Page 91 of Kathryn

He slid his arms around her and held her upright as his hips rolled and bucked, lifting them both off the settee, the fierce power of his thrusts making the erotic act all the more arousing.

Tell him you like it, a voice whispered.

Katie did not require much convincing. After all, it stood to reason that if she enjoyed the sensual—occasionally crude—things he said, maybe he would, too.

“So big and strong and… hard,” she whispered in his ear, and then sank her teeth into his lobe.

His body jolted. “You drive me mad, Kathryn. But you already know that, don’t you?” He made a sound deep in his throat and lifted her high before pulling her down, filling her so deeply the line between pleasure and pain was obliterated.

And still he was not inside her deeply enough. “More,” Katie ordered. “Harder.”

Her words ignited something inside him, and his body flexed and rippled as he worked her with a savagery that thrilled her. “Is this what you want?” he demanded, his voice raw and harsh.

“Yes… yes…yes!” she chanted, the words growing more ragged as she sped toward the edge of bliss.

His hips drummed harder and faster and wilder until he hilted himself. “Kathryn!” he shouted, shuddering as he found his release.

Katie collapsed against him, their slick torsos skin to skin, her body on fire as she tucked her face between his shoulder and neck.

She must have briefly dozed, only coming back to consciousness when he shifted beneath her.

“Kathryn?”

“Please, Gerrit,” she begged. “Not—not yet. Hold me.” Love me—or at least pretend for a little while.

He was rigid for a moment before the tension drained out of him and he sank back down, his powerful biceps tightening around her, hugging her to his body as he pressed his lips against her temple.

Almost as if he had heard her.

***

“Love me—or at least pretend for a little while.”

The shocking words were scarcely a whisper, but her mouth was right beneath Gerrit’s ear and so there was no mistaking them. His body responded reflexively, his arms tightening around her slender body as she burrowed into his chest, her hot, damp breath warming the sensitive skin of his neck.

He swallowed down the flutter of panic that surged from his belly to his throat and kissed the top of her head before he knew what he had done.

Love her?

She had agreed with him that day in Chatham’s library. It was a marriage of convenience first, last, and always.

Wasn’t it?

Thinking about it hurt his head.

But Gerrit could happily sit here all night feeling her smooth, taut thighs straddling him, her soft breasts pressed against his chest, and her hot, wet pussy squeezing his cock, which had not completely softened.

Love her?

Thinking of Kathryn and love in the same sentence instantly made him recall his last conversation with Amelia, when she had harangued him until he’d snapped at her, something he had never done before. But then Amelia had never nagged him before, either. And yet now, every time he paid a call on her, desperate for the calming influence she’d exerted on him all these years, the only subject she was interested in discussing was his wife. Or, more specifically, how Gerrit needed to go about mending the breach between himself and Kathryn so they would have a real marriage.

That had been Amelia’s word: real. As if Gerrit was not really caught in parson’s mousetrap with no chance of escape. Well, not unless his wife eloped with another man as his last one had done.

His arms tightened reflexively around the slender body pressed against him at the thought, as if he could keep Kathryn from running away with physical restraint alone. She mumbled something against his throat, snuggling closer, her soft, pliant form somehow heavier in sleep.

The sheer vulnerability of the situation—the trust she showed by sleeping in his arms—made his throat constricted with something, but he didn’t know what. What was wrong with him? Why the hell was he so bloody emotional?

It had to be a result of not just Amelia’s nagging, but his mother’s as well. He could not recall ever being subjected to so much nagging in such a short time.