He stepped closer and brushed a kiss against the corner of her lip. “If I hadn’t, I would have been here three hours sooner.”
Her knees went weak. His mouth found hers, and she melted into his heat. He kissed like a man who knew exactly how long he had waited. She answered, every carefully drafted provision scattering like loose papers in a high wind.
When her breath faltered, he pulled away.
“Marguerite, I will only do this if you want it too.”
This had to be a negotiation tactic. Men did this—they removed the structure so you had to reach for them without it, which gave them the power.
Except . . . He was looking at her so earnestly. She was very good at reading faces, and his was doing something young and uncertain. He had said the true thing, and he was waiting to see the cost.
“But we have a bargain, and I promised that—”
“It does not matter to me.”
The little coal inside her, the one he lit with the epaulets, the one she had been pressing her hands against, pretending so hard it was not there, caught fire, and the warmth spread.
“I do not know how to want something without a contract protecting me from it. But I want this,” she said, sliding her hands up his chest.
One step in, and his mouth covered hers, hands framing her face as if he feared she’d vanish if he touched anything else.
Heat burst low in her belly, and she grabbed his shoulders, felt the wet linen cling to muscle. His tongue swept in. She stumbled. He caught her waist. She pressed closer. His jaw was locked, his breath measured through his nose, as if he were holding a line with both hands in a gale.
He made a noise—deep, almost a growl. It vibrated through her ribs.
The door was solid at her back, and he was solid at her front, and between the two, there was no room left for provisions.
Tristan gripped her hips through the robe and pulled her flush against him, and she felt exactly how long he had waited.
Heat shot through her. Good, she thought, with the last competent corner of her mind. This she could manage. Fast was manageable.
He dragged his mouth to her throat, and she tipped her head back against the door.
“Marguerite.” Her name in his mouth, pressed into the skin below her ear.
He found the hem of her robe and slipped his palm up the outside of her thigh. When he reached her hip, he lifted her leg around him, and she felt the cold of the door at her bare calf and the heat of his hip against her inner thigh and the precise geography of what he wanted.
She exhaled against his neck. Yes. This. Quick. A transaction with mutual benefit and a clear endpoint. She could return the robe to her shoulders when it was done, pour them both water from the pitcher, and locate herself in the familiar landscape of afterward.
His hand moved between them, and his fingers found her core. She gasped—the sound embarrassing in its nakedness—because he discovered immediately that she was slick and wanting and entirely legible.
“God,” he said.
Her face burned. She turned it against his shoulder. His hand withdrew, and she heard the rasp of his falls, and then his erection was pressing against her mound. She exhaled and tilted her hips to meet him.
He pressed into her. The blunt head breached her, and already she knew she would not survive the rest. Her head fell back against the door. Above her, the lamp swung, light crossing the ceiling in slow arcs, and the hull groaned around them.
Tristan braced his forearm against the door above her head. He held there, barely inside her, his chest expanding against hers with a shuddering breath.
She shifted, trying to draw him deeper.
He caught her hip at once and pinned her still.
“Tristan.” Her voice had gone thin. Too bare. She steadied it with effort. “You may finish.” Before she lost anything she could not recover.
His body went still in a different way, as if some line had snapped taut inside him. Then he withdrew.
She pressed her shoulders back against the door. “What are you doing?”
