Page 320 of From Rakes to Riches

But when her spine arched and her sex spasmed around him in delicious contractions, something like panic surged as his own climax gathered through his veins.

It sped toward him, an avalanche bent on annihilation. He already knew how powerful it would be and still couldn’t leap out of the way.

It would ruin him. Shatter him.

He barely pulled out in time.

Burying a roar in the velvet of her quilt, he let his cock slide between their bodies as his release ripped him apart. It was a cataclysm of pleasure, something so mind-altering he knew the moment defined him.

Because there was the resolute man he’d been before he tasted the heaven that was the embrace of Mercy Goode.

And the tragedy of everything that was about to happen next.

11

Mercy thought that relinquishing her virginity would make her feel older, somehow. More experienced and womanly. Perhaps even wise, now that she’d been initiated into the society of secret smiles shared by Nora and Pru, her two married sisters.

Instead, she felt very young and vulnerable as she complacently allowed Raphael to wipe away the slick leavings of their joining from her belly and between her thighs.

She stared at the shoes he’d discarded in haste. The ones he’d wear to leave her.

Would he put them on? Was it time for him to go now?

Now that she was cold and oddly small and lonely in her massive bed.

Mercy took a moment to admire the masculine shape of his backside as he turned away from her and ministered to his own hygiene.

She wished she were a sculptor. A painter. Any sort of artist that could capture him in a rendering.

For memories had a tendency to fade, and she wanted to appreciate his beauty every day.

He returned to her, and her heart lifted as he slid into the bed and gathered her against him. Settling on his back, he arranged her boneless limbs over his muscled form like a marionette before spreading her curls across his chest so he could stroke her hair with lazy fingers.

She nuzzled into him as he yawned with such ferocity his jaw cracked and his limbs shuddered with it.

As elegant and sinister as he was with his fine suits and caustic conversation, Mercy discovered she rather liked him like this.

Silky hair mussed by her fingers in the throes of pleasure, hazel eyes at half-mast and a drowsy curve softening his hard mouth. Even his jaw had relaxed, the cords beneath his ears and next to his temple released.

The damp chill of the late-winter night lurked just outside of where their cobalt coverlet and gold lamp ensconced them in a decadence of warmth and flesh and velvet.

Though he’d pulled the blanket to their waists, she could still consider their differences with idle curiosity. Decide what she liked and what she had to accustom herself to...

If that were an option.

The steely muscle beneath his marble-smooth skin mesmerized her as she let her fingers wander the peaks and valleys of his geography. She appreciated all that he was, the dusky hue to his skin. The warm fragrance of him, like cotton and salt.

Crisp hair on his leg tickled the inside of her thigh, and she drew her appendage over the abrading stuff, letting it scratch away the irksome itch.

His breath evened. Moving from the chest beneath her cheek down to his stomach. The hammer of his heart slowed to a thump, and he was silent for so long she thought he might have fallen asleep.

She lifted her head to check and found him staring—unblinking—into the middle distance as his fingers toyed with her hair.

“Is something troubling you?” she asked, pretending not to be anxious as she perched her head on her palm.

He was not quick to reply. “I don’t know if it’s the darkness of the hour or of the situation, but I can only think it is a cruelty of fate that I found you.”

“Well...there’s a thing to say.” A frown tugged at her mouth, at her heart, and she pushed back from him, offended in the extreme. “When I was feeling just the opposite. Thinking how fortunate I was to have spent such a time with you. To have enjoyed myself so thoroughly. Did I..um... Have I misunderstood your seemingly enthusiastic responses?”

---