She’d had the perfectly rounded head of his prick in her mouth for naught but a few moments, yet she recognized it at once. Her legs fell further apart in intuitive abandon.
“Yes,” she moaned in invitation, reaching up to him with both arms, aware in the back of her mind that Nathaniel had needed coaxing and assurances all along the way that she knew what she wanted, and what she wanted was him.
Fortunately, the masked duke appeared to have lost all hesitancy. In one smooth motion, he lifted her left leg onto his shoulder, mouthed a hot kiss through the lawn of her drawers because she was still wearing her bloody drawers, and surged up to make a single, firm, gliding push into her body.
Splayed open beneath him, filled and invaded and surrounded by him, Bess lost her vision. She lost her voice. She lost her breath.
There was no room for anything inside her but him.
Bess forced her eyes open to find him staring down at her with an intensity that made her shiver. Which tensed her muscles, which clenched around the hard, hot length of him and made her shiver again.
“You feel,” she tried to speak, shaking her head back and forth upon the pillow. “It’s so much.”
“You’re doing so well,” he rumbled, in a way he likely meant to be soothing. “There’s only a little more. Can you take it?”
“There’s more?” It would’ve been a shriek had she the lung capacity for it. To Bess’s dismay, his teeth bared and he started to draw out of her.
Dropping her leg to wrap around his waist, she locked her ankles at the small of his back and said, “Where are you going? I’ll have the rest, please.”
He groaned. With infinite care, Nathaniel leaned forward to catch her lips in a searing kiss as his hips thrust inexorably, immensely, deeper.
She felt him in her throat.
Bess might have clawed at his back a little bit; she really couldn’t say. Because then he began to move.
Hard little nudges of his hips that rubbed at a spot inside her that made stars burst across the backs of Bess’s eyelids. Short, rhythmic pulses of sensation that built and built, stirring her up inside and exhorting her to meet his body thrust for thrust until they moved in perfect harmony.
Fireworks sparked through her belly, her entire lower body seizing up as his thrusts grew longer and rougher. They broke the kiss, tearing their mouths away to gasp for breath, and Bess stared up at the knife edge of his jaw and the glitter of his ravenous eyes.
He twisted his hips savagely and she broke apart, an explosion of light in the dark that went on and on even after he pulled out and knelt up over her once more. He held the angry red rod of his cock in a punishing grip, shuddering with unspent need.
Winded and sated, Bess met his anguished gaze and tilted her chin up invitingly. “Anything I wanted, you said. Give it to me. Now.”
His mouth opened but no sound emerged as his hand stripped his cock once, twice, and then jet after jet of his spend covered her breasts and collarbone. Bess felt it almost as another aftershock, her soft, swollen core clenching on nothing but the satisfaction of having brought him to release.
Perhaps it was perverse, but she found she rather liked having the hot, sticky proof of it adorning her skin.
Bess smiled and closed her eyes, luxuriating in her body. She felt alive.
Expecting at any moment to feel him crashing to the bed beside her, instead she felt the straw ticking of the mattress shift as he climbed off it.
Before she could protest, he was back on the bed and using one of the dampened linen cloths to gently wipe the evidence of their passion from her chest.
Her heart swelled at the simple caretaking. Raising herself up on one elbow, she caught his wrist to keep him from leaving the bed again.
“Is the ‘anything’ rule still in effect?” she murmured, lowering her eyelashes in what felt like a parody of shyness after all they’d just done together. “Because I would like to be held.”
He went perfectly motionless, half turned toward her. He’d refastened his breeches but moonlight still limned the long line of his bare shoulders in silver.
Behind the mask, his expression was unreadable once more. A sliver of anxiety pierced the bubble of Bess’s satiated languor, but it didn’t have a chance to do serious damage because he came slowly back up the bed to lie stiffly against the pillows beside her.
Unsure whether to laugh or cry at this man’s seeming inability to cuddle, Bess patiently lifted the muscular arm closest to her and snugged under it to lay her head on his chest. Beneath her cheek, his rigid muscles slowly, slowly relaxed.
Bess smiled. It felt like another, much softer swell of satisfaction to get him to rest peacefully, even for a moment. Not wanting to disturb him, she stayed as still as she could and hoped that perhaps he had even dropped off to sleep.
She was not far from sleep herself, the steady drumbeat of his heart and the exhaustion in her limbs lulling her down.
What you came to London for, she mused drowsily. Finally got it. Found you a scoundrel and got ravished. Now what?
