20. In Which Luke Sees to the Lady

It was a look Luke had never seen before on Grace Chetwood’s face: the particular hot intensity radiating from her when he slid inside her.

Of all her expressions, this was now his favorite.

He’d come too quickly, the first time. Even lasting as long as he had took the sort of effort he associated with scaling actual mountains. He’d left her unsatisfied.

That would not be happening again.

He slid up into her slowly, holding her hips in his hands. She was perfectly slick with his release and her need, and it felt like sinking into silk. He felt a shiver run through her. Pulled out just as languorously, watching the sensations register on her face.

Admittedly, it was hard to focus. Making love to Grace felt like the culmination of all his training, all the years in the field in every challenging condition. Everything he’d ever endured had existed so he could keep his attention on the nuances of her even as he died of pleasure.

“You don’t make it easy,” he murmured. “All this wet, gorgeous heat.” He pulled her down onto his cock, and a little noise escaped her.

He needed to kiss her, that exposed throat as she tipped her head back, and he needed to taste the skin, and he needed to graze it with his teeth and feel a moan vibrate through her. And coax her to move over him, find the pace that pleased her. She flushed when he called her beautiful and when he cursed her maddening tightness and when he told her to take him. Take him deeper. Take more.

Now, he pulled her by the waist as he sat up. Wrapping her thighs around him, so she sat in his lap. Some wry part of his mind noted that they mirrored the statue in the corner now, her legs around his hips, his hands holding her at the base of her spine, their bodies joined. And that this was what he had wanted in the butterfly vivarium. Exactly this.

“Now,” he said, brushing strands of hair from her face, “Let us see to the lady.”

He lifted his fingers to her lips, encouraging her to wet them with her tongue, then reached between their bodies. He was watching her, gathering the information he needed in this new position. When he increased the pressure of his fingertips, he felt her clench around his shaft, and that pulled his eyes down to where they were joined, and he was arrested by the sight of his cock buried in her, of her flesh stretched around his.

She saw him look, and, with a wicked glint, leaned back on her hands, to improve his view. His engorged length, flushed and slippery. Her swollen petals dragging along his flesh as she tipped back a little farther. His fingers, glistening wet with their mingled fluids, skating tight strokes over the most sensitive inch of her body. He felt hypnotized by it, entirely liquid.

When he raised his gaze to hers, the look on her face was so aroused that it alone sped his pulse. Was it possible to come apart from a woman looking at you?

“Luke, I need ... ”

“I know,” he whispered. “Let me give it to you.” He’d gotten the hang of the angle now, and moved his fingers with more precision as she eddied over his cock in small undulations. “Is it good?” he asked, in a tone that let her know he already knew the answer. Her response was a laugh that ended in a cracked moan. “Take your pleasure, princess. It’s what my body is for.” He’d meant it teasingly, but he felt it deeper. It was simply true. Her gaze flared, hearing the raw edge in his voice. “Made for you,” he said, drawing one of her hands to his lips. He brushed the inside of her wrist. “My fingers. My mouth.” He nipped the tender skin. “My cock. For you.”

Her eyes glittered at his words—but quickly, the tide of sensation stole her attention. Gathering force, now, the movement of her pelvis growing jagged, hitched. He circled her clitoris faster, leading her toward it, and she was moaning, voice breaking on his name and yes, yes, please, and he was rocking into her, his cock pressing against her walls in a way that made him feel vicious, made him want to throw her down and fuck her so hard he couldn’t breathe.

“Take it from me,” he urged, their hips moving together now in a tight rhythm as she rode him in his lap, his fingers coaxing and relentless. She leaned into him, clutching his shoulders, so close—he could see the desperation in her eyes. “All of it. All of me. Take it.”

She came sharp and sudden, on an agonized gasp, and he held her through the convulsion, her sweat-sheened skin against his, her cunt tightening around him.

She melted into him as the tremors subsided. All of her limp, sated.

She pressed her face into his neck. Breathed there a moment.

Then raised her head to look at him, eyes sparkling. “For a man who claims paltry previous experience with a woman’s pleasure, you’re suspiciously adept.”

He shrugged. “I think it helps that giving it to you is the thing I most desire in the world.”

“Evidently.” She moved, and they both recalled, on twin intakes of breath, that he was still inside her, very hard. “Oh,” she breathed. “I believe there’s more to do here.”

By way of agreeing, he pulled out of her to lay her down onto the bed, and she grinned, reaching out pull him atop. He cocked a brow to tell her he had other ideas, and coaxed her to roll onto her stomach.

“ Oh,” she said again, now with curiosity, as he climbed over her and pressed in from behind. And one more time, “Oh ... ” the utterance now tautly threaded with new sensation.

He stroked into her, winding her hair around his hand to pull it aside, exposing the back of her neck, and then he kissed her there, tasting her sweat, running his lips over the rise of her vertebra, as his other hand slid to cup her breast, tease the nipple.

“ God ,” she moaned. “Luke. That is . . .”

“Yes,” he muttered into her neck. “Too good. Too rich. Too sweet.” She tipped her head back to offer her mouth, and he kissed her deeply, tongue moving into her as his cock did. Everything flushed and expanding and heavy, their movement creating more and more of it, till they were swimming in it together.

And then she was arching into him with an urgent hiss. “Luke ... ” her voice tight, surprised. “I’m going to—don’t stop—”

He heard himself growl, and Jesus Christ, the discipline it took not to lose all control, to keep his deep, steady rhythm so she could ride it to another peak, his whole body shaking with the effort, his mouth against her ear. Come for me, Grace. Let me feel it. Come around me.

“Don’t stop ... ” she was panting, her hands fisting the counterpane. “Don’t stop ... ” And then, “Come with me ... ”

The words sent light all through him, tensed every muscle, his belly, his cock, and then, as he felt her clench around him, he spun off the cliff with her, so intense that for a fraction of a moment, there was only hot blackness and the sharp, ragged cry of her climax.

The sun was threading its first red across the horizon as they walked back to Bexley Hall. They did not speak. Grace could feel her throat, abraded from the sounds she’d been making for the last several hours. Her body felt sated and heavy. She suspected there would be marks, his fingerprints bruised into her hips, and that when he undressed, he would discover red scrapes on his shoulder from her teeth. It made her smile.

It hadn’t been enough, but she couldn’t imagine it ever could be.

As they approached the house, Grace spotted a wisp of smoke around the side, and saw that a man was sitting on a bench in the garden, in the center of the stone spiral, his back toward them, watching the sunrise. Philip.

Grace squeezed Luke’s hand, nodded in Philip’s direction, a warning to stay quiet.

He nodded. He seemed relaxed, and deep in thought.

When they got close, he pulled her behind a tree, cupped her face in his hands, and slowly brushed his mouth over hers.

Their last kiss.

When he released her, he tilted his head to the house. Telling her to enter first, alone. “Safe travels, Grace,” he said, softly.

She brushed a curl off his forehead. His gaze was steady, knowing. Clear all the way to the bottom.

“And to you,” she said.

And then, she walked away from Luke.