He made her mad with wanting. Moaning, she wrapped her legs around his hips, feeling the hard flexing of his buttocks against her heels as he drove into her.Thiswas what she’d always longed for—what she’d always craved. A passion that consumed her thoughts and senses so that she wasn’t Patient Pippa or the perfect countess or even a lady…she justwas.
With Cull, she was just herself. And it was enough. Everything.
“More,” she pleaded. “Please, Cull.”
An animal gleam came into his eyes. “Want it harder, love? Like this?”
The rough shove of his hips lifted her spine off the blanket, and she moaned her approval. He was so big, so vital, his presence expanding her capacity for sensation. Then hereallybegan to move, making her realize that he’d been holding back. He drove into her with thrilling aggression, and she held onto his shoulders, feeling the powerful shifting of muscles beneath his taut skin. Losing herself in the wildness of their mating dance.
Soon their passion began to overwhelm her. Need filled her, pushed at her insides, pulsed under her skin until she couldn’t stand it any longer. Shecravedrelease.
“Cull,” she begged.
In answer, he withdrew. At her mewl of protest, he gave her a sensual grin and grabbed her legs one by one, hooking her knees over his shoulders. Then he pushed inside her again, the angle even deeper than before. He pounded into her, grunting with pleasure, the cords of his neck standing out in brute relief. Staring up into his glittering gaze, she felt a tautening at her center, and an instant later, ecstasy burst.
The slow, grinding lunges of his hips kept her adrift in pleasure.
“Christ, I love the way it feels when you come around my cock,” he rasped, his eyes heavy-lidded. “So tight and hot and wet. You’re going to take me with you.”
“Come with me.” She framed his face, her palms curving around smoothness and scars. “I want to feel you, Cull.”
With a growl, he thrust harder, faster, so virile that, even in her spent state, she felt her blood quickening. Then he pulled out, tearing off the sheath. Kneeling between her legs, he gripped his cock, and her breath snagged at his magnificence. At the rippling animal power of him as he jerked his enormous shaft. He roared as he reached his finish, as he lashed her belly with his hot essence. He sprayed her skin with silky trails until he was wrung dry.
Panting, he collapsed atop her and kissed her, slow and deep. She would have been content to lie there forever, blanketed by his musky warmth, floating in the twilight.
“My arse is getting cold,” he muttered.
Laughing, she said, “I can think of ways to keep it warm.”
“I’m going to hold you to that, sunshine.” He rose and scooped her up effortlessly, striding toward the cottage. “All night long, as a matter of fact.”
Pippa awoke, her cheek pressed against something warm and scratchy. Her lips curved as she took in the delicious expanse of Cull’s chest, the hard-paved muscle with its covering of wiry hair. They were in the bed of the gamekeeper’s cottage, and she was cuddled up against him, his arm around her, her leg over his. She had never woken up tangled with a lover before. Wistfully, she thought she could get used to it.
Memories of the night returned, suffusing her with heat. After making love to her outside, Cull had carried her into this rustic one-room cabin. Before the wood fire, they’d feasted on the simple repast of bread, cheese, and ham he’d packed in the basket, but their real appetite had been for one another. The food had just been the fuel to keep their energies up.
After eating, they’d made a meal of each other—at the same time. She blushed, recalling the wicked position Cull had introduced her to and how much she’d loved it. He’d taken her twice more until she was too exhausted to move. Fully sated, she’d fallen asleep in his arms, and the only thing better than that was waking there too.
She leaned her head back to look at him. Asleep, Cull looked boyish, his features relaxed, his long lashes resting against his cheeks. Bronze scruff glinted on his strong jaw and unblemished cheek. In the light of the new day, his scars seemed diminished. He was so attractive that she felt a stirring of lust…but she had other bodily needs to attend to first. Taking care not to wake him, she extricated herself and went to use the necessary.
When she returned, he’d rolled onto his side, his back to her. His backside was an artist’s dream, a network of ridges and hollows, shifting shadows and light. The sheets were draped just below the vee of muscle that girded his lean hips, revealing a hint of his delectable derriere. She didn’t know what she wanted more: to paint him or have her way with him.
Then she noticed the markings. Since it had been dark last night—and she’d spent most of it beneath him—she hadn’t seen the small triangle of dots nestled between his shoulder blades. Slipping into bed, she took a closer look at the tattoo and saw that each dot was an inverted “W.” A pair of wings…like the drawing a child might make of a bird in the sky. There were six birds in all, one on the top row, two on the next, and three on the bottom.
She gently touched the top of the triangle, wondering what the markings meant. When his muscles bunched beneath her fingertip, she pulled away.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” she whispered.
Cull was rolling over. They lay on their sides, facing one another. Her chest warmed at the boyish appeal of his sleep-tousled hair and drowsy eyes.
“That one is for Toby,” he said in a sleep-roughened voice.
She blinked, not understanding.
“The lark at the top of my tattoo,” he clarified. “His name was Toby, and he was twelve when he died. A rival gang captured him, wanting information that he’d gathered for one of our clients. His body was found in the Thames a few days later.”
Horror swept through Pippa. Now she realized what the tattoo was: a memorial for fallen mudlarks. Her heart squeezed at the burden that Cull literally carried on his back.
“He was just a child,” she said with helpless sorrow.
