She had never had so much attention paid to her body, never felt as if every nerve ending was slowly catching fire, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted her mouth on his. His body inside hers.
“Matt, please. I want to see you.”
“Gods, Lucy. That….” His words faded as he rolled them, guiding her onto her back and settling between her thighs while the sound of his beast’s rumbling purr rose all around them.
She lifted her head and pressed her mouth to his. He slid his hands into her hair and held her, his mouth taking hers in deep sliding pulls as he poured himself into her. Then, shuddering, as if he was barely holding onto his last shred of control, he notched his heavy cock at her entrance and paused, waiting.
She wrapped her legs around him, digging her heels into his clenching buttocks, and drew him closer, sliding her hand between them to guide his cock into her, as his hard body tensed above her, and they both groaned.
He lowered his head into her neck, kissing and sucking her skin as his hips began to move. A slow, sultry grind as she melted beneath him.
She lifted her hips, meeting his as he pumped harder, and wrapped her arms around his body, using him as an anchor. Holding him deep inside her.
“Lucilla. I… fuck.” His teeth scraped along the tendons of her neck and her body tightened, clamping onto his.
She clung to him as he thrust harder, surrounding her with heat and pleasure. Her body shuddered and a frantic whimper escaped. “Matt. Please. I need….” She gasped for breath, trying to find the words.
“Do it, Lucy. Come. Now.” His voice was more a growl than anything human, his entire body vibrating with the rumble of his beast, and it pushed her over the edge into a powerful, rolling orgasm as blazing waves of ecstasy crashed over her.
A second later, he pulled out and then came in pulsing surges over her belly and onto her breasts, his eyes glowing gold as he looked down into hers.
He collapsed at her side and pulled her into his arms, and they lay together, skin against skin, his heartbeat thudding in her ear. Gods. She had never felt anything like what she felt with him.
Eventually, he wiped her clean as best he could in the confined darkness and helped her get into her breeches and shirt before pulling her back under his arm.
She lay against his side, her head on his good shoulder while he ran his fingers down her back in light strokes. She felt warm and safe, deliciously relaxed, and languorous in a way that she never had before.
She rolled further onto his chest, cupping her chin on her fist so that she could look at him, even if it was too dark to really see him. “I love hearing your stories about the Hawks,” she told him quietly.
The bands of gold in his eyes gleamed in the darkness, and she felt his smile, even though she couldn’t see it. “They’re like brothers,” he admitted.
“And what about your family? Dornar said that your father was a baron.”
She felt him stiffen under her, and she rolled herself to lie fully on top of him, pinning him down. He could move her, of course, but she didn’t think he would. She hoped he wouldn’t.
“Yes, he was a baron.” It was a rough admission, and she wondered how many people knew the truth.
“Doesn’t that make you a baron then? Shouldn’t you be at court or managing your estates?”
He let out a humorless laugh. “There are no estates. No lands. Nothing left to manage.”
Something in his voice made her hesitate, but she wanted to know it all. “What happened to your lands?”
“I lost them.” The words were clipped. Final. And she didn’t believe them for one second.
“Lost them how?”
“I couldn’t manage the estate—we lost too much money—and I had to sell them to a neighbor. I lost everything my father left me.”
She could feel the tension thrumming through him, the way that his beast growled, low in his belly, and knew, without doubt, that there was more to this story. She turned it in her head, considering, thinking about everything he’d told her. About how long he’d been a soldier. And then realized the truth.
“How old were you when your father died?”
There was a long pause before he answered. “Thirteen.”
“And when you sold the land?”
This pause was even longer. “Eighteen.”
