Page 73 of The Trick of It

She squirmed, her body rocking into this exploration and murmuring pleas for more escaping her lips all of their own accord. Each syllable seemed to shatter him, his body trembling in the places where it touched hers, until he could resist no longer and shifted his weight backward, taking his hand away from her to wrap it around his erection.

“Yes?” he said once more, dragging the feel of him against her entrance, giving her a taste without taking fully. “Now?”

“Yes,” she agreed, shifting forward so that she took him in, just a little, out of nothing but pure bodily instinct. It made them both gasp. “Now,” she managed, lifting her arms and digging her fingers into his hair. “Now.”

He used the heel of his hand to anchor her hip, his fingers still damp from the evidence of their want grazing against the dip of her waist. He eased into her, excruciatingly careful and slow, those burning, green eyes alert and locked on her, despite the difficulty she was having in keeping her own eyes open.

He did not seem to mind. If her lashes fluttered, he still watched. He still drank in her face as he claimed her, inch by inch, until their bodies were slotted fully together, joined completely.

She could feel his heartbeat inside her. Could feel every thrum of his pulse through this new connection, this sharing of their very being.

He gazed down at their connected bodies as he began to move, seeming to admire the look of it, memorizing the ways they changed each other.

She would have looked, too, if she hadn’t been afloat in sensation, in the feeling of being part of one another and the satisfaction of having the ache that had been tormenting her, that had simmered and roiled in Rhys’s presence for all her life, finally, finally addressed.

The feel of his skin under her palms and fingers was electric. The scent of the soap in their hair and the soft lavender of the linens around them seemed to blossom and engulf her. Even the sound their joining made was delicious, rhythmic, and lush.

He leaned backward, transferring his weight onto his heels as he pulled her with him, lifting off her so that he could trace his fingers over her exposed body as he moved, so he could access the very site of their union if he wished.

And it seemed that he did wish that.

She watched between her lashes, fascinated and drunk on the pleasure of it as he stroked around her entrance with his thumbs, without a single shake or faltering in his rhythmic pumping.

“Oh!” she gasped, her back arching off the mattress as he pressed just in the center, like he knew all the secrets of her body that she had never been told. “Oh, God!”

The last thing she saw was the flash of his grin, his teeth glowing in the low light as he coaxed her over the sheer drop to madness with those fingers of his, with that body of his, with everything that made him who he was.

Hers. He was finally hers.

And she came apart with that knowledge, that final triumphant realization, her legs seizing around his hips and her fingers digging into the sheets at her sides. It was a burst of color and light and utter, mind-breaking relief that stole her breath away.

In the spasms that followed, the languid, helpless flop of her limbs as she felt the Earth return to its rightful place, she felt his mouth dropping soft kisses on hers, his hands stroking her hair, and his voice murmuring in her ear, telling her how well she’d done, how beautiful she was, how perfect.

Later, Rhys would explain to her that watching her reach her own pleasure had brought him to his own. That he had spilled between her thighs and against her sex because it had happened so suddenly and with so much force that he’d barely had time to react.

For now, he only kissed her and held her.

And when she could breathe again, he retreated from the bed to get her a warm towel and clean her body and his own before wrapping them in sheets and blankets and arms and dousing the lantern for good.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Rhys had intended, with all his soul, to stay awake. He wanted another night of meandering conversation and childlike wonder in the dark. But as he curled around her, his face curved into the recess of her neck and freshly-washed hair, he found himself surrounded by her scent—not the cinnamon and dates that she’d worn today, as enticing as that had been and would continue to be, but Seph herself. Her own special perfume.

It was a scent he had tried half his life to forget and had never quite succeeded.

He wanted to tell her that. He wanted to confess so many things. He wanted to hear her laugh when he told her he’d accepted a poorly paid residency at a ramshackle pub in rural Ireland just in the hopes that he’d befriend a woman who sounded like she did.

Seph probably knew the women in Kildare sounded nothing like the Travellers.

She probably knew that.

But then her breathing deepened and rumbled, her warm body snuggling backward into his, languid and sated. And he found himself both smiling at the gentle purr of her snores and being lulled into their spell, their irresistible, thought-melting spell.

Before he knew it, it was morning.

He was alerted to this unfortunate fact by the squirming in his arms as Seph attempted to extract herself from his embrace without waking him. Or at least that was what it looked like. He knew she could be stealthier than this if she really wanted to be.

“No,” he muttered, pulling her tighter. “Stay.”