How had this turned into their first time? Rough against the door?
“God above,” he groaned. She clung tighter, legs locking, drawing him deeper still, threatening to hold him there.
Her breathing had turned uneven, high and shallow, each small sound she made a fresh spark to the already raging fire in his blood. Her nails scraped at his neck, and Christ, he nearly exploded at the sensation there and then.
He pounded harder. “My wife,” he said roughly. “Mine.”
She merely laughed.
He drove into her harder, deeper, and the small, choked sound she made in response only encouraged his body, which had robbed his head of power. She tightened around him hard enough to make him curse and praise in the same breath, nails biting into his flesh. Bishop snapped along with her, pleasure roaring up his spine and tearing through his chest like lightning. He held her through it, thrusting once, twice, again, riding the quake of her and feeling the shake begin in his own bones.
He stayed there, crushing her to the door, both of them shaking. After a moment, or a thousand, he couldn’t tell anymore, he held her tightly and crossed to the bed.
“Giles!”
He fell with her onto the mattress, chuckling. “Now we do it slow, princess.”
“Now?”
Bishop grinned down at her. “Maybe after a few minutes. We have all night.”
Chapter Fifteen
Alyssia rested againstthe steady rise and fall of Giles’s chest behind her, her head resting beneath his chin, surrounded by steamy water. She could still feel him everywhere—her body digesting the memory of his mouth, her core deliciously tender, deliciously alive. If wickedness possessed a flavor, it would be the honeyed ruin he left shimmering on her tongue.
He had not been in any hurry the second time. Oh, no. Her rogue had turned patient. Maddeningly so. Every inch of her had been explored at a torturous pace, each kiss and brush of his fingers deliberate, unhurried, and so tender she’d nearly wept from the soul-deep want. When she’d thought she could not bear another moment of his teasing, she’d threatened to kick him from the bed. Naturally, that had only made him laugh, and then prove, in wicked detail, that he had every intention of staying exactly where he was.
Now, she was grateful he had.
Her limbs floated, sated, and she had no notion of how long they’d been like this, only that she never wished to move from this bath. A bath, she might add, he’d gone in search of servants to prepare. Her face flushed at the thought.
Utterly shameless, this man.
It’s their job, he’d said.
Very well, fine, but they weren’t really their servants, were they? They were the Marquess of Knoxley’s!
Urgh. How embarrassing.
It also didn’t slip her notice how she’d ended in the very bath she’d avoided their first night here. Somehow, near impossibly and beyond her expectations, the world had given Giles back to her.
What if he hadn’t returned? What if she’d married one of the other men at that table in the Lyon’s Den? The thoughts surfaced before she could stop them—dark and uninvited.No, she blocked off the questions before her heart locked onto them. She refused to live in the what ifs. The past had already taken enough from her; she wouldn’t let imagination steal more.
“What are you thinking?” Giles murmured against her ear, his voice rough and laced with contentment, making her smile. His hand drifted over her thigh, tracing slow, lazy circles that drew her right back into the present—his present.
“Nothing.”
“That’s not true. We’re always thinking about something.” He rubbed his cheek against hers. “You tensed.”
She had? “Irrelevant things,” she murmured after a moment. “Nothing worth noting.”
“Do you know what is worth noting?” he asked teasingly.
Dare she even ask? She didn’t need to, for he answered anyway.
“What’s between us is no longer a marriage of convenience.”
She should have known. “I don’t know about that. I dare even say I beg to differ.”
