For a moment, he merely looked at her, his throat working, his eyes wide amid the amber glow, the heat of his gaze scorching her skin.
“You don’t know what you do to me.” His fingers worked the buttons on his trousers, his eyes never leaving her. “Having you as I wanted in the cottage would have ruined me.”
“I ruined you on Lord Templeton’s dance floor.”
He smiled and her heart constricted. “You’re not wrong. You’re the first and only woman to have me begging.”
“Lie on the bed. Let me hear you beg some more.”
When had she learnt to be so bold?
He pulled off his shoes, pushed his trousers down past his lean hips and stepped out of them. He was larger than she remembered. And strangely beautiful with it.
“You mean to own me, love?” He drew his hand down his rigid length, a sensual hum in his throat as he looked at her.
“I learned a thing or two from my first Masque.” Her confidence wavered. “Though you may have to guide me.”
“I’d do anything for you. But you know that.”
“I had an inkling when I saw you at the ball tonight.” She felt a flutter in her chest as she pictured him on the terrace. “But one can never be sure.”
“You should have had an inkling when I gave you the key to the cottage.” He pulled back the bedsheets and settled on the mattress. “What do you plan to do with me?”
Love you.
Ease every painful memory.
She climbed on top of him, straddling his broad thighs. “My father refused to pay for riding lessons. This will be my first.”
“Lucky me, though I suspect you’ll be an expert.”
“There’s only one way to know.”
She reached between them, closing her hand around his hot flesh and guiding him to her entrance. Their gazes locked as he eased inside her an inch, then a little more, stretching her, filling her slowly.
Their breath left them in a rush.
The hunger in his eyes sharpened, but there was something else there, something softer reserved only for her.
“God.” His gaze moved over her face, the slope of her shoulders, lower still. “Everything about you is so damned divine.”
His hand closed over her breast, his thumb grazing the peak, and she felt the answering pull of it low where they were joined. She closed her eyes against the feel of him buried deep.
When she moved, tentatively at first, his hands tightened on her hips.
She learnt the rhythm the way she learnt most things: by feel, by instinct, by reading his face for what undid him.
His thumb found the place that made her gasp, circling with the same unhurried patience he brought to everything that mattered. He meant to make her come before anything else.
“Don’t stop, Dominic.”
He thrust upwards as he stroked and worked her.
“Daphne.”
The sound of her name, rough-edged and almost broken, tipped her over. She shuddered, her fingers clutching his shoulders, the pleasure cresting and breaking across her in a long, helpless wave.
“You’re mine now.” He rolled her beneath him in one smooth movement, his voice dropping to a growl. “And I mean to take you hard.”
