“No, sweet,” he promised, kissing just the tip of her nose. “Not like that. Slowly, now.”
As he whispered the last he pressed against her. To her shock, the narrow channel of her body stretched to accommodate him, welcoming him as he breached her. At the very beginning there was a ripple of pain, and she sucked her breath in through her teeth.
The moment she did so, he stilled, waiting, his breath held, as she grew accustomed to the merging of their bodies.
“Do you know how much pleasure this act can give?” he murmured, kissing her neck as he held still, cupping her breast and thumbing her nipple over and over.
Pleasure shot down her body, settled where his cock was buried, and she flexed out of instinct, drawing him in a few more centimeters.
“I don’t know,” she moaned.
“Let me show you,” he said and thrust a bit farther. The pain was gone now, replaced by a strange, yet wonderful feeling of fullness. Of belonging. Of pleasure and beauty and ancient rightness.
She lifted against him, and he seated fully within her and held perfectly still once again. He kissed her and slowly circled his hips. His pelvis hit her clitoris and her eyes flew open at the wild spark of pleasure that lit deep inside her body.
“Yes, see,” he said, circling again, again, so many times that she lost count.
She clung to him, rising to meet him, trying to force him faster, grunting out pleasure when he refused her body’s pleas and instead slowed his pace. He was so good at this, like they were made to be joined, like she was made to accept him and surrender to his will.
And surrender she did, at last falling into the rhythm he created. When she did, every fiber of her being grew focused as pleasure mounted, growing as it had with his mouth. Yet it was a more intense sensation because he was inside of her. He was taking, she receiving, protecting, holding him in the most intimate of ways. And she wanted it to last forever.
But he wouldn’t allow it. His thrusts grew more focused and purposeful and the pleasure that was growing within her increased accordingly until at last she was flying again, her body rocking against his as she cried out pleasure into the quiet room and dug her nails into his back to keep from vanishing in the swirling vortex of release and love that flooded her every sense.
In that same moment, he drove harder, his neck straining. Then he shouted her name and suddenly he was gone, turning away as he spent away from her body and collapsed back over her, smoothing his hands over her and murmuring her name again and again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Clairemont smoothed his hands over Celia’s bare back, loving how her beautiful dark hair fanned over his chest as she lay against him. In the aftermath of their incredible joining, it was impossible to deny how madly and deeply he loved this woman.
And equally impossible to deny that what he had just done was so wrong. They could never be together and yet he had selfishly claimed a piece of her because he was too greedy to let her go as he should. He had never hated himself more than he did in that moment.
She rolled over, resting her hands on his chest and her chin on the same hands. She smiled up at him, her eyes bright and free of regret.
“How did you become a spy?” she asked.
He tensed. He wouldn’t give her his name, but she wanted his story. The story was far more intimate, and yet he wanted to share it with her, to give her a piece of himself that had never and would never belong to another, just as she had done with him. Her gift was physical, his was something else.
“I’m like you,” he said softly, trying hard to find words he’d never sought before. “I never knew my parents. They died when I was not more than a baby. I had no other family and we lived far out in the country, where there was no orphanage, so the church took me.”
Her smile had faded as he began to speak, and now her lips parted. “Were they…kindto you?”
“Indifferent,” he said with a shrug. “As far as I recall. I was very young, you see. And I left their care when I was just four.”
“You were taken in?” she asked. “By a family?”
He swallowed hard as images of someone big and cruel filled his mind. “Not a family. I suppose that must have been what he told the vicar. Or perhaps he just bought me, I don’t know. But he was a traveling chimney sweep and he needed an apprentice.”
Her brow wrinkled. “At—atfour?”
“That is the preferred starting age,” he said, his lips thinning at her innocence of his world. “The chimneys are narrow and a small child fits perfectly in them.”
“Aiden,” she whispered, saying the name of a man who had never done such dirty, horrible work. Yet he was happy she did—it kept him grounded here instead of lost in memories of the early time of his life. “Was he at least kind to you?”
“He was not.” Clairemont shut his eyes and could see him, Felix Freestone, rising up over him, a fist clenched, his eyes blurred with drink and rage. “He was cruel beyond measure.”
“What did he do?” she asked, her hand coming up to gently trace his jawline. “What did he do to you?”
“Wouldn’t you rather hear a lie?” he asked, his voice cracking slightly. “I could spin one for you that would make us both feel better.”
