Oh my goodness.
Her heart shot into her throat. At the same time, molten heat flooded her sex, her nipples prickling against her satin negligee. Because she’d caught her proper husband in the act of doing something unexpected.
Unexpectedly naughty, that was.
Was he thinking of her… or someone else? At the latter thought, fire leapt inside her, possessiveness feeding into her arousal. Because Marcus washers—and if he didn’t know that, then she would have to prove it to him.
Chapter Nine
“Ride me, love,” he growled.
With his back against the headboard and his hands clamped on his wife’s sweet arse, he urged her on—not that she needed much encouragement. Goddamn, he’d married a hot little vixen. She wriggled her hips, grounding down, and the feel of her tight sheath taking his cock to the root nearly drew his fire. But he held on, wanting to prolong the pleasure, the joy of introducing his beloved to her first good fucking.
For the first three months of their marriage, he’d made gentle love to his new bride, not wanting to scare her or offend her delicate sensibilities. He’d planned to introduce her slowly to the more adventurous delights of the marital bed. But his marchioness turned out to be an eager pupil, and each time he bedded her, the passion between them flared ever hotter. Tonight he’d judged her ready to try a new position… one that would become as necessary as it was pleasurable as the months went on.
One of his hands moved forward to rest possessively on the slight swell of her belly. She was hardly showing, yet the idea of her ripening with his child filled him with a potent combination of tenderness and lust. He didn’t know why, but the sight of his pregnant wife made him randier than hell.
As luck would have it, being with child seemed to affect Penny in the same way.
“Marcus.” His name had never sounded better than at this moment, her voice breathless as she bounced on his erection, her hair a wild and glorious tangle over her shoulders. “Oh, I’m so close…”
Hell, he should have had her astride him weeks ago.
“Lean over, there’s a love.” He slid his palms up her smooth shoulder blades, pulling her closer to his chest. “Take me like this.”
He saw and felt the moment that the new angle hit her: flames leapt in her gorgeous eyes, her cheeks flushing as she sank down on his shaft, her lips forming a soundless O as her pussy gripped his rod like a velvet fist. Lungs straining, he guided her hips, grinding her against him, rubbing her little love knot against his cock with each plunging stroke.
“Marcus... I can’t… it’s too…oh my God.”
She came, her sex milking him, bringing him to the edge.
~~~
Marcus’ eyes snapped open.
He became aware of several things at once. His lungs were pulling harshly, his burgeoned cock throbbing in the wet fist of his own hand. He was a hairsbreadth from shooting his seed… but something had jolted him from his fantasy.
A sound, a furtive movement.
He hastily released himself, water sloshing as he sat up. He’d told Gibson, his valet, to give him privacy. The man had been with him through the wars and usually followed orders as well as any soldier.
“That you, Gibson?” he called out. “I’m not finished yet. Come back in a half hour.”
No reply. Had he imagined the noise?
After another minute, Marcus relaxed and sank back into the hot, sudsy water. Absently, he stroked his still rigid shaft… but the mood had been broken. Anger now simmered along with arousal, a frustrating and potent mix.
Why in the devil was he fantasizing about Pandora? After her betrayal—the lies that had destroyed everything he held dear—he should want nothing to do with her. She’d manipulated him for the entire length of their marriage, and he probably didn’t even know the full extent of it. Hell, he didn’twantto know. What man wanted to discover just how much of a lovesick dupe he’d been?
At the same time, he couldn’t shake the image of her on her knees, begging for his forgiveness. What she’d shared of her past made his chest clench. If she could be believed—the operative word beingif—then the suffering she’d known… He rubbed his hands over his steam-slicked face, swamped by a feeling of protectiveness that he couldn’t control.
He wanted to kill that bastard Octavian for coercing Penny, a bleeding ten-year-oldorphanfor Christ’s sake, into the dirty business of espionage. She might not have called it coercion, but to Marcus it was. She’d had no other choice—besides stealing or starving, that was, and he didn’t count those as real choices. Octavian had taken advantage of her, trained her to do his filthy bidding. Marcus wanted to tear out the man’s bloody throat for treating his Penny that way.
Back then, I thought of it as completing a mission.Her words were a haunting echo in his head.It was the only life I knew. I didn’t think I deserved any better.
His fury reared again, along with a pain that sliced through him as excruciatingly as a surgeon’s scalpel. And he would know as he’d once had a bullet removed from his shoulder. The only thing that had made the agony bearable had been the alternative: had the assassin shot him three inches over, he’d have been dead on the spot.
Even so, he’d take a dozen bullets over knowing that Pandora had been with other men. That she’d not thought herself worthy of a better life. That she’d bartered her beautiful body as if it were naught but a cheap commodity.
