Bess stared directly into his eyes and whispered, “Don’t hold back.”
Then she leaned in and nipped his lower lip before kissing him like she needed his mouth to live.
And Nathaniel was gone. His hips shoved up, again and again, while the clasp of her legs around his waist brought her down over him, hard and deep and so good he thought he would lose whatever was left of his mind.
Bess plundered his mouth and scratched her short fingernails through his hair and across his shoulders, taking what she wanted without apology or restraint.
They struggled together, striving toward a peak that neither could reach alone. He worked her on his cock and she shook and sobbed and fell apart in his arms. Nathaniel steeled himself to pull out, but Bess lifted her head and gave him a heavy-lidded smile.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“I have to,” he ground out. “I can’t risk it.”
A bittersweet twist pinched one corner of her smile, but Bess circled her hips luxuriously against the raging hardness she’d clamped inside her by tightening her legs around his hips.
Nathaniel swallowed a groan of divine agony.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ve taken care of it. Stay right where you are, please, and finish.”
Nathaniel was immobile, frozen between the frenzied urge to do as she said and the absolute wall of denial he hit when he thought about ruining her life with an unplanned pregnancy.
No, he could not risk her, and he opened his mouth to tell her so, but Bess stopped him with a kiss.
“I’m a woman of the world,” she told him with a lofty air that couldn’t quite hide the glint of self-directed amusement in her eyes. “Or at least, I know a woman of the world, and between us, I promise you, I am taken care of. There will be no unwanted consequences of this night, or any other night we spend together.”
Any other night.
She meant to have him again.
Nathaniel broke. He pounded into her, the pleasure so huge and intense it felt like a separate entity outside his body.
Her eyes went wide. He shoved gracelessly deep, his entire body rigid as he emptied himself into her and felt the shivery spasms of her delight through the endless pulses of his climax.
When it was done, aside from the odd quake of an aftershock, Nathaniel’s legs gave out. Turning so his own back was to the wall, he slid to the floor, holding her close and safe until she was perched in his lap.
They hadn’t managed to remove even one article of clothing.
He was still inside her.
“That was…not what I expected,” she admitted on a breathless laugh.
Nathaniel dropped his forehead to her shoulder. He wanted to say something—something clever or romantic or…he didn’t even know. But no words came to him. The combination of the intensely technical fight and the powerfully explosive coupling had robbed him of any articulacy he normally possessed.
“Are you all right?” she asked. The caring in her low voice made Nathaniel’s hands clench in the fabric of her dress. “It looked like he barely touched you, but I confess I was somewhat…distracted, watching the fight.”
“I’m unhurt.” He hesitated, his throat clicking as he swallowed. “But you may check me over if you wish.”
Her hands stroked his hair, sending shivers down his spine. His prick, mindless beast that it was, had never softened completely. At her touch, and the gentle hum of her agreement, it began to firm and throb.
Her hips shifted when she felt it. Something very like shame tightened Nathaniel’s stomach.
He was too much, he ought to leave her be—but Bess, wonder that she was, pulled back far enough to peek up at him through her lashes.
“Really? Again?” she asked, surprised and pleased.
Nathaniel didn’t know how to tell her that he wanted her all the time, at every moment of the day and night, whether he’d had her days ago or mere seconds.
He let his body answer for him, curling his hips up to nudge into her. She sighed into it and moved with him, slow and sensual now after their first headlong rush to climax.
