediately to his passion-fueled desperation. Her tongue tangled with his as he plundered her mouth. Lucy climbed into his lap and ground herself against his hardening cock.
He ached to feel her bare skin against his. Taking handfuls of her nightgown, he ripped it off over her head. Exposing all that smooth skin drove him wild. He dragged her fully against him, exulting in the soft press of her breasts against his bare chest.
He stroked his hands up and down her back. “Lucy, I can’t get enough of you. You are more addictive than any vice I’ve found in London.”
“Don’t deny yourself. I’m yours.”
Christ, this woman would kill him with her words, with what she offered. He rose, taking both of them over to the bed. Laying her down, he ran a hand down the center of her body, enjoying the gentle swells and dips. Then, he undressed, toeing off his shoes and dropping his trousers.
“Spread those pretty thighs for me.” His gaze latched onto the dark curls that hid the glistening pink of her pussy as she opened for him. “Good girl,” he murmured as he slid his hands up her thighs and bent to bury his nose between her legs. He tongued her opening, enjoying the taste of her arousal. Then continued to lick up to that perfect pearl of a clit.
“Oh god, Hart!”
He grinned at her shout. Lucy didn’t know how to be quiet when she was aroused, and he loved it. She moaned and screamed his name. She had a mouth that would put a sailor to shame when she instructed him on what felt good. After her first blush of embarrassment the morning after their wedding, she hadn’t held back any of her pleasure. Right now, he lapped it up, feeding on her passionate abandon.
“Hart.” She grasped at his hair.
He raised his head to look up at her. “Yes?”
“Come here and fuck me properly. I want to feel your hard cock inside me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He grinned and climbed onto the bed and over her body.
She pulled her knees up and thrust her hips up to meet his slow slide into her. They both moaned. Being inside her tight sex was like coming home. Lucy’s hands frantically roamed over his chest and upward to trace over his shoulders and then down his back as if it were her last chance to touch him.
He captured one of them against his heart. “Lucy, having your hands roam my body feels amazing. You have opened a floodgate. I want to make love to you for hours. I wish to drown in your tender touch.”
She sighed and met his thrusts, taking him deep. They made love slowly. The intimacy of her touch saturated every fiber of his being as she stroked his damaged skin with soft fingertips, learning the grooves and the smooth, shiny stretches. He leaned over to take one of her breasts in his mouth and flicked the pebbled tip with his tongue. A strangled cry of pleasure escaped her lips, and with that plea, the time for going slow was gone.
He pumped into her, angling for the spot inside that made her writhe. His mouth moved to her throat, and he scraped his teeth down the pale column. Wanting to mark her.Mine.He bit down. Lucy climaxed with a shout. With another deep thrust, he followed her over the edge. Filling her up with his seed. Marking her again as his.
Rolling over, he took her with him. She lay sprawled on him, her head on his chest. Then he felt the hot caress of her breath as she began to pepper his chest with light kisses. Closing his eyes, he allowed himself, with each brush of her lips, to believe that Lucy was telling the truth when she said that his scars did not change how she saw him. To believe that somehow this precious woman cared not about what he looked like on the outside. What a damn gift she was.
Hart ran his fingers slowly through her hair. He would protect her at all costs. Even if it meant sending her away to Belstoke with an army of guards until he could figure out how to deal with his father’s so-called friends. He needed to locate that journal. If it truly contained secrets he could use to destroy the others, then it could be the key to keeping all that was his safe.
Chapter Thirty
Lucy increased thepressure of her kneading, and Hart groaned, but in a good way that meant she had loosened the muscle she massaged. The soft morning light filtered through the sheer curtains. She had finally gotten around to working the salve into his right shoulder and arm muscles.
