Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

The Earl of Edgerly is nearing his end, although he’s chosen to stay in London with his female companion of many years. As expected, his countess remains in Northumberland.

~Private report to Agent Noble from an intelligence officer assigned to the central region

C ece was happy someone was having a delightful week.

With a thoroughly uncouth oath, she wiped her palms on her skirt, leaving streaks of soil from her foray into gardening. She didn’t usually fiddle with foliage and such in Northumberland. Although she couldn’t afford a gardener, her aging groom had a way with plants and was quite talented at maintenance—and he was getting too old to ride, so this left her with a reason to continue to pay him. (Though it left her without a groom, which was a problem.)

Nonetheless, the spot she was hiding in afforded her a wonderful view of Crispin’s back lawn and the two figures crossing it. And the ruse of gardening a reason to be crouched in the dirt, spying.

When she wasn’t the spy in this house.

Josiah and Jasper were laughing as they trudged across the overlong grass, hands gesturing wildly as they talked, crumpled lengths of sodden linen draped across their shoulders. Their shirts were damp, the thin cotton sticking to their skin. This presented more of a view than she’d thought wet material could of the man’s physique. Cece held her breath and leaned in until a yew branch scraped her forehead.

Even with the sting, she didn’t move… one… inch. Not with this gift given to her.

Crispin’s body was a marvel.

Scars littered the parts she’d seen. His forearms, his hands, his neck. She’d taken peeks into his open collar, of course, and when the chance permitted, at every bit of him she could, even his utterly masculine feet. But this was a generous portrait, his shirt fully unbuttoned, exposing the trail of dark hair leading from his chest to his lean belly. The roll and sway of his hips as he strolled along. He had muscles, the genuine article, features usually attributed only to those who worked with their hands. Lowly men of trade, untouchables for a woman of her status.

Therefore, she’d never seen the like.

Even more intriguing, he had a menacing air about him, an aura that exuded danger. Mara had whispered things Cece believed to be mostly true. Her companion had been born in Shoreditch, where Jasper Noble was legendary. There was talk about him, Mara said. So much talk, so much mystery. Cece could see the reasoning behind his choosing to create his persona there. What better place for a baron’s son to bury his background than a ratty little corner of London where barons never trod? Brilliantly and quite unplanned, she guessed, the mix of urbane and crude made him a man who couldn’t be easily placed in a category.

Except to her because she’d known both sides of him.

Cece well understood being a person society and the public at large couldn’t place .

Leaning down, Crispin grabbed a ball and tossed it across the yard for her son to retrieve, his brawny chest flexing. His trousers were riding low on his hips. Very low. As if he’d heard her whispered sigh, he hooked his thumb in his waistband and gave it a tug that then highlighted other assets. He wasn’t wearing drawers, and his shaft was a noticeable bulge settled to the left.

This was an intimate slice she’d not been allowed in her marriage. Oh , the wonder to be permitted to examine someone from head to toe and everything in between. Any time of the day—and as often as one wished. Before, she and Crispin had only had stolen moments, young adults exploring passion. Hurried encounters, similar to what they’d done in the stable and again in her study. Standing up both times.

They were grown now. She might not know his body well anymore—but she knew hers . She wanted his weight pressing hers into a soft mattress. She wanted to claw his back while he thrust inside her.

She wanted to hold his arms over his head and make him beg .

Cece brought her hands to her flaming cheeks and blew a breath through her teeth.

She needed to get Crispin into bed, and she needed this soon.

But he was balking. Since she’d found Josiah asleep in his bedchamber two nights ago, both of the boys adorably covered in cracker crumbs, her host had been avoiding her. Before she’d woken them from their resting place before the hearth, she’d taken a slow tour of the room and rediscovered, from the stacks of books cluttering every surface, that Jasper Noble was as much of a reader as Crispin Sinclair had been. She found he preferred earthy fragrances, and he kept a neat wardrobe but a messy bed she hadn’t been able to take her eyes off of. He had a spare set of spectacles on his vanity, a sharp blade under his pillow, and a hair clip of hers she’d been missing for weeks on his bedside table.

A finding that sent a burst of longing straight through her. A feeling close to, but she hoped not exactly like, love.

It wasn’t entirely a disaster as far as a kidnapping went that she’d hoped would lead to more.

They shared a table at breakfast and dinner, carrying on stilted conversations about the weather, London’s political climate, and the intricacies of producing best-in-class whisky. He loved talking about whisky. Crispin helped her complete the forgery assignment for Xander Macauley and sent the package off under discreet cover, while promising it was the last illegal task he’d ask of her.

The promise came with the faint threat that it should be the last she’d ever do.

Last night, she’d beaten Crispin soundly at chess, then sat back while he gave Josiah an introductory lesson that led to his putting her son to bed and never returning to the parlor.

Clearly, he was wooing the boy, not the mother.

The truth of it was, he and Josiah were getting closer, a situation filling her with equal parts happiness and dread. She’d seen the way Crispin looked at him, and the way Josiah looked at Crispin.

Love when it first hit you was hard to conceal. She should know.

She assumed this was the reason Crispin was acting like a jittery colt around her and hadn’t requested she return to his chamber. No quick orgasms in the various nooks in his home perfect for them. Not even so much as a passing kiss in a spare linen closet. Although she’d like the next experience to be one where they were lying down.

Their arrangement hadn’t included attachment to a boy, and she could see the attachment was a conundrum for the man.

When she asked Josiah about Jasper, he’d told tales of spiders and coughing fits. Of protection instead of fear of monsters under one’s bed. Adding that his new friend must be almost as good a man as his father. After all, Jasper had said so.

When the Earl of Edgerly had been a rotter.

Yet, boys deserved to think well of their papa—and she wouldn’t tarnish this image. It wasn’t such a difficult untruth in a world of them.

Hearing their footfalls crunching atop gravel, she shrank into the yew. She was sweaty from the heat, covered in bits of grass and dirt, generally unappealing. She was nothing but a Northumberland hoyden after all. Her mother’s decree rang through her mind— a lady doesn’t present herself poorly and hope to attract a man . With a fallen sigh, Cece dashed a lank of damp hair from her brow. Actresses and opera singers, the types Jasper Noble consorted with, never looked this bad. Ginger hair looked horrid with flushed cheeks, so she was often told. She must have been mad to think she could attract an infamous rogue for even a week.

The young man from her past simply hadn’t known better. She’d been the first apple on his tree to pick. He’d no experience with which to judge. What was one silly chit when you could have one hundred ?

The scent hit her first. The fragrance she’d dabbed on her wrists from the bottle on his vanity, a scent that curled her toes inside her muddy slippers.

Slowly, although she knew who she’d find, she glanced up into Crispin’s sun-kissed face. He was so tall his head seemed to be in the clouds, that dusky hair streaked with gray a staggering vision next to the blue-white of the sky. Her gaze rose from his crumpled waistband up his long body. Droplets of water glistened in the hollow above his collarbone and dusted the dark hair scattered across his chest. A bead coasted down his cheek and over his lips, before rolling down his stubbled jaw. His eyes were wide, slightly startled, a sapphire glow pinning her in place. The beat of longing that vibrated through her would have taken her down had she been standing. As it was, she tunneled her fingers into the warm soil and held on for dear life.

In those seconds, the air pulsed like the blood beneath her skin. A measure she could hear in her ears and feel between her thighs. The memory of her cheek pressed into the sweet curve of his neck and her fingers stroking his hard cock as she came rolled over her like a wave. He swallowed hard, his only reply to her stare, and if she’d had more confidence, she would have said it was both of them caught up in the fury.

As it was, she was wholly unsure.

Moments later, Josiah stumbled into the shrub, sending leaves fluttering around her feet. “The pond is the best! It’s muddy but deep enough to dive and was just brilliant fun! Mr. Jasper swims there most summer nights, he said. Can you imagine? In the dark? Ugh. What if a snake found you? Or a monster that likes water? Or a frog the size of a carriage?”

Realizing there was no hope for improvement, Cece rose while shaking out her skirt. Crispin observed with a hawkish gaze, his eyes a compelling shade similar to the depths of his blasted pond, a mix of guarded blue and black. At times like these, she could believe he’d once been a treacherous emissary.

What she couldn’t believe is he wanted her enough to fight for her. He didn’t trust what he felt like the innocent young man had. Her betrayal—if a marriage she’d been forced into could be deemed a betrayal—had scraped his memory clean. She guessed every emotion that hit his heart was dulled due to the injury.

“You have a spot of dirt…” Crispin flicked his hand in the air, leaving the rest of his consideration unspoken. He was forcing back a smile, damn him.

She scrubbed at her cheek and her chin, getting angrier as his grin broadened.

Josiah grimaced. “Oh, mum, you’re making it worse. You need a bath something awful.”

Crispin laughed, full out, though he tried to conceal it behind an elegant turn of his wrist. Her son’s amusement wasn’t far behind. The two of them would be considered a charmingly adorable duo if she wasn’t the object of their ridicule.

Leaning over the hedge, she yanked the towel off Crispin’s shoulder.

Which was a mistake. It brought him closer, only an inch or two, but enough to make a difference. His gaze locked on hers as his tongue came out to sweep his plump bottom lip. As they stared, a muscle fired off in his jaw, ticking madly. His teasing scent was embedded in the damp linen—and in her blood after she pressed her nose into it.

Glorious, the bouquet. In addition to the sight of him standing there, skin moist, his breath lifting his broad shoulders, his hands tensing into fists, a hearth fire of attraction.

She wanted to immerse herself in this . Forget about a lavender-scented bath in the tub upstairs. She wanted desire to cleanse her.

Crispin proved her jittery colt theory when he quickly stepped back. Too elegant a move to be called a stumble, but it was rushed. And defensive. “I’ll deliver the boy to Mara,” he said, having already turned and started down the gravel path leading to the manse’s side entrance. “Come, Jos. Your mum is working.”

Cece watched them go, her nerves rippling. She returned to gardening with fumbling inelegance and only half a mind on her task, restraining her inclination to run after the exquisite beast and make him admit, in a way only she would understand, that he wanted her. Being a mother didn’t mean she couldn’t be his lover. Couldn’t he get on with this bloody affair?

Nevertheless, she wasn’t going to push. Not yet.

Her amiable host swam every night, so she knew where to find him.

When he reached the pond, Jasper unknotted his cravat with fumbling fingers. The buttons of his waistcoat slipped from his grasp once or twice. With a furious exhalation, he wrestled with his boots and finally freed them. The wind ripped past, tossing his hair into his face. A storm was brewing around him and inside him. Cece’s immovable green gaze striking him every other second during dinner had unsettled the hell out of him, though her demeanor had been nothing short of decorous.

She played the lady magnificently when she wished to. Better than he’d played the gentleman. Maybe even better than he’d played the thug.

He needed this swim. Needed the purity of closing his eyes and being enveloped. In his youth, it had been the same. His father’s black moods had often driven him into the forests and fields bordering their estate. He’d worked his horse out well, night after night. It was simple maths. Physical activity fought back emotions one wished to hide. In this case, emotions one wished to take . Cece’s need was vibrating off her and spinning through him, a battering ram of yearning. Did she think he’d missed that little trick of burying her nose in his towel and breathing him in? His pulse hadn’t been steady since he’d stumbled upon her behind that unkempt hedge, looking like Flora, goddess of plants or sunlight or trees. He cursed and yanked the last button of his trousers free without care, noting the spot of mud the fastener tumbled into. He’d not paid attention in class, apparently, if he couldn’t keep up with the gods.

What man yearned to tup a woman covered in dirt and straw? A chit with cheeks as rosy as the glorious hair atop her head? A countess who looked like a glowing country lass out for a summer frolic? A woman who, if she had more experience, would understand she could wrap a jaded former spy around her pinky, causing him to lose his senses, his heart, and his mind.

He bloody did, that’s who.

He didn’t know what he’d have done if her son hadn’t been standing there, delighted from their afternoon adventure, the cutest child imaginable with his gap-toothed grin and radiant happiness. There was a little-used pantry off the kitchen that had a butcher block quite perfect, Jasper imagined, for what he’d been envisioning. His fingertips had tingled for an hour or more with ribald, truly filthy images charging through his brain. Until he’d gotten back to his bedchamber, taken his rigid shaft in hand, and cut his fever down a notch. Another standing with his back against the door, half-dressed pleasure session.

He was running out of time and Cece out of patience—and he couldn’t blame her.

The sole rake left in the Leighton Cluster had promised a torrid affair and only given a fearful coward’s folly. Because love had proven more dangerous than the spy game. He’d worked hard, for years , to forget the hollowness of leaving her. It was smart of him to question getting involved again, wasn’t it? He respected the power of their connection; hell, he feared it. The reckless, lovesick baron’s son was long gone. Heartbreak had stolen his innocence, then the realities revealed during his emissary career had slammed the lid on optimism, leaving a sorrowful ache in his belly that lingered as he walked London’s cruel streets. The docks, the stews, those forbidding passages winding down to the Thames, felt like home because the faces he encountered there mirrored his bone-deep sorrow.

Still, his hunger for Cece was a fearsome presence, a primal, intoxicating bubble of breath in his lungs, a skipping pulse in his veins. Beautiful women had flitted in and out of his life with scant disturbance. He’d had a vase thrown at his head, and there’d been the minor fracas with the MP’s paramour, but otherwise, he was honest about his intentions, a forthright if distant but skilled-enough-to-sway lover. Lust was a straightforward emotion, uncomplicated if handled adroitly. Sterile, short-term affairs were his specialty.

Chemistry, however, the tensing of a man’s belly when he walked into a parlor and she was there, the shot of joy that rocked you where you stood when she smiled at you, ah , was the stuff grief was made of. He’d been served that tasty dish for nigh on two years after Cece married her earl. Strolling into a shop and seeing a chit who tilted their head the way Cece did had crushed him. Her laugh ringing out as he crossed a busy lane making him stumble, then head to the nearest public house to drown his pain. There’d even been the opium adventure one summer, as desperate a plea as a man could make.

After a bit, the tremors of his heart had lessened to dull numbness. Now, his body and his mind were coming alive after years of insensitivity. Somewhere along the way, since Cece had stumbled back into his life, he’d gone from feeling modestly comfortable in his aloneness to simply feeling alone .

Stepping from his trousers, Jasper tossed them on a stump, deciding the matter right then and there. He was going to take this swim, calm his fevered blood, and march to Cece’s bedchamber after the clock struck midnight and not one second beyond. He wasn’t above throwing her over his shoulder for the trip to his chamber like some bedeviled caveman. He was going to live this dream, then he was going to let her go with both of them accepting that their time had passed. Cece needed to be someone’s proper wife, Josiah, someone proper’s son. Jasper Noble wasn’t up to either job.

They’d have until dawn to drive each other mad before the servants and the child and the companion awoke. He planned to lose himself in her. Taste her from head to toe and start all over again. Milk his cock in her glorious body until he could not think . He coveted blessed oblivion at her generous hands, lips, and teeth. She could bite him at will this time.

His pulse scrambled when he heard the crack of a branch beneath a light footfall .

Jasper didn’t have to turn to know his minx had made it easy on him.

She wasn’t a woman who waited for what she wanted, and he loved her for it. He couldn’t admit it yet, but he knew he did. And he always had.

The sad part was he didn’t have her courage.

She appeared through the mist like the goddess he’d envisioned, her flaming mass of hair trailing down her shoulders, the blunt ends dusting her breasts. A breeze blew over him and across her, a silent roar. In the distance, thunder sounded, a ripple beneath his feet. Her spencer glided down her body and fluttered away to reveal a simple dressing gown he was going to destroy in seconds. There was a visible moon this night, and she crossed to him through dense shadow and light.

As she closed in, he rubbed his aching chest. Rolled his shoulders. Prepared to talk. Stopped. Composed his pitch. His thumb tangled in the waistband of his drawers while he debated how to let her know she didn’t have to seduce him.

He was seduced .

She didn’t give him a chance to speak. Her touch was eager, her lids closing as she went to her toes to reach him, fingers curving over the nape of his neck, and pulling him in. He was almost thankful the emerald burn of her gaze had been extinguished. A growling wind circled them, the sensation of madness cascading in a passionate slide down his body. He wasn’t going to stop her or stop himself. He wasn’t going to apologize. Ask for her mercy, her compassion, her damned understanding for the choices he’d made.

And he wasn’t going to make her explain hers.

He was merely going to take. And give .

Seizing her face in his hands, Jasper sank into the kiss, offering everything he had. His heartbeat became a pounding cadence in his ears, his fingertips, his belly. His shaft swelled against her hip, pleading for release. Hooking his arm around her waist, he lifted her from her feet and molded her body to his. Worlds merged as time slipped away. The past caught up with the present, firing his memory banks. “You’re safe with me,” he whispered against her lips, a sudden burst of raindrops slicking their skin. “You always were.”

Speechless, she pulled back enough for moonlight to swim across her face. Her eyes were teeming with helpless certainty—a potent mix he held no weapons to fight. A raindrop struck her temple and did a lazy roll down her cheek. He trapped it with his lips, drinking her in. She tasted better than his whisky, better than life. And he needed her. Christ , did he need her.

Thunder rumbled as the storm strengthened. Sweeping Cece into his arms, Jasper tucked her head into the nook of his shoulder and strode in a direction opposite the house. The cottage at the edge of his property was little used and roughly maintained. A lumpy bed, a sagging settee, and a scuffed desk fit for a man in hiding. He’d last had a guest there when Dash Campbell had a falling out with his wife that lasted exactly two nights before Theo came to retrieve her utterly apologetic husband.

Halting beneath the portico, Jasper shifted the luscious bundle in his arms and reached for the rusty key secreted atop the frame. Cece took the invitation and trailed her teeth up his neck, nibbling until his knees weakened. Groaning, he elbowed the door wide and released her to stand silhouetted in the doorway. Bracing his hand above her, he moved her against the doorjamb, and took the kiss to another level. Beyond persuasion, this soared to a request for admission. A plea to join . With a slanting lean to accommodate for their difference in height, he melded into her, her folds enveloping his cock with warmth and imagined moistness through two scant layers.

Breaking away, she ducked under his outstretched arm and raced, laughing, into the cottage, her hair trailing like amber mist behind her. He remembered this joy, an exuberance for life that he was in awe of. Kicking off her slippers, she gave him a saucy smile from the middle of the dark chamber and reached to grasp the hem of her dressing gown.

“ Cece ,” he whispered when he realized what she was preparing to do.

Her gown was gone in seconds, damp cotton fluttering to the carpet at her feet. Heart dropping to his knees, he squinted, struggling to see her in the muted light. His damned spectacles were on his desk inside the house.

“Are you coming in, Jasper Noble?” she whispered from the darkness.

Rain began to ping the tin roof as he closed the door with a soft click and leaned against it. If she thought he was going to rush an event he’d waited years for, she was sadly mistaken. “Do you remember watching me?” He slowly lowered his drawers and wrapped his fingers around his shaft. “Before we found the courage to make love all those years ago?”

She hummed softly, her chest rising with a swift breath. “ Yes .”

Keeping his gaze locked on her, he tugged his drawers off until he, too, stood unclothed before her. “Those stolen seconds stand as the most intimate of my life. I’ve never shared anything like it with anyone, giving myself like that. I never thought to—or tried—after you.”

“The earl—”

Wrenching free of the door, he stopped her with a snarl and an outstretched arm. “Perhaps someday I can hear this, minx, but not now. Not yet.” Circling her like a tiger, he went about the room lighting lamps until her body was revealed to him in its glory. Damn , he thought, nothing was faded about his memories. She was the most spectacular creature alive. “The picture of you has stayed right here bright as the sun”—he tapped his temple—“and will for eternity.”

Cece didn’t shy away when he halted before her. She let him have his moment, a lingering, teasing, tormenting review. She was slim of shoulder, plump and curvaceous of hip; her skin creamy against the lustrous amber locks fired by lamplight. Her nipple puckered when he grazed it with his knuckle, her ragged sigh tunneling through him like the finest brandy. It was the color of nutmeg, dark and peaked, begging for his attention. He couldn’t contain the impulse as his lips closed the aroused nub, his cheeks hollowing with the effort.

Trembling, she touched him then, fingers curling around his waist in possession. The scent of orange blossoms drifting from her skin threatened to eat him alive. “No more talking,” she murmured and stepped back, guiding him toward the bed. “Because I fear you’ll soon be trying to talk me out of this.”

Laughing, he thought to caution her about the shoddy mattress, but his mouth was full of her. He’d moved to the other breast, recalling quite clearly that she loved having her nipples sucked and preferred it when they were sucked hard .

He realized when they tumbled to the bed and her legs shifted to allow him to settle effortlessly between them that this was trouble. So much trouble. His heart horribly involved when devotion simply didn’t happen to him. He’d shut the door to many a bedchamber on his way out in absolute relief.

When this squalid cottage and the woman inside it felt like a beginning .

Bracing on his forearms to keep from crushing her, he cupped her cheek and brought her gaze to his. Her lids lifted, revealing eyes the color of burnt grass, full of dreams. A lock of hair trailed across her lips in invitation as his chest ached in longing and remembrance. The golden freckles dotting her cheeks were guideposts in the night. The scar splitting her eyebrow, another connection, binding them. As if he needed more. “I’m going to do wicked things to you until dawn, Constance Willoughby. Over and over again until we perfect the art. Fair warning. I’m going to talk, in lurid, exacting detail until you’re begging for release. We’ll take the time we never had before.”

In response, she skimmed her hand down his back. Digging her fingertips into the tender skin at his flank, she released a hot breath against this cheek. “ This ,” she whispered and raised her hips, rubbing her quim against the firm length of his cock, “is all you need to say.”

The kiss erupted, igniting the air around them. She drove her fingers through his hair and met his tongue thrust for thrust. Bodies bumping, skin slick, breath charged. Caresses flowing into awareness, flowing into pleasure. The experience was unparalleled, a mix of old and new. He remembered the sound of her moans, but her whispered desires, as lurid as the ones he’d promised, were a revelation, her daring suggestions a blunt enticement to a man starved for her.

She directed and allowed him to direct. They touched, licked, sucked, giving playful encouragement and breathless counsel, making bets, and breaking them soon after. She only halted him when he started to slide down her body to taste her, his fingers dancing through the silken hair at her core in preparation for the assault.

The bed squeaked as she rose, her thumb digging into his shoulder to stop him. Though he didn’t, not really, sliding his finger inside her moist channel and stroking as she watched, dazed. Her juices coated his skin, her scent his soul. She was ready, so ready. His neck was stinging from a bite she’d given him seconds before and sweat was beading on his brow. His arms were shaking, his knees weak.

He was losing his noted composure and couldn’t have cared less.

Working her hand between their bodies, she grasped his shaft and lined it up perfectly against her slick folds, adding three enthusiastic base-to-tip caresses to ensure he didn’t argue. He gasped, his brow dropping to her shoulder. Hell’s teeth , her hands were clever, her body calling to him. And her smile? Wicked.

“You win. I’m begging,” she gasped and sank to the bed. The move shifted her hips enough to send the head of his cock inside her. Merely a shade, barely a whisper. Not enough, not nearly enough. “Actually, I’m demanding it. The rest, we can… oh , later.”

“Slow, love, slow,” he urged on a gusty breath, wholly for her benefit. Settling his head between her legs and stroking his tongue across her sex would’ve guaranteed she came before he did. He’d admit it to no one but himself, but he often used oral service to keep a situation exactly where he wanted it. He gave pleasure and took only the small portion he needed for himself. There was never a need to give a woman everything . Instead, a steady pulse was dancing at the base of his spine, indicating an impending orgasm that threatened to be of the losing consciousness variety. He knew the type—or rather, remembered them with her.

Cece being Cece, she was having none of his standard sexual schemes. Grasping his buttock in her hand, she angled her knee alongside his hip and gave him no warning before she thrust him into her tight, silken channel, seating him deeply inside her. It was hasty, almost angry, and breathtaking. To be seized was a rare thing for a man. A rare thing for him, anyway, as he’d commanded every carriage he’d ever ridden in .

After this ploy, he was spellbound, spent. Meaning Cece got what she wanted.

Wrapping his arms around her, he let his weight fall and began to fuck her thoroughly and with little of his usual finesse. Later, he’d have trouble recalling exactly where he’d lost himself.

He only recognized the night was the most stirring of his life.

“Don’t be vexed,” she groaned against his neck, her body shivering beneath him, the tight muscles in her core squeezing him dry. Her teeth closed in on a tender spot beneath his ear as she rose to meet his thrust, another of her delicious nibbles, and his vision blurred. He gathered he liked being bitten. “We have time for the rest.”

“Yes, yes, later,” he thought he whispered. Or perhaps the words were buried, misplaced in the glowing sensation of being surrounded by her for the first time in forever.

Linking their fingers, he tugged her arm above her head and against the rickety headboard, stretching her body out beneath him, sinking until his pelvis knocked hers, and they were one form in pulsing motion. He couldn’t fill his hands with her quickly enough. He ached for her essence. He was starved, dying of thirst, expiring from unexpended pleasure. And she seemed the same, meeting him measure for measure. They kissed, panted, growled. Tore at each other as if clothing remained when there was nothing but slick skin and desperation. The bed protested—he truly feared the act was going to kill it—rocking into the aged wall with loud thumps.

She arched her body with a feral moan and dug her nails into his hip, dragging him deeper, which he hadn’t thought possible. Slowing, he glided his length inside her in prolonged, provocative strokes, closing his eyes to the possibilities, the bloody wonder . His hand tangled in her hair as he brought the glorious mass to his face and breathed her in. The scent of orange blossoms shot through him like a punch, bringing his release a step closer.

“Quit tormenting me,” she huffed, her tight, clever body closing around him.

Curving his arm beneath her bottom, he shifted her, angling, searching for the ideal fit. One moment more… there, oh, hell, there. “I’m tormenting myself, minx.”

She whimpered, her arm trembling where he trapped it against the headboard. Her hand at his hip guided his rhythm, demanding, until the only sounds filling the room were the recurrent slap of skin and consequent cries of ecstasy. Her thigh at his hip tensed, her body seizing. Releasing her arm, he caught her knee in his hand, and held her steady as he thrust—as he overwhelmed them both. There was no gentle way to bring them home. They were grinding each other into oblivion in his cottage’s rickety bed, marking each other for doom.

Ruin was bliss.

Fevered, she took frantic hold of his shoulders and bowed into his thrusts. “Touch me,” she whispered, her eyes emerald beacons lighting his path.

It was sound advice as he was close to the edge and wanted only to take her with him. Her sex was coated in her juices, the nub aroused, and jutting from her folds. He thumbed it, circling and pressing, the vision of licking her clean doing him in. When he whispered what he wanted in her ear, she groaned and shook beneath him.

Her convulsions around his shaft unleashed a blinding orgasm that set his heartbeat galloping free. The world around him faded to a single point: her . He held her close, wanting her, wanting this. Love and lust intertwined. They thrust and shivered, kissing and clawing, clinging, mislaid souls. Their scent permeated the space, sounds of pleasure rippling like waves across a shore.

Sliding free at the last, he spilled his seed on her thigh while shoving aside the pinch of anger he felt at withdrawing—when he hadn’t wished to withdraw. Truthfully, he wished never to withdraw.

Cece knocked his hand away and collapsed to the bed, her release cycling out like wheels spinning madly on an overturned carriage. He watched bliss take her, then take her again. It lasted longer than his, a fact over which he was envious.

He hung his head low, his weight braced on his forearms. He wasn’t sure he could feel his toes, now that he thought about it.

“Breathe,” she murmured drowsily against his shoulder, “or you’re going to faint.”

His mind blanked, his lungs burning as he realized he hadn’t taken in air in minutes. Faint? Actually, with the black swirls littering his vision, it seemed possible.

He pressed his brow gently to hers. “Give me a moment, Ce, then I’ll move. I know I’m heavy, but I’m also a bit boneless.”

She wiggled and sighed. “No, your weight… I love your weight atop me. I’ve longed for it.”

This endearing sentiment was the last thing he recalled before sleep took him, fatigue overriding fear in realizing love had once again smacked him in the face.