Page 584 of From Rakes to Riches

“Too much?” he asked into her neck, his lips sliding against damp skin.

“No,” she said, breathless, pleasure and pain spiking through her, mingling, one inseparable from the other.

It was so much.Hewas so much. Surelytoomuch. But somehow…improbably—she took all of him…demandedall of him.

Pleasured to within an inch of its life, her sex held for an uncertain moment, teetering on an edge before it tumbled over and broke, a ragged cry pouring from her as she held on tight, the sensation of lightness blossoming inside her, tingling through her veins to the very tips of fingers and toes.

“Gemma,” he groaned into her neck as he continued to move her on him, impossibly deeper, the promise of his own release drawing him inward.

At the very last moment, he pulled from her and took himself in hand. Instinctively, her fingers pushed his aside and wrapped around him. “Like this?” she asked, giving his length a testing stroke, an unexpected feeling of power slipping through her.

“Oh, yes,” he rasped, his voice a crushed-velvet scrape, his dark gaze watching her bring him to the edge, then over it, as he shouted his climax toward the ceiling, his seed pulsing onto his stomach. He collapsed back onto an elbow, utterly spent.

Gemma reached for a cloth on the washbasin. With a few quick swipes, she had him cleaned up and was collapsing beside him.

He slid an arm beneath her head and turned onto his side, so he faced her. His gaze brimmed with words unspoken.

Words he looked determined to speak.

Not yet, came a plea from deep inside her.

With words, reality would steal into the moment.

And she wasn’t yet ready for reality.

“Gemma,” he said.

She touched a fingertip to his lips. “Not yet.”

He took her hand in his and lowered it to his chest. Beneath her palm beat his heart, steady and sure.

“You’re safe.”

And there was reality landed square in the moment.

“Rake—”

Now it was him touching a silencing fingertip to her mouth.

“With me,” he said. “You’re safe with me.”

“I know.”

And it was true.

She did know it.

But she knew something else.

It couldn’t last.

But he didn’t know that.

A week from now, the rest of her life would begin—without him.

She swallowed back sudden emotion that wanted release. “I leave with Hannibal at dawn.” The change of subject was utterly necessary.

“You don’t have to go just yet,” he countered. “Wilson and Blankenship can walk him with a few lads. You could go later in the week.”

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