He’d traded his honor for a single night of pleasure, and he couldn’t even regret the loss. All Nathaniel regretted was that he’d never have her again.
A week of pretending the very sight of her was not a jab to the guts; a week of resisting the tidal pull of her presence in his house and in his carriage and in the same ballroom or drawing room or assembly room.
It had been the most impossible task he’d ever set himself, and yet he’d done it.
Until he saw her at the edge of the ring tonight.
She came back.
It was all he could think, every beat of his heart pounding out the same message over and over.
She came back. She came back.
But he’d been waiting in this empty room for what felt like an age, and the chill was beginning to creep over him once more.
There. A light footstep in the hall.
All of Nathaniel’s senses were trained upon it. The swift steps coming closer, no hesitation at all—which made him think it could not be Bess, surely not, but then the brass doorknob turned, and Bess slipped into the room and shut the door behind her.
Chapter Sixteen
She came back.
He’d planned to speak to her, to talk and to listen and to find out what she wanted from this, from him—but he was off the bed and halfway across the room to her before he could blink.
Bess moved just as quickly, all but crashing into his arms, and then her mouth was under his and her hands were on the back of his neck and sliding into his hair and Nathaniel forgot what he’d meant to say.
He forgot his own name. He forgot everything but her.
The taste of her lips, dark and sweet like tea and sugared shortbread. The velvet rub of her tongue. The breathy sounds she made when he clutched her greedily close and took her mouth the way he wanted to take all of her. Everything she was and everything she had.
Wound tight and sprung loose by days of longing, Nathaniel caressed down the smooth line of her back all the way to the perfect, round globes of her bottom, and lifted her up. Bess squeaked into his mouth, but she never stopped kissing him—if anything, she licked into his mouth with an increased fervor that made Nathaniel feel crazed with lust.
He staggered the few steps to press her back against the wall, letting it take enough of her weight to get one hand between them and fumble beneath her skirts.
An urgent, exploratory press of his fingers found her already slick with need, swollen and soft. Bess panted and cried out, turning her face to his cheek so that her hot, sweet breath washed over him like a benediction.
“Can I?” he choked out.
“If you don’t,” she gasped, “I think I’ll die.”
She wrapped her legs around his hips, trusting him to hold her up, and Nathaniel had his cock out and notched against her hot, melting core in an instant. He filled his hands with her arse, filled his lungs with her shattered, heaving breaths, and sank into her.
The position forced him deep, and they both threw their heads back and clung to one another in something like shock at the first moment of penetration.
It’s too much, Nathaniel thought, a thread of panic stitching through the bliss, but no—Bess’s internal muscles were tightening and releasing, massaging his length in a sensual rhythm that told him it felt as good to her as it did to him.
Clawing back his wits, Nathaniel steadied his stance and braced enough to lift her along the length of his cock until only the very tip remained inside her.
Then he let her slide back down, punching an ecstatic cry from her throat and prompting her to enfold him tightly in her arms.
He held still, the sensations threatening to overwhelm him. His stomach muscles burned; his thighs flexed. His arms felt imbued with the strength of Hercules, as though he could hold her to him forever and never tire of the perfect weight of her.
Her eyes fluttered and she dropped her chin so that they were practically nose to nose. Nathaniel knew the thick leather mask shadowed his damnably unusual eyes, muddying their color to an indistinct gray.
Still, part of him quailed to have her face so near, her searching gaze like a beacon.
He closed his eyes and turned his face away, almost without thought, but a slim-fingered hand at his cheek brought him round until they were nose to nose once more.
