Page 46 of This Haunted Heart

“You have no idea what this does to me,” she whimpered, arching her back, wriggling her ass at me.

“Tell me again that you don’t have a heart,” I commanded, pleasuring and punishing her body in turns, rubbing between her legs over her clothing.

“I don’t,” she groaned. “I’m heartless.”

“You gave yours away and never got it back,” I reminded her as I jerked down the breeches from her hips and the drawers she’d borrowed. I stripped her—no garters, no stockings. And when I got to her boots, I pulled those off and chucked them aside angrily.

“I gave it away,” she agreed, “but it still manages to order me around somehow. Even from a distance.”

It wasn’t at a distance. It was right here with me. And telling her so was on the tip of my tongue, pressing against my lips, trying to escape. She’d stolen from me, and then she hadn’t died. It had all been a lie.

How dare she leave me.

But there were things I craved outside of that daunting confrontation, and I swallowed those words that would change everything, swallowed the wordsso they could not send me down a different path. I would not let go of my anger, my desire for revenge. Not for anyone.

Not even for her.

When she was bare from the waist down, I bent her over my lap and slapped her ass until her skin was a bright tempting pink and she was squirming and mewling and clawing at my clothing, trying to undress me, too. I rubbed out the sting in her skin, fondling her. Her flesh was hot from my attention. When I reached between her legs, she dripped down my fingers.

“Don’t stop, don’t stop,don’t stop,” she chanted.

I gave her what she craved while her knees were pressed to the dirt and her feet pedaled at the grass beneath us. I pulled her hair and spanked her raw, made her tell me what a bad girl she was and all the filthy ways she’d make it up to me. I filled her pussy with my fingers and teased her flesh while she promised to crawl for me and suck me, to beg and plead for mercy on her knees, to sit on my cock when I commanded her to like a very good girl, a repentant girl, a feral little sweetheart that would do anything to be full of me.

“Unbutton your shirtwaist, unless you want me to ruin it, too,” I warned, opening up my trousers and tugging down my drawers to free myself quickly. I knew by the hum in her throat and the jerking of her hips that she was close to her peak, and I wanted to feel her come around me. I pressed her flat to the earth, then I entered her prone body from behind and rolled my hips, driving her forward.

Her heat pulsed and squeezed me tight as she came.

“Attagirl,” I said, jaw clenched. Her body was a silken dream, a taste of heaven, the gods’ ambrosia, and I didn’t want it to be over yet. I knew what her pleasure tasted like, and I couldtaste her then on my tongue just from memory alone.

She worked off the fastenings of her shirt and removed it as I plundered her. Muscles in my shoulders and arms went taut. My pulse surged.

The fawn skin of her back was broken by old gashes and jagged scars, the same ones I’d treated when we were young. Time had turned them a rosy shade. Placing a palm over the marks, I slowed my pace to follow the map of those injuries with the pads of my fingers, learning them anew.

Rynn craned her neck, peering over her shoulder. “See? I’m a pirate, too,” she said softly, sounding sleepy.

I pressed my lips to the worst of her scars and felt her tremble beneath me. Sliding my hands up her belly, I cupped her breasts and held her tight, rocking into her to claim her and to love her, because as much as I hated it, I did love her. I always would. It was not an emotion I could cast from me, hard as I tried, no matter how much it vexed me.

There was such a thing as loving someone too much, and I was proof of that. I loved her in a manner that consumed and destroyed and drove me to madness. Panting and grinding, I let out some of my madness into her with her enthusiastic encouragement, her moans and cries so loud she scared birds out of their nests and squirrels from the trees. Her fingers dug into the earth beneath her as her body shook with each pump of my hips.

I slowed down again, not wanting it ever to be over. I wanted to live inside this woman. Were I a ghost, I would ravish and possess her always. My heart pounded, a fresh agony in my chest. My pulse was a storm at sea in my ears. I knocked the breath out of her with another slow, hard thrust.

“This is going to take a while,” I warned her, moving myhands to her hips and digging my fingers in.

“Good,” she panted.

“I won’t be gentle,” I promised.

“Even better.”

I turned her onto her back, and she spread her thighs for me, as pretty as a present. “I won’t stop, even if you beg me to,” I rasped.

“I wouldn’t dare.”

I sunk into her, caging her in with my arms, watching her lashes flutter and her lips round in ecstasy at the invasion. She worked herself under me, meeting my hips with hers. Her nails scratched down my back, over my clothing, down scars that matched hers. I buried my face in her hair.

Sucking on the skin of her throat and kissing her breasts, I made her orgasm again, and the sweet satin squeeze of her body proved too much for me. I came deep inside her.

She curled into me as I rolled us onto our sides. She was not a hellcat anymore but a hell kitten, pressing little kisses to my jaw. Chasing her release turned her ferocious, but an orgasm always made her meek and tender. She nuzzled me.

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