Page 45

"Audrey, I can't... if you keep..."

She pulled back. Looked up at him. He was breathing hard, his chest heaving, his hand still in her hair. In the daylight she could see what she had done to him. His eyes were black. His jaw was tight. His skin was flushed from his chest to his throat.

"Was that right?" she asked. Genuine.

He pulled her to her feet and kissed her. Hard. Desperate. Tasting himself on her mouth and not caring. His hands found the laces at her back, and he worked them with a speed that suggested anger, but with an accuracy that proved otherwise. Her dress loosened. He pushed it off her shoulders, and it fell to her waist, and he pulled it over her hips and it pooled at her feet.

Her shift. Her stays. He unlaced the stays with steady hands and drew the shift over her head. She stood in front of him in stockings and nothing else and the sunlight hit her body full, and she fought the urge to cover herself.

He looked at her. At all of her. Her breasts. Her ribs. Her stomach. Her hips, the bad one sitting higher than the good, the joint visible beneath the skin, the bone not where it should be. He had felt all of this in the dark. Now he saw it and his expression did not change. Not pity. Not performance. Just attention.

"You are staring," she said.

"Yes."

"It is worse in the light."

"It is extraordinary in the light."

He picked her up and set her on the edge of the desk and she gasped at the cold wood against her bare skin. He stepped between her thighs and kissed her, slower now, his hands on her hips, his thumbs tracing circles on her hip bones.

"I want to see your face this time," he said. "No pillow. No hiding."

"I do not hide."

"Hm." He pulled back and held her gaze. "Good."

He entered her with his eyes on hers. Slow. She watched him watching her and the exposure was more intimate than the act itself. Every flicker that crossed her face, she could not mask any of it because the daylight was merciless and so was he.

"There," she breathed when he hit the angle that made her vision blur.

"There?" He repeated the motion, his mouth twitching. She gripped the edge of the desk.

"Don't... don't be smug..."

"I'm not smug. I'm paying attention." He did it again and she moaned and her head fell back and he caught it with his hand and brought her face back to his.

"Eyes on me," he said.

She looked at him. She could see every detail: the flecks of amber in his dark eyes, the faint scar at his hairline she had never noticed, the way his brow creased when he pushed deeper. He was striking. She had not let herself think it before. She thought it now, with the sunlight on his face and his body inside hers and nowhere left to pretend.

He moved. Steady. Unhurried. His hands held her hips and each thrust pressed her against the desk. She wrapped her legs around him and he hitched her higher and the shift in angle was devastating. She cried out.

"Good?" he asked.

"You know… perfectly well."

"I like hearing you say it."

"It is... oh... it is good. Kit…"

“Kit?” He quickened his pace and she stopped talking because her mind had stopped working. She gripped his shoulders and held on and let the pleasure build in long, rolling waves, each one higher than the last.

"Rafe asks permission." She pulled him deeper with her heels, drawing a groan from his throat. "Kit does not."

His face was tight with restraint. His arms were shaking.

"Let go," she whispered.