I tilted my head, trying to hide the emotion from my eyes or from forming on my lips. “As distraction techniques go, how has your evening been?”
He braced himself over me with his hand to the frame above my head, his big body blocking mine. With his free hand, he took my ponytail and twisted it around his fist. “Distracting.”
He lowered his mouth to mine.
I pushed up on my toes to map my lips to his, drowning in an all-encompassing kiss. I adored his kiss. Warm, giving, demanding. He was learning to communicate with me, not just through words, but in his actions, too.
Kane stole my thoughts then broke away. “Clothes off unless ye want to do the walk of shame tomorrow in a ruined gown.”
As if I didn’t have a change of clothes in my bag. “Not going to chase me down the corridors?”
He stepped back. Swallowed. Then reached to crack open a window, the sweet scent of the rain coming in on a breeze that stirred the curtains. “Not tonight.”
God, the intimacy. That’s what was going to kill me. Sex after being chased down was thrilling, or feeling him moving in me when I could do nothing but take it, but this was something else.
Just him and me and a bed.
“Then you take my clothes off.”
He backed me into the carved post. “Turn around.”
I did, bracing my hands on the cool wood while the rain drummed its steady beat. He gathered my hair off my neck and breathed me in, then slid down my zip so my dress pooled at my feet. When his palm flattened over my belly and pulled me back into him, the heat of him stole my balance, and I let it.
He unclipped my bra, and I moaned at his touch on my breasts. He kissed my jaw, my throat, shedding his clothes between soft touches.
“On the bed.”
I crawled on the mattress, and Kane caught the side of my underwear, drawing them off me to leave us both naked. Then he was on me, flipping me over.
“Slow,” I ordered.
“I can’t.”
“Then let me.”
On his knees, Kane inflated his huge chest with a heavy breath. I set a shaking hand to the centre and pushed him back onto the white pillows and brocaded quilt, careful not to touch his wound. He let me, giving up a sound of need when I threw my leg over him. I’d never ridden a man before, scared of how I’d look. At how unflattering the angle might be. Kane stroked me with reverential touches, nothing in his eyes but how turned on I made him.
This wasn’t sex. It was lovemaking. I took my time over kissing him, neglecting his heavy dick that throbbed under me. I tormented him until he growled, lifting me to thrust inside, releasing me to settle once more with a moan that could wake the neighbours.
Capturing his wrists, I guided them above his head with an unspoken instruction to keep them there so I could play. This, he couldn’t do, his hands had to be on me. Touching me, taking handfuls. He let me ride him for a minute until his control broke and he took over, slamming into me with urgency that boosted how I felt.
Adored. Beautiful.
It hurt my heart and healed me at the same time.
When he came, I did, too. Both of us tumbling together, but far from the only time it would happen over the course of the evening.
Driving into me for a second time, he muttered words that thrilled. “I want it all, Lovelyn.”
I did, too. Everything he had to give. I knew it was more than he showed.
Later, when the room was all shadows and the rainstorm softened to a hush, he brushed his mouth over mine. My hands fisted the sheets for a kiss that didn’t end. The connection I sought was right there in that touch, the insistent demand to stay with him, to be there.
No words. Only the kind of quiet that resembled trust, and a happiness that I could hardly contain.
When I drifted against him, the window still open and the air cold on our skin, he tucked my head under his chin and held me. He didn’t sleep at first. His fingers traced shapes on my hip. I imagined they were letters, making words to say what he couldn’t. It was that hug, that tight hold that nearly broke my one-more-day rule.
Tomorrow, I told myself, and tried not to fall.
