Page 26 of This Haunted Heart

“If that’s what you want,” she said, voice wobbling.

“That’s what I want.”

While I was distracted with the cushion, she grabbed the front of my shirt and jerked me forward. With one kiss, all the breath in my lungs came out of me in a mad rush. My eyes slid shut.

She tasted summer sweet. I could still smell the sunlight and spring rain on her skin and in her hair. Hints of citrus and wine clung to her like she’d rolled in crimson rose petals just moments ago. I wanted to take back control, but when I planted a hand beside her to push away, my body disobeyed me. My fingers fisted into her springy curls. My other hand cupped her hip where it flared and dug in tight. Lost, I pulled her closer.

This was the kiss I had dreamed about for two decades. This was the kiss that had haunted my soul, teased my thoughts, consumed my mind, and driven me to madness. I hated that I wanted her—hated that my heart refused to reject the one who’d poisoned it.

I’d walked knowingly right into her snare, but oh God, what a delicious trap it was. I didn’t want to escape it.

The satiny pillows of her lips were plush and inviting and so unexpectedly warm. Her tongue too—it was curious and light as it licked into my mouth, and I was overcome. My lips surrendered to hers immediately. Conquered without a fight. She nibbled and suckled and teased my tongue like she was just as ravenous for me as I was for her.

But I knew this to be a fiction. This was a game to her, and that thought alone cooled me.

She’d undone the buttons down the seam of my trousers, and I hadn’t even felt her nimble hand at work. Furies spare me! My waistband loosened around my hips. She tried to cup my growing erection with those same talented fingers, but I captured her wrist and lowered her back onto the bed.

Her lips were swollen, gently ravaged. A positivelybreathtaking sight.

“I’d like to kiss you elsewhere,” she explained, trying again to reach for the opening she’d made in my trousers, but I held her fast.

The mental image of those beautiful, battered lips around my cock made me so hard, my length stretched achingly against the linen of my drawers. I was so sensitive, the pull of the fabric was like sandpaper. I wanted to sink into the silky sweetness of her mouth. It was the only cure for me, but I knew better and wouldn’t dare.

This was a game. A manipulation.

A game I would win.

“Oh dear,” she said, surprised. “You look even angrier now than when we started. How did a kiss cause that?”

I didn’t feel angry anymore. Just overcome. I pushed her legs up until her knees bent and her feet rested flat beneath her. Then I sat just below them.

“Open for me,” I rasped.

She did, slowly parting her thighs, revealing the split in her drawers, intimate dark curls, and a pink pussy begging to be touched. I found the furrow between her thighs with the pad of my fingers, and I pressed and stroked sweetly sensitive flesh until her lungs hitched.

I knew this body. Knew this pussy. Knew how to please and tease and pleasure it. Knew how to make her pant and beg and scream and come.

This nightingale was mine, and I knew how to make her sing for me.

I spread her open for my inspection, then I rubbed her tenderly, until this most delicate part of her swelled and went taut. Her pupils widened, swallowing up the rich hickorycolor. Nowshewas the one conquered. Nothing but a desperate hunger remained. Her desire coated my fingers, and I quickened my pace and the pressure.

I slid a finger inside her. Eyes wide, she strangled a whimper.

“None of that now,” I told her. “I want you to moan for me.”

“We aren’t alone in this house, and this isn’t a brothel,” she whispered.

“It would be a travesty if you kept quiet. An absolute and utter tragedy. Be a very good girl now and moan for me. Be wanton for me, Rynn. Let me see you undone.”

Biting that plump lower lip, she gripped her knee with her right arm, holding herself open to me, and her eyes squeezed shut. I sunk two fingers into her soft heat, making it even more difficult for her to hold back the little hum building in her throat.

My speed increased, pressing inside her deep, then retreating slightly to tease her with my thumb, over and over again. Her breath left her in shallow pants. The vixen tried again to touch my hardened cock. I trapped her hand against the mattress near her hip. Her fingers flexed, still reaching despite their cage.

“I want to touch you.” She spoke so earnestly I almost believed her.

The desperation in her expression, the passionate desire, was so profoundly invigorating, my cock wept in my drawers. Her hips rocked, first gently, then frantically.

“Oh,” she groaned. “Yes! Yes, like that. I need more . . . I want more of you . . .” She gulped at the air, chest heaving.

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