“Since you know who I am,” he said, and reached up to untie the mask. “I think I can remove this.”
She caught her breath as he did so and tracked his movements as he set the mask away on the bedside table. When he returned his lips to her neck, she sighed again and he devoted himself to nibbling and sucking his way along the elegant column. She tasted like…honey, like spiced wine. Sweet and intoxicating. A flavor he wanted to lose himself in.
And he would. For a while. His hands slid around her back and as he continued to kiss her, he found the line of buttons along her gown. He unfastened each one slowly, letting his fingers stroke the shockingly bare skin beneath.
“Why no undergarments?” he murmured against her throat.
She shifted. “I-it felt m-more outrageous,” she stammered, her voice strained as he sucked her neck gently. “Oh…”
He lifted his head and met her unsteady gaze. “You liked the danger of coming here,” he said softly. “The uncertainty.”
She nodded slowly. “My life has always been…arranged. My future will be, too, soon enough. Coming here was a rebellion. A claiming of what I want, if only for a little while.”
He stared at her. This was supposed to be a moment stolen from time, wrapped in anonymity. Except she knew who he was now. And she was confessing secrets that were powerful.
Secrets that inspired him to go wild, to forget that he was a rational man of control. With her, he wanted to be more.
“Whatdoyou want, MissSwan?” he asked, using that secret name Robert had uncovered in his investigation into her identity.
Her throat fluttered at the question and she stared up at him, her lips trembling, her breath coming short so that it lifted her utterly delectable breasts on each inhalation.
“I want you,” she whispered, dark color filling her cheeks with every pointed word. “What happened between us, it was never like that with my husband. It was never like that with just…just my…my hand.”
He shifted as his mind moved to images of this woman spread out before him, touching herself for his pleasure. For her own. He shook the thoughts off.
“How do you want me?” he whispered as he hooked his fingers into the neckline of her gown and gently tugged it forward, baring her from the waist up.
She swallowed. “Hard,” she gasped. “Fast. With your mouth, with your fingers, with your cock. I don’t care. I just want you. I don’t know enough to ask for anything more.”
“Then let me show you,” he growled, shocked by his own words. He sounded like Robert at his swaggering, drawling, seductive best…or worst. But that had never been Matthew. And yet here he was, inspired to tug this stranger’s gown the rest of the way off. Inspired to tug her naked body flush against his as he drove his tongue deep within her mouth and showed her that he wanted her.
As he imagined every wicked, wild thing his mind had ever conjured and planned how to fulfill those fantasies until she was shaking in release beneath him.
He caught her hips and lifted her, cupping her bottom as he ground her down over his aching cock. She dipped her head back on a gasp and her legs came around his hips to hold herself steady. He smiled as he moved them across the room like this and pressed her hard against the wall. She lifted against him, soft sounds lost on his tongue as he fumbled with the placard on his trousers. Finally he managed to get the buttons loose and he popped free, his cock brushing her backside. He hissed at the touch of heat on heat, hardness against soft.
He wanted her. To be inside of her. And his mind kept screamingnow.Now.Now! Everything else was lost. All his usual control was gone, and he reached between them to press his fingers against her sex. She was wet, hot to the touch, and he shuddered as he moved himself in place and drove hard into her waiting body.
She cried out at the breach and ground against him, likely out of pure instinct. But the cry broke their mouths, and as she looked at him, their faces so close together, the intensity of that connection only drove the power of the other. He held her stare as he drove her against the wall, pivoting his hips just so, withdrawing as far as he could before he took again and again.
He watched her as she met his rhythm. Watched the wonder in her expression transform to wanton desire and deepen to the edge of release. And then he watched her plummet off that edge. Her body milked him as she dug her nails into his shirt and rode out the pleasure. Only when she went limp in his arms did he carry her back to the bed and part their bodies to lay her across the pillows.
She stared up at him, dark eyes glazed as they slid down his body and settled on his still hard and now very wet cock. “You didn’t—” she said.
He shook his head. “Not yet. I’m savoring this. You wouldn’t dare deny me that, would you?”
She sat up and caught his cravat, with a tug, she pulled him in close. “I think it’s evident I wouldn’t dare deny you anything.”
She kissed him. Slowly. And he let her trace her tongue over his lips. Let her come inside and gently, carefully explore as he had explored. She flattened her hand on his chest and pushed him back until he lay across the bed with her leaning over him. Only then did she part their mouths and begin to untie his cravat, unfasten his shirt. He placed his arms beneath his head and smiled up at her.
“Seduction looks well on you, Miss Swan.”
She blushed. “It sounds so silly for you to call me that.”
She opened his shirt and swallowed hard. He almost puffed with a pride that felt so very odd. He was not one to preen and here he did so as she lifted a trembling hand and laid it to his flesh.
“You want to tell me your real name?” he asked, trying to focus on the conversation rather than the fact that she was smoothing that soft, delicate hand down his stomach, to the waist of his open trousers, closer and closer to the cock that still throbbed and demanded attention.
If he weren’t careful, he’d be unmanned the moment she touched him. And that wasn’t what he had in mind for the rest of this night.
